Ford timelord

[Pieman]

I didn't know until I started researching Galaxies and Custom 500s that they did an estate version of this model, called the Ranch Wagon...

 

But I did know of this hearse version - which I assumed was a one-off - because I was there when it got bangered at Brafield!  Was raced by a Dutch guy who's known for racing rarities he picks up all over Europe, and I remember walking through the pits and suddenly going "What the fuck is THAT??"

 

[barefoot]

On 2/21/2020 at 5:51 PM, Split_Pin said:

I think they set out to play the music industry more than anything else.

Surely they played the World of Art as well?

And I disagree about the white paint chucked on the replica. Chap should have never cleaned it and claimed it as an original artwork by Cautey/Drummond. As things stand it was just a bit of KLF ephemera, there one minute & gone the next. Exhibited alongside Emmin's unmade bed, a fucking fortune to be had!

[mk2_craig]

^^ This!!  Coulda banked enough to buy that nice Aussie example and make it into another Timelord replica.  

[808 Estate]

On 2/26/2020 at 7:22 AM, Philmanns said:

 

@808 Estate I can only assume you’re an 808 State fan, that or you’ve got a Mazda? ? I may go to the Brighton gig on 24th April, Orbital DJ set the same night too.

Yes indeed. No Mazda though.

I thought playing on the name would make a good forum name too. That looks like a bloody good night out. I may have to go to that.

[Philmanns]

23 hours ago, barefoot said:

And I disagree about the white paint chucked on the replica. Chap should have never cleaned it and claimed it as an original artwork by Cautey/Drummond. As things stand it was just a bit of KLF ephemera, there one minute & gone the next. Exhibited alongside Emmin's unmade bed, a fucking fortune to be had!

You’re not the only one that has suggested that the  paint should have been left on to create ‘an art piece’. However I think that the likelihood of it suddenly becoming worth a fortune as an art piece is unlikely. Cauty’s art sells but he’s not exactly Banksy (despite them allegedly being mates). And my car is a Ford Timelord replica, which is the way I want it to look. If I’d wanted it to look shitter than it already does, I could have poured white gloss paint over it myself .

[Philmanns]

22 minutes ago, 808 Estate said:

Yes indeed. No Mazda though.

I thought playing on the name would make a good forum name too. That looks like a bloody good night out. I may have to go to that.

If I see you there I’ll buy you a pint ?

[Pieman]

7 minutes ago, Philmanns said:

And my car is a Ford Timelord replica, which is the way I want it to look. If I’d wanted it to look shitter than it already does, I could have poured white gloss paint over it myself .

Spot on.  I know your intention is to keep that beautiful car as faithful to how the original Timelord looked, and it really does.

[808 Estate]

22 minutes ago, Philmanns said:

If I see you there I’ll buy you a pint ?

If the Timeleord is there, I will buy you several.  

 

 

[Philmanns]

23 minutes ago, 808 Estate said:

If the Timeleord is there, I will buy you several.  

 

 

Haha! The gig is in Brighton where Cauty also lives, I shan’t be giving the fucker an open invitation to redecorate it again! 

[808 Estate]

Very fair point. ?

[Pieman]

12 minutes ago, Philmanns said:

Haha! The gig is in Brighton where Cauty also lives, I shan’t be giving the fucker an open invitation to redecorate it again! 

Take a big bucket of whitewash and get your own back before he has chance.

[barefoot]

22 minutes ago, Pieman said:

Take a big bucket of whitewash and get your own back before he has chance.

But that would be 'Philmanns' appropriation, not a Cauty/Drummond original and I'm guessing Charles Saatchi would probably not bite your hand off for it.

[Pieman]

30 minutes ago, barefoot said:

But that would be 'Philmanns' appropriation, not a Cauty/Drummond original and I'm guessing Charles Saatchi would probably not bite your hand off for it.

I didn't mean chucking it over the car

[Mr_Bo11ox]

On 2/26/2020 at 7:22 AM, Philmanns said:

I bought it in 2015. The previous owner (Ross) bought it over from the US. He created the replica and drove it to Spain to visit the scenes from the White Room in Sierra Nevada.

@Philmannsthis 'commemorative' trip to Sierra Nevada sounds interesting. Have you seen any photos of that? I'd love to see some if there are any knocking about!!!!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I've just found another KLF-related podcast if anyone's interested

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p080wx2y

 

[jonny69]

On 2/22/2020 at 12:29 PM, Mr_Bo11ox said:

Incidentally if anyone wants to read 'The Manual' its seemingly very expensive to buy but its only a little book and the whole lot is available to read here:

https://www.tomrobinson.com/resource/klf.txt

I read it in a couple of sittings at work and its fantastic. I'm sure its totally out of date and useless today but it conjures up some brilliant images if this is really how they went about it back then.

 

I'm partway through reading this in the lab at the moment and it's excellent! Got to say it throws up a lot of nostalgia about that period in time. I didn't directly have anything to do with the music industry (plus I was only a kid at the time) but I was around the London record scene and people taking part in it. Great insight into the setups and technology at the time!

[cort1977]

l

[Philmanns]

On 2/27/2020 at 7:50 PM, Mr_Bo11ox said:

@Philmannsthis 'commemorative' trip to Sierra Nevada sounds interesting. Have you seen any photos of that? I'd love to see some if there are any knocking about!!!!

Not photos but there was a video on YouTube which seems to have gone. I’ll ask him why.

[Philmanns]

@Mr_Bo11ox Just found that White Room trip clip on YouTube 

 

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Wonderful!!! I have been listening to that 'chill out' soundtrack non-stop for about 3 weeks now. 

What a labour of love!!! 10/10 to the lad for making this.

[junkyarddog]

That car in the film clip looks a lot more tidy and straight than the one in the doctorin the tardis video.

[Pieman]

37 minutes ago, junkyarddog said:

That car in the film clip looks a lot more tidy and straight than the one in the doctorin the tardis video.

That's because it's  a replica - which @Philmanns owns!  WGU 18G was the original, WGU 18E features in that video and is now owned by Phil.  Who I am not jealous of at all...

[meggersdog]

3 hours ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

Wonderful!!! I have been listening to that 'chill out' soundtrack non-stop for about 3 weeks now. 

 

I had this cd in the car the whole of December .Certainly beat having to endure Christmas songs on the radio on my drive to work.

[jonny69]

I saw Jerry out of Jesus Jones up at the park yesterday (as you do) and just happened to mention I was reading The Manual because we were talking about music. He went oh yeah, I know Bill quite well and recalled a load of stories about all the mad shit they did in the bar they had on Old Street and how one of their mums completely lost her shit with them when she heard about the burning of the million quid. 

Anyway, I mentioned the Timelord and this thread and he was like oh yeah the old police car! He was there when they bought it for a couple of hundred quid and regularly had it parked outside his flat in Hangar Lane because it was too big to keep outside wherever it was Bill or Jimmy were living. 

[808 Estate]

After much searching, I found the original version of the 3AM Eternal video. This one is shot almost completely in and around Ford TImerlord as opposed to the other versions where the video is set in the pyramid stage, with just a few shots of the car.

 

[mk2_craig]

Thanks for hunting that down! I was about 13 when these guys were at their peak, it’s an enjoyable bit of nostalgia. 

[808 Estate]

Theres an excellent discussion on the KLF on the Steve Hoffman music forum.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-klf-album-by-single-by-album.692361/

[JB77]

Just been catching up on the hunttimelord blog and Jimmy Cauty gave an interview about how he acquired the car. If I read it right there were two Galaxies plus the LTD. 

[JB77]

The more I look at the pictures on page 5 of this thread especially the early pics from Flinton Chalks ownership and the NME photo in the Swedish field there are a few minor differences to the car(s) after the Swedish trip. Look at the roof where there are two black mounts for lights and the rear quarter panel has small badges and reflectors right at the end. After the car got back to transcentral it was supposed to have had its parts swapped onto another Galaxie and the original Timelord was scrapped. Look at the picture of the car in front of the billboard and the mounts on the roof are gone and the b pilllars are black as well as the paint is a mess and missing the writing as Datsuncog pointed out. I need to get a life! 

[Datsuncog]

On 4/12/2020 at 11:12 PM, JB77 said:

Just been catching up on the hunttimelord blog and Jimmy Cauty gave an interview about how he acquired the car. If I read it right there were two Galaxies plus the LTD. 

Holy cats... somebody hold the front page!

https://hunttimelord.wordpress.com/

 

As @JB77 has just clocked, Darren over at HuntTimelord has apparently been in touch with Jimmy Cauty, and it appears that my 'two Galaxies' theory - and Bill Drummond's assertion that "there were two of them" - was partially correct after all.

The ex-Superman IV JAMsmobile supplied by Flinton Chalk, and the car which became Ford Timelord, were not the same car.

At risk of sounding monumentally smug, it appears that the Galaxie which suffered terminal engine failure and was recovered back from Sweden never saw the road again, as I had conjectured back in November, and became a parts donor for its replacement prior to scrapping.

On 11/7/2019 at 4:18 PM, Datsuncog said:

It's the ownership change well after the car was documented to have been acquired by Jimmy Cauty that particularly interests me. Now it could be that it was just a case of catching up on paperwork - or was it perhaps after the car had some major change recorded, such as a replacement engine after the Sweden debacle?

September '87 just seems to stand out since that was when WGU went overseas, and suffered total engine failure before arriving back to London on the back of an AA flatbed.

If this were a physical jigsaw, I think I'd put this piece carefully to the side - as it looks to be Something that might fit with Something Else, but I don't yet know what.

Which is why the car in the pre-Sweden pics looks a bit different from the car photographed in London in late '87, as JB77 also noticed.

Extracts from the HuntTimelord blog give Jimmy's words as follows:

Quote

I saw the police car advertised in Auto Trader or maybe it was Exchange and Mart, the ad said Ford Galaxy 500 police car as used in Superman the movie, It was for sale somewhere in South East London, we jumped into Simons pick up truck and headed over to take a look.

The owner of the car was a bloke called Flinton Chalk, Flinton would pop up from time to time over the next few decades most recently as a member of Badger Kull.

One of his main selling points for the car apart from it being in the film Superman was that the car had a 3 speed manual hirst gear shift, I didn’t know what that was but apparently it was a thing racing cars have so was a good thing.

The ford was in pretty bad condition but in those days we just bought old bangers and drove them into the ground, but it was a runner so I did the deal and drove it home

I think it was £300.

 

The first thing I did was sand off the sheriff’s stars from the front doors and replaced them with The JAMs PD Blaster logo which I painted by hand with blackboard paint and a small brush, I then painted the 23 on the roof and KLF on the hood and rear trunk, I also fitted a whip areal to the back wing, and for the roof I fitted a rotating beacon light and borrowed a couple of spotlights from a JCB that was parked on a nearby building site. 

( in those days building sites were not protected by fencing and cctv so it was much easier to acquire the things you needed for your cop car )

Pretty soon we were using it as the JAMs mobile, it was also my everyday car.

 

Driving a Ford Galaxy 500 was a bit of a trial, the inside was usually full of choking exhaust fumes but because we all smoked anyway no one noticed, the breaks didn’t work, the suspension was shot to bits, the electrics were rotten, the steering had so much play I always described it as like trying to steer a small boat around town. In the early 70-80s and early 90s we were quite skint as the royalties hadn’t started coming in for KLF records, I did have some royalties from the Lord of the Rings poster but they were diminishing by the late 80s, everything was done self-help, from doing up our squats to fixing cars and motorbikes, the idea of taking a car to a garage to be fixed was unheard of, that was the sort of thing your parents would do.

The down side of this was that most cars we had were total wrecks and our houses were even worse, this didn’t bother us one bit, we felt like we were living in a new type of community and it was exiting even though a bit harsh in the winters.

 

At some point in 1987 we had to drive to Stockholm in the Police car to try and have a meeting with Abba.

We got there okay but I noticed when checking the oil level that water was mixing with the oil, (the oil looked like white emulsion paint) I knew that was bad news but we set off anyway back to London and hoped for the best, later that night somewhere on a forest road North of Gothenburg the engine blew, there was a huge bang and that was it, no compression and a great big puddle of oil and water all over the road.

Bill was a fully payed up member of the AA so the car was eventually towed back to London with us all in the crew cab of the AA truck.

I planned to replace the engine but during the night of the great storm of 1987 a large tree branch fell on the car and smashed the windscreen and made a massive dent in the roof. It was decided it was un-fixable so I set about finding a replacement.

Another Ford Galaxy was located, it was the same year, same everything, but like the original car this one had virtually no brakes and was in pretty bad shape so a perfect match, apart from the paint job which was bright red.

[...]

I took as much as I could from the first car, doors, hood, trunk door, number plate and fitted it badly onto the new car, painted it all black and hey presto police car number 2

What was left on the original car was towed away to the scrap yard.

It was this second car that in 1989 became Ford Timelord and went to Spain to film the road movie The White Room.

NOTE: Technically a number plate should not be taken from one car and attached to another but this was a show biz emergency so it was ok.

So, based on Jimmy's account, it seems that the original WGU 18G was in fact scrapped in late 1987, and its identity transferred on to a second, red Ford Custom/Ford Galaxie, whose original identity remains unknown.

This car was then repainted in black and white. The Melody Maker pics of December 1987 are the first known of this second car - with the paintwork looking quite different in a few key areas.

It also explains why the car photographed by Jon Mace in 1990/91 still had some of Flinton's Bluesmobile lettering showing through the rattlecanned doors - it's because the doors were swapped between the cars. Suddenly, it all becomes clear.

It also possibly explains why the last V5c was issued for WGU on 6 October 1987, as deduced by @LightBulbFun - although as the Great Storm of 1987 occurred on the night of 15-16 October, it's possible that Jimmy's conflating a few different events - maybe the second car had already been purchased for its engine before storm damage put the tin hat on the original car?

I'm sure the lads at DVLA have a box to tick for 'showbiz emergencies'. They're good like that.

So what, then, became of the second car - the actual Ford Timelord which appeared in the 'Doctorin' The Tardis' video, and in The White Room? The one which @Pieman managed to positively ID as having been raced at Swaffham in June 1991?

Says Jimmy:

Quote

After filming the white room movie in Spain the car came back to London and just sat broken down in our front garden of Trancentral for quite a long time, it was painted white for the final scene of that movie and was unusable.

We used the cop car one more time for the video for 3am Eternal in 1991, It was a non runner by this time so we scraped the white paint off the windows and put it on a filming low loader, and just did some internal shots while driving around London, we cut some holes in the roof to allow for additional lighting.

I’m not sure what happened to the car after that shoot, I think we left it at Pinewood studios on the back lot then never bothered to pick it up, it might still be there who knows. I think it’s still registered to my name.

So it seems that Jimmy's unaware that it ultimately ended up with Paul Bickers, and bowed out a few months later in a blaze of glory in Norfolk.

And possibly JLE 67K gets a mention - the Ford LTD that 'wouldn't run right' and ended up with Gen Matthews:

Quote

There was a third police car an early 80s Ford Custom V8, but we never used it as a JAMs car and sold it.

Wrong decade, but the rest seems to fit.

And the Chevy Nova used in the Wimbledon charity banger race gets a shout out too:

Quote

In 1992 we took part in a banger race pop stars v. Radio 1 DJs at Wimbledon race track this was a different police car, a later model with a V8 engine that I painted to look like the original, that car was completely smashed to bits that night and left at the race track.

Crikey. So there we have it.

If Jimmy's correct and no chains are being yanked, then there were indeed two identical 1968 Fords used by he and Bill Drummond during their late 80s/ early 90s art-music career - but seemingly there was only ever one Ford Timelord.

There's maybe a bit of drift on dates and specs - the original WGU was a 6-cyl Custom base model, not a Galaxie 500; the '3a.m. Eternal' video was shot in December 1990 - but basically what Jimmy says in Darren's interview piece backs up all the information that's turned up over the past 17 pages or so. Wow.

That does tie up some loose ends very neatly.

I'll rest easier in my bed tonight - really.

Again - thanks to all for reading, assisting, challenging and ruminating about this car and its strange history! No way could I have found out half as much on my own.