Ford timelord

[jakebullet]

1 hour ago, egg said:

I know it has been discussed before on here. But I still can't believe this actually happened!

 

Well that was a bit wank really. Maybe that was the point. It's art and I don't get it.

[paulplom]

Precursor to most death metal bands. Genius imo.

[Pieman]

Update - have got more pics from the Swaffham meeting.  Taken from screenshots of the meeting VHS, many thanks to Shawn Mason for these.

[Datsuncog]

17 hours ago, Pieman said:

Update - have got more pics from the Swaffham meeting.  Taken from screenshots of the meeting VHS, many thanks to Shawn Mason for these.

Ooh, that's taken a few belts up the arse... it'd take more than a couple of swings of the lump hammer to bring that back to concours, I'd say.

Well, that certainly looks to be the same car alright - No. 284.

So it's deffo footage from the 30 June 1991 meet?

 

I ask because I had a very pleasant response from Jon Mace this week, the guy who snapped the Timelord looking very sad outside Trancentral.

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Hi Tim,

Thanks for getting in touch, sounds interesting!

Firstly, yes I can confirm that the car pictures were taken in November 1991.

I visited Jimmy and Cressida at Benio's that day to do a video interview ('terribly' I hasten to add!) for my BA Hons Degree - end of year thesis, which of course I did on the KLF.

They were amazingly helpful and invited me in and allowed me to chat and film.

Okay, so... he seems pretty sure of the date, as it's tied in to when he did his university thesis.

That does sound quite definite in terms of pinning down when the pics were taken - and seemingly five months after the Swaffham racemeet.

(You can imagine me trembling as I read this)

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I was then invited to meet Bill at Lilly Yard Studios where they were working on The White Room.

Footage was taken there too, Bill also was amazingly open and helpful, and it was fantastic to be in the studio while they were working.

Ah... um.

The White Room was released in March 1991. Though it was indeed partly produced at Lilly Yard Studios.

So the band couldn't have been working on it in November 1991; it'd already been in the shops for eight months by then.

Right... okay.

So options here are:

• Jon's got the year wrong: he did the interview and took the pics in November 1990, when The White Room album was being finalised and the Timelord was seven months away from Swaffham. Occam's Razor suggests this is the simplest, and most plausible, explanation.

OR

• Jon's got the album wrong: Jimmy and Bill were in fact working on the follow-up record, The Black Room in November 1991 - which was never completed, and abandoned when they shut down the KLF after the Brit Awards in February 1992. Or possibly they were working on some White Room remixes; they did do a lot of remixing, with the chart-topping '3am Eternal' being their third or fourth version of that track. Or even the unfinished White Room film? There were a lot of White Rooms floating about. But if so, then we're still left with the conundrum about the cars.

I'm inclined to think that he's more likely to have got mixed up a little over the dates - but then finishing uni's one of those things that you tend not to forget, yeah?

Yet the identical rust and wob on the passenger door between the pics Jon took and the Swaffham footage suggest that it was the same car both times.

Hmmm... there's quite a lot riding on this precise info, so I might have to reply and push him a bit (nicely) on exactly what he remembers.

 

Then he continues:

Quote

Re: Ford Timelord

As far as I was aware there were indeed two cars - I think Jimmy mentioned that the guy from Jesus Jones had the other one? - Not sure, I'd have to rewatch the footage I think.

Okay, so now we're getting somewhere - back to the 'two Timelords' theory, and now with the '72 Ford LTD clearly identified as the other car in the mix.

Perhaps for folk who aren't massive car anoraks the colour and general shape is enough to make the two cars interchangeable.

If Jon and Bill are both thinking along the same lines, then it's perfectly true that there were two Ford Timelords - two big rusty Yank cop cars with 'KLF' written on them.

But there's no evidence beyond the colour-changing A-pillars that suggest there was ever a near-identical 'ringer' for WGU 18G.

So, in all honesty, it seems like my pet two-Galaxies/Customs theory has as many holes in it as my Cortina's floorpan, which is disappointing - but there's still a few loose ends that need tidying.

Previous interviews have stated that Jimmy wanted to drive the Timelord at the Nordhoff-Robbins charity race at Wimbledon in March 1992, but it was 'too far gone' - hence Paul Bickers helping him to prep that Chevrolet Nova instead.

I'd taken this to mean that it needed too much prep to get it from the driveway into a race-ready state - but maybe it means that Bickers had raced it the year before and kept the remains - but it transpired the Timelord was simply too knackered for another outing round the oval.

So, if that's to be believed (and I don't really know what to believe anymore), then perhaps the remains were kept - for nine months after Swaffham, at least.

Maybe longer? Or maybe never?

This shipping container in Norfolk rumour still swirls...

 

Jon goes on...

Quote

I'm sure he mentioned driving it off a cliff too, or planning to.

Heh, now that's interesting!

Clearly there was some sort of spectacular destruction planned for this car, and that does tie in with speculation that the unfortunate Nissan Bluebird hire car up at Cape Wrath was a stand-in for the Timelord.

 

Quote

Not sure which one I took pictures of though, it was under a tarpaulin outside and I just had to take those piccies after leaving!

So looks like the poor old Ford Timelord really was left to rot under a cat-piss tarp, which Jon moved out of the way to crack a few snaps:

But this weird date discrepancy thing still annoys me.

 

Quote

Great that you've been in touch with Bill about this! - He's a lovely fella.
If you haven't spoken to Jimmy, maybe give him a try - he appears to be the genius behind this stuff...

Well now... it looks like this is where the story might be heading: back to Jimmy Cauty.

I think he may be the only one with definitive answers here about the life and death of this unlikely icon - should he choose to give them.

I guess I've got this far... 

 

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Anyway, good luck with your research, it's great to hear that the legacy lives on and there's still interest in them after all this time.

Best
Jon

Phew!

[quicksilver]

Very interesting stuff and it's great that Jon Mace is taking an interest in our quest, even if he hasn't given us any definite conclusions yet. The car at Swaffham is definitely a genuine Timelord as you can see the WGU plate on the front, and even though it's getting on for 30 years ago Mr Mace is likely to remember which year he finished uni in (and he possibly still has some dated coursework somewhere to confirm it). How do we reconcile that date anomaly though? If there indeed were two cars, someone went to an awful lot of effort to make them look absolutely identical, even down to the same bodged repairs, and that just doesn't seem plausible so we're no closer to an answer and the mystery rumbles on. It is a Timelord though so maybe it regenerated itself after the race

[Mrs6C]

22 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

How do we reconcile that date anomaly though?

Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?

[Pieman]

Sorry, but that car at Swaffham is DEFINITELY the same one seen on that driveway, it can't be a different one.  We need a reply from Paul Bickers really but he still hasn't responded to my message.

[Split_Pin]

The car at Swaffham has had its paint spruced up for the race if its the same car.  Pillars are black but should be white and the rest of the black paint seems to have had a blowover bar the bootlid.

Also the 'numberplate' should say '18G' at the bottom but on the second Swaffham picture it definitely doesn't look like that.

I think if we ecer do find out its going to be from Datsuncog 'Columbo'.

[Dan_ZTT]

7 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Jon's got the album wrong: Jimmy and Bill were in fact working on the follow-up record, The Black Room in November 1991 - which was never completed, and abandoned when they shut down the KLF after the Brit Awards in February 1992. Or possibly they were working on some White Room remixes, which they did a lot. Or even the unfinished White Room film? There were a lot of White Rooms floating about. But if so, then we still have the conundrum about the cars.

I think this is your more probable solution. Not likely to forget what year you finished uni. As you say, they were in the studio all the time doing remixes, the film, etc, if you were to sit in for an hour or two you wouldn't know which it was, especially 30 years later. 

'two cars' I'm also certain must be just non-car folk not seeing any difference between two big yank cars painted up similar. 

The original galaxie might still be in a container (or just under an old tarp) in a norfolk yard, or it might have been cubed in 92. Mr Bickers is the only one who can give the truth I reckon. 

[Pieman]

It's 2am and I can't sleep due to a chest infection, so I thought I'd have a closer look at the pics.

It can clearly be seen that the rot at the bottom of the door matches, meaning that this must surely be the same car.  As for the question of the pillars - it's entirely possible given the parlous state of the car when it came to the end of its life with the KLF, the roof and pillars may have needed some welding or other remedial work just to get it into a banger-able state, which might explain why Paul and his team painted them up once the work was complete.  The rear wheelarch repair appears to have been painted over or replaced too (although the bloke in the 1990s goalkeeper shirt is rather annoyingly blocking our view of it and the C pillar).  The lip at the top of the windscreen appears to have been bent up in order to remove the glass as well.

In this pic we can see that the boot (trunk) section doesn't even line up with the rest of the car, suggesting that it was already falling apart even before its first race.  That C pillar doesn't look very intact either.

And as the car lines up for the second race, it looks as though the lower part of the boot section has gone altogether and only the bootlid is left hanging on, showing just how rotten it was.  The text I got with the photos when they were sent to me via social media said "The car did 2 races on the day, both heats, but failed to come out for the final. It ended it's day in a ball of smoke on the pit bend."

So on this evidence, unless the car did have Christine-esque magical powers, there is no way it could have been returned to the state it was in when photographed on Jimmy's driveway - and unless Paul Bickers was requested to keep the car after the meeting, I would imagine it was pressed afterwards as it may not even have survived being dragged onto a trailer after this.

[Split_Pin]

I think the drivers door picture counts as indisputable evidence that these are both the same car. The back end must have been spectacularly rotten to either fall off completely or fold up so badly as to disappear into itself almost entirely.

Some fantastic results at contacting those concerned.

So it looks like WGU18G lasted to June 1991.

 

[bunglebus]

Looking forward to seeing the video. I won't press the guy anymore as it seems several of us have made contact with him via different channels.

As I mentioned he does have a YouTube channel so hopefully it will get uploaded. His previous ones looked like a camera videoing the TV, maybe this one will be digitised properly. I have the kit to do this off a VHS tape if required

[DodgeRover]

The front of the screen will have been bent out when they've put chains through it to lift it which suggests the roof and pillars were probably stronger than expected.

[quicksilver]

I'm almost disappointed that this saga seems to have reached a conclusion and we now know what happened to Ford Timelord. I suspect Jon Mace will come back and say "sorry, I got the year wrong, it was 1990", confirming there was only one Galaxie and it died on the Swaffham banger track in 1991. Its demise seems very anti-climactic after all the things that car went through, but I suppose it's typically subversive KLF to let a friend quietly banger race it without a fuss instead of giving it the dramatic public send-off that would be expected.

[LightBulbFun]

for what its worth I spoke with Stuart (yes that Stuart!) about this car last night

as he was involved in and raced in banger racing for many years, and funnily enough he knew about it, and started talking about how it cropped up on a banger racing forum a few days ago

and when I saw what was posted, I saw it was someone on that forum asking for this thread! hah small world  (ironically I said I cant show him this thread because its in a members only part of the forum, but the banger racing thread he linked to was also in a members only section LOL, so he copy and pasted )

sadly stuart does not know of any specific details more than what we already know, but he suspects from his experience in banger racing, that it would of been cubed/scrapped after the race sadly, especially as back then it would of been seen as just another yank barge going round the oval

(although I did get out of him, that it would of been up to vehicles owners to dispose of it after the race, so although it was probably scrapped, someone could of scooped up the remains and stashed them somewhere if they  really wanted to)

but yeah stuart thinks it met its end on the Banger track, such a shame its not likely to exist anymore

can you imagine if someone here found it/got it somehow?!  

[Pieman]

The thread mentioned will almost certainly have been started by me

[Datsuncog]

^^^ Heh, I found a comment beneath an unrelated YouTube video on 90's banger racing the other week asking about Ford Timelord - I'd dashed off quite a detailed reply before I twigged that I was replying to you!

Thank you so much for all your digging here - even though we only appear to have confirmed exactly what was posted on the first page of this thread, it's still been a fascinating ride to find out more about the car, the music and the sheer bloody weirdness that was going down in the early '90s. A time when you could, apparently, pitch up at a squat in That London in a shagged Ford Galaxie with little more than a sequencer and a load of ABBA LPs, and end up with a No.1 hit on your hands in little over a year.

Seems that there was indeed only one WGU 18G, and though it was clean rotten it still ended its very eventful life in gladiatorial combat. Shame its final career ended by blowing its lid on the pit bend rather than screaming to victory but hey, that's entertainment...

I'd still like to get a fix on exactly how it all ended - with reports saying the car was hanging around under a tarp in "Bickers' old yard in Coddenham" for a while, it'd be good to know what finally became of the remains, and when.

I can understand why Paul Bickers may not wish to get involved; it's his call entirely and I've no animosity if he prefers to stay out of it. He may well have to regularly fend off enquiries about the car, and he's got a business to run.

But I will try to make contact with Jimmy Cauty, and see if he can throw a bit of light on the car's final year or two in his ownership.

There could be an article yet in all of this... Who Killed Ford Timelord?

[bunglebus]

If anyone fancies building a replica, WGU 81G is on a red Triumph that's SORN - possibly a motorbike going by the 199cc. 

[egg]

Thanks everyone for such great contributions.

I think it is very fitting with their art that an 'icon' of their public image was destroyed in a banger race. They love to destroy as much as create- the money, the Nissan Bluebird, deleting their back catalogue, putting white paint on the replica Timelord.

I've said it before on this thread, but who are the equivalents of Cauty and Drummond today? 

[DodgeRover]

The only thing I could add to this is on there being 2 of them could a second one have been created when the car was needed and they realised the original was FUBAR?

It wouldn't be beyond a prop creation company to have just wacked the plates on it from the original car especially if it was still road legal on paper.

[Pieman]

53 minutes ago, egg said:

Thanks everyone for such great contributions.

I think it is very fitting with their art that an 'icon' of their public image was destroyed in a banger race. They love to destroy as much as create- the money, the Nissan Bluebird, deleting their back catalogue, putting white paint on the replica Timelord.

I've said it before on this thread, but who are the equivalents of Cauty and Drummond today? 

No one, because music acts are manufactured by Simon Cowell or Instagram these days.

[mk2_craig]

35 minutes ago, DodgeRover said:

The only thing I could add to this is on there being 2 of them could a second one have been created when the car was needed and they realised the original was FUBAR?

It wouldn't be beyond a prop creation company to have just wacked the plates on it from the original car especially if it was still road legal on paper.

I think most people reading this have jumped to the conclusion that Bill Drummond meant “there were two Ford Timelords” rather than “there were two Ford Galaxies”. 
 

but it would be nice to think the latter, just as there were two Blue Peter “Petra the Dog”s, three Triumph Roadsters during Bergerac, and heaven knows how many Dukes of Hazzard General Lees. 
 

Trouble is, if that were true, which is the real WGU18G ?

[tapir]

bit late to the party here, fantastic research and it's been really enjoyable reading through all the posts.

I'm too young (just) to remember the KLF but have read Bill Drummond's books and followed his art "career", his book 45 is well worth a read

[DodgeRover]

8 minutes ago, mk2_craig said:

I think most people reading this have jumped to the conclusion that Bill Drummond meant “there were two Ford Timelords” rather than “there were two Ford Galaxies”. 
 

but it would be nice to think the latter, just as there were two Blue Peter “Petra the Dog”s, three Triumph Roadsters during Bergerac, and heaven knows how many Dukes of Hazzard General Lees. 
 

Trouble is, if that were true, which is the real WGU18G ?

Over 300 chargers were the General Lee at one time or another, I know LEE1 or LEE3 survived and made it back onto the road recently, or at least the tags from it did...

[Mr Pastry]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

If anyone fancies building a replica, WGU 81G is on a red Triumph that's SORN - possibly a motorbike going by the 199cc. 

Hmm,  If the number was sold and transferred to another vehicle, surely the Timelord would have needed to be taxed and MOT'd and would have been issued with a replacement number?

Just saying, in case it gives anyone any useful ideas...

[Split_Pin]

Unlikely at this level.

Now, is there any concrete evidence of what happened to Timelord II, the K reg Ford LTD?

[bunglebus]

Original was 18 - closest I could think of was 81 so I did a DVLA check on it and found the Triumph

[Split_Pin]

I've never really studied closely the pictures of the replica until now but unless you knew the plate, you would never know. It really is very accurate. I didnt realise it was actually patinated like the real car as well.

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, mk2_craig said:

Trouble is, if that were true, which is the real WGU18G ?

whichever ones details matches the details on the V5?

4 hours ago, bunglebus said:

If anyone fancies building a replica, WGU 81G is on a red Triumph that's SORN - possibly a motorbike going by the 199cc. 

there's a really good looking replica on WGU18E which I think fits better as its still "WGU18x" if that makes sense!

 

 

[Split_Pin]

Has anyone checked the MOT history for WGU 18E? It looks to be in an equally parlous state as the original was back in 1991 and it has been out of MOT since August 2018.

Does anyone know who owns it?

Edit: Tax site says yes until August 2020 and not MOT results returned but the box is shaded in green. Confused.