(Words by Darr Hawthorne – Photos by Darr Hawthorne and Jesse Benson) – In addition to contributing to BangShift.com, one of the occasional jobs I’ve got is providing “picture cars” for TV commercials, feature films, videos and print shoots. I spent a long time in the film business and TV commercial director sales, but when the commercial business took a dump, it was time to diversify.

Finding cars for commercials is always a fun journey, but a car or bike that I might think fills the bill is nowhere near the consciousness of the Director, the Ad Agency Creative Director or Art Director, so multiple options are always submitted. Hey, it’s not like working.

When an old friend called to find a classic Impala convertible to purchase and use in ING Direct TV commercials I found a black, 283-powered, Powerglide car on Craigslist with a salvage title in central California, paid off the young owner’s 23% interest loan in cash, fixed the leaking trans, changed out the brakes and power steering, tuned it up and fixed the overheating cooling system, added new upholstery and carpet from Original Parts Group, painted it ING Bank orange and rebuilt the drop-top as a picture car for the bank’s advertising agency to photograph. The bank people had been renting an orange, vinyl-wrapped Impala for shooting at the rate of $1,500 per day, the bank marketing dude had been shopping eBay and set a cost ceiling.

But there were budget constraints; hey it was a frugal bank project. It wasn’t going to be a perfect GoodGuys-type resto, it was going to be used for TV commercials, golf tournaments and parades, not a concurs restoration, but it had to look great to the camera’s eye. The bank-marketing department paid for the resto, paint and labor and a modest profit – then purchased the Impala for $1.00.

For a NAPA commercial with Ron Capps and Martin Truex, a production company needed a modern nitro funny car and NASCAR racecars in the background for more NAPA Knowhow.  Through a friend, I located a local Irwindale Late Model builder who’d paint a couple of his 1/2-mile racecars into NAPA blue and convinced drag racing legend Steve Plueger to rent out his NHRA Mello Yello funny car chassis and engine for the commercial. Whether it’s finding choppers, hot rods, a pair of Lamborghinis or real racecars it can be a fun part of the workweek.

Another project involved Levi’s, the marketing department needed to restore a pair of Levi’s edition ’73 AMC Gremlin and ’78 Jeep CJ5 for a concert series and with my son got that done for the client.

Last year the production company for AutoZone was looking for a period Indy Car and found them an obscure ’77 Maxwell, found choppers for LG Television and a one-off, purpose built, Mad Max-type Jeep with an ominous plow.

Not long ago, I got a call from a location scout for a French fashion photographer who was in the US planning to shoot stills for IRO, an International clothing company based in France.

The location scout was looking for old-looking funny cars and wanted to see some the cars sitting in a museum or something like that, but the NHRA Motorsports Museum in Pomona doesn’t loan out or rent out their display vehicle. Fortunately the pool of classic nitro funny cars in SoCal is huge and the colorful sample photos sent to France included the “Swindler II” Stone Woods & Cook Mustang owned by Mike Cook and the Pisano & Matsubara Vega owned by the Mallory Family, among others that were submitted.

It turned out that the IRO Creative Director was crazy about photos of these faithfully reproduced Mustang and Vega funny cars, and as can be an issue, the agreed “picture cars” were available for the day they needed to shoot with the perfect , European fashion models.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that a couple of International fashion models would pose in front of the camera using the funny cars as background elements with smoke and racetrack atmosphere at nearby Willow Springs, north of Los Angeles.  Oddly, the guy who ran the smoke machine on the shoot was an old family friend… I dated his sister a long time ago.

In addition to the cool clothes and funny cars, there were lots of options for props, checkered flags, metal flaked and multi-colored helmets and other clichés of racing.  Ultimately it was about the clothes, the IRO Catalog and sales.

These shoots can be long and tedious, but this particular shoot was rather short, needing afternoon sun and the dark of night for most of the setups.  Too much fun with racecars!