#electra being the third wheel here

[tommynikkivincemick]

three way call — part 9

Summary: Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx find themselves in the frustrating predicament of being infatuated with the same woman. This calls for a competition.

Author’s note: What’s up fuckers, it’s been a minute! Sorry for the long hiatus, but shit’s been fucked! But now I’m back and will hopefully be writing more. This will probably be the last chapter of three way call, but I’ll totally write an epilogue if y’all would like one. Also sorry if I forgot anyone on the tag list, I haven’t been keeping up with requests very well. Sincerest apologies. Enjoy.

Warnings: Language, alcohol, mild violence, the usual.

Over the following weeks, Tommy, Y/N, and Nikki became inseparable and the Terror Twins became the Terror Triplets. The trio would constantly be touching, kissing, cuddling, sitting on top of each other, or excusing themselves to go have sex. They knew how each other member of the throuple liked their coffee and what kind of cigarettes they smoked, how they tossed and turned in bed, their preferred brands of beer, and what toppings they liked on their pizza. Y/N knew that Nikki didn’t think Crown Royal was worth the money as far as whiskeys went and that Tommy preferred sativa over indica because it didn’t make him feel as hazy. Nikki knew that Tommy didn’t like cheap vodka when doing shots because he’d thrown it up so many times before and he knew that when Y/N made the coffee, it somehow tasted better despite being made the exact same way by everybody. Tommy knew that Y/N only used Sally Hansen nail polish and owned every shade of red ever made, or so it seemed, and that Nikki only burned dragon’s blood incense, only from this weird little hole in the wall shop downtown.

To Vince and Mick, the closeness was nauseating. Vince was tired of fourth wheeling in his own home and tired of being kept up all night and some of the morning by “Oh Tommy, oh Nikki, oh Y/N,” and the pounding of the headboard on the wall. The most blissful times were when Y/N was at work or the trio decided to spend the night at her apartment instead. However, when Y/N was away, the boys had begun to play, testing boundaries romantically and in the bedroom at all hours of the day. Even band practice has changed; Nikki with his perfectionist tendencies harped on Vince and Mick as usual but suddenly everything Tommy did was perfect. In Tommy’s eyes everything should be dialed back a bit, unless it was his drumming or Nikki’s bass.

“I’m so sick to death of those three,” Mick said one day while the Twins were visiting their third at work.

“Oh, shut up, you don’t even live with them! They’re so far up each other’s asses, you can’t even tell where one ends and the others begin at this point,” Vince bitched.

“Don’t get me wrong, Y/N is great, and I’m glad they’re all happy, but when it affects the band is when I draw the line.”

“I know! Nikki and Tommy have been skipping practices and they’re god damned lucky all of our gigs have gone smoothly. I mean, hell; Sixx is supposed to be the leader of this band and who was it that had to call back that Zutaut guy about scheduling a meeting with those record exec guys? Fucking me! I mean, we call Nikki the leader, we call Y/N our manager, and Tommy’s the second in command, so they need to start fucking acting like it if we’re gonna score this record deal.”

“Should we break them up?” Mick asked, a devious sparkle in his eye.

“Absolutely not. Good material has been flowing from Nikki like fucking water; have you read the lyrics for new piece? ‘Looks That Kill’, or whatever? It’s bitchin’, and I don’t even care that it’s about Y/N. He told me what he wants for the instrumentals and it’s gonna be awesome, the whole next album will be.” Vince gushed.

“They’ll tire themselves out eventually,” Mick sighed, “Until then, we suffer, and also tell them to get their shit together.”

Meanwhile at the record store, Y/N swore she was about to throw her lovers out of the store.

“When’s your lunch break?”

“When does your shift end?”

“We miss you!”

“Just close the store for a little while, we won’t tell...”

“Yeah, come on, baby, live a little!”

She loved Tommy and Nikki— really she did— but today they were making her want to tear her fucking hair out. The Twins were especially needy today and it seemed like their whining and pleading wouldn’t ever stop.

“Guys, you’re gonna get me fired, stop it!” She hissed, slapping Tommy’s hand off of her ass.

“Your boss is never even here! Nine times out of ten, you’re the only one working in here,” Nikki reminded, taking another cherry sucker from the bowl on the counter, and watching as Tommy slid behind her again.

“Yeah, but there’s customers here and sometimes the owner’s son comes by to check in and... and...” Her eyelids fluttered and her train of thought went off the tracks as Tommy began kissing her neck and nibbling her earlobe to distract her, “Tommy! I’m gonna slap you in the face if you don’t stop it!”

“But don’t you like it?” He whispered.

“I love it, that’s the problem. You two go home and I’ll see you in an hour for lunch, yeah? I’ll even call in sick for the rest of the day and have what’s-her-name cover for me.”

“Fine,” Nikki pouted, “You promise?”

“I promise, lover,” She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him gently, “But I promise nothing if you two don’t get out and let me get some work done.”

“C’mon, Sixx,” Tommy huffed and leaned down to give Y/N a kiss on the cheek, “See ya later, sweet thing.”

“Later, babes,” She smiled and waved goodbye as they left at last.

She sighed a sigh of deep relief and sank into her chair that sat behind the register. Finally she could take a breather and get some work done. Then the phone rang.

“Mötley residence, Mick speaking, can I please speak to Y/N?”

“Black Cat Records, Y/N speaking, what’s up, man?” She greeted.

“Are the boys still there?”

“Nope, just left. Why, did you need something?”

“No, no. They’ll be home soon enough, I’m sure. We’re having a band meeting later, though, and you need to be there, too.”

“Yeah, got it. Good news or bad news?”

“Little of both. Well, little bad, lot of good.”

“Okay, I’ll be off in a little under two hours and I told the boys I’d call in for the rest of the afternoon. See ya later, Mars man.”

“See ya later, Terror Triplet.”

She chuckled at the name and hung up. As she stuck price labels on a new shipment of records, she wondered what the news could be. The rest of the morning drug on slowly with few customers and boring music on the radio. No Mötley Crüe, that’s for sure. Finally, it was time for the lunch break. Y/N made a quick call before she left.

“Hey, Sylvia? Can you cover me this afternoon? Yeah, yeah, band stuff, you know. Yeah, I’ll tell the boys you said hello. Thanks, hun, I owe you one.”

She was lucky her coworker picked up and was even luckier she agreed to cover her. Even though her boys annoyed her, she still couldn’t wait to go home to them. Y/N was also anxious about Mick’s news. There was so much on her mind that she couldn’t even pay attention to the Blondie song that was on the radio as she drove to the Mötley residence. She climbed through the window of the apartment to find all of the boys laying around the living room in various states of undress.

“Why are you all half naked?” She snickered.

“It’s hot as balls, babe. Our AC broke, I think,” Tommy whined.

“Did you hit it?”

“A little,” Vince sighed, “It didn’t help.”

Y/N hummed to herself and went to the other window, kicking the air conditioning unit as hard as she could, to no avail.

“Damn, that usually works. Oh well, is there cold drinks in the fridge?”

“Yeah, Vinnie went grocery shopping today. We got beer, Diet Coke, bitchy wine cooler things, and some other shit,” Nikki replied, fanning himself with a random piece of sheet music.

She kicked off her shoes and shirt and grabbed a Coke from the fridge, sitting on the floor between Nikki’s legs and leaning her head on his thigh.

“Why are you wearing these leather pants, babe? Aren’t they hot?”

“Fashion before function, sweetheart,” The bassist shrugged.

“So Mick,” Tommy piped up, “What’s your big news?”

The guitarist sat up in his chair, and cleared his throat.

“Good news first. Do you guys remember that Zutaut kid?”

“Dorky rugby shirt?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one. He talked it over with Electra and called today saying they want to sign us as soon as possible.”

The boys and Y/N erupted in a chorus of whoops and hell-yeahs.

“So what’s the bad news? I don’t think anything can sting after that,” Nikki grinned.

Vince shifted uncomfortably before addressing the rhythm section and their lady love.

“Nikki, Tommy, Y/N, let me start by saying we love that you guys are happy together. But me and Mick feel that you’re letting this relationship consume you a little too much. Nikki, you’ve been letting Tommy get away with murder during practices. Tommy, you’re going soft with Sixx and Y/N, man. And Y/N, you’re our manager, but you’ve been devoting more of your time to the guys than the band as a whole. You should have been the one to talk to Electra and tell us we’re getting signed, you know? But we’ve been having to pick up the slack and that sucks.”

The trio nodded guiltily. They knew their priorities were a bit skewed as of late. Y/N had been meaning to call Electra for days, Tommy had been slacking and not taking his position as second in command seriously, and Nikki was too in love to whip Tommy into shape again. It wasn’t fair to Mick and Vince, and they knew that.

“Yeah, I mean us being together makes us happy, but maybe we should’ve considered if it would be good for the band,” Tommy sighed.

“Maybe taking a break would be the best thing for the band,” Y/N mused, words soaked in sorrow.

“Hey, no! You don’t have to take a break from each other, just even out your priorities a little more, you know?” Mick offered, “Tommy still acts like a ten year old but has more grown up moments since you guys started this. Nikki broods less and the creative juices really seem to be flowing. And you seem really content, and me and Vince don’t want to take that from you. You just needed to be straightened out. It’s cool, just focus on the band more, okay?”

The three nodded and sighed in relief. Y/N excused herself to go lie down because it had been a long day, and Nikki followed. Tommy would have, but insisted that Nikki’s bedroom was too stuffy for the Los Angeles heat with no air conditioner. The bassist opened the window in his bedroom to allow for some air flow as the manager removed her shirt and pants to lie down on the dark sheets.

“Were you serious when you talked about us taking a break?” Nikki asked, sitting on the floor beside the bed.

“Only half. If it would be better for the band, I think we could all agree on it. But it would kill me not to be with you and T-Bone anymore,” She whispered.

“Yeah, I get it. I don’t think I could go back to not being with you two dumbasses,” He cracked a smirk, “The bed’s too big without a couple extra warm bodies next to me.”

“I bet you’d write some killer breakup songs, though. Everybody loves a heartbreak,” She joked, fanning herself with a magazine from the table.

“I wouldn’t love this heartbreak,” Nikki sighed, leaning his head on the mattress, inches away from hers.

She took the memo and kissed him deeply before the sounds of chaos erupted from the living room.

“Damn it, Tommy! Don’t drink all the beer!” Vince whined, “Grab another one and I’ll... I’ll shoot you with a staple gun!”

“Did you leave your bag out there?” Nikki whispered.

“Mhm,” Y/N hummed.

“Is your staple gun from the store in it?”

“Mhm, wh—“

There was a metallic pop, followed by shouting.

“FUCK, BLONDIE! YOU MISSED MY EYE BY AN INCH!” Tommy shrieked.

“HALF AN INCH!” Vince yelled back.

“Oh, fuck,” The couple in the bedroom sighed in unison, before going out to join back in the chaos.

Tag list: @jayprettymuchomw @kayladurin @crazysaladchopshop @iamtiber-andtiberismusic @loveofmyloif @saints-of-the-universe @tommyfuckinlee @oh-well1 @cranberribread @princesadeltoro @prostidudes-for-justice @miriampraez @tarahell @n-osebleed @valentines-in-london @bohemian-war @cuntlord0606 @holding-on-to-my-youth @abbysdogcollar @deacontaylormercurymay @fuckyeah-motleycrue

[restlessmuseum]

Aegisthus Minor De Iuventute

The short essay here aims to evoke the fleshy flesh of feminine like a haunted caveman. A global phenomenon: statue-made but being; status quo the hand best friends forever, the fringed fabric of shyness protecting the dismemberment through different words, the dawnward chiral which awakens to remain nocturnal. On the back burner. A work of love like opium dei. If you can play, so much the better. Know-it-alls studying these wasteworks by means of abuses believe that they likely have no magico-religious significance (i.e. the fat fact to embody the cockblocker). Revelers releveled. From the tidy toy theatre I'm a nice person, believe me. I just am no longer sure of my degree of kinship. Calm up. My beliefs, 1) I think I still have my crystal balls as a memento; 2) I think I'm losing all but my mind. Nothing to undo, they are driving me sane. Or I drive while I'm writing. It shall prove useful for the nymphaeum dug into the fearside to establish a pulsionotopic map of this given telepathetic angelology. Given: weddings only change the quality of semen, not of semantics, which is also my descent. Clinamen upstairs. Given: the sons are of him and only who calls the bearer first. Who's next. Therefore I live porous in the panicked room. Butt I... I started thinking about. There'll be no fleeing, q. e. d.; calm up. Instead I was tagged by the lovely @clytorimnestraxxx to list at least three perversions... Well, because of my anon, here's: kissing my elbow pit secretly several times a day; wallowing in the dirt of the integral calculus; the lewdness of transitive relations. En passant. Given: these singular methods can produce a small ant of desire or, in the worst case, an infinite sequence of writings, each containing a special nothing, liquore maculantur. Nevermind. Words are coming. (almost exclusively) Onto the chapel (like the old doctoress said she wanted to do, which is obscene in Italian. Now I, faced with Italian, am like a naked squire who insists on hesitating on the verge of the moat, almost crushed by the drawbridge. Why write the language I can barely speak, after all?), that's why we're always there. Since it is natural for illusions to indulge in the hope of a man, but imperfectly reasonable the ascetic convulsion that you like me, we shall first consider how madly in love I am with the minority of another tragedy. It's just our minds having end(less)ly sex (Numeral) on the way back from the sept and I just can't be part of this. They are stained with the scarn alcoholic of blood ties and tissues and I can only be a third wheel. A single wheel is the huntable form of the only thing that can be hunted. What promotes the proper huntability breeds genius in the licensed hunter. Period. Here ends the economic analysis of the matter and begins the argostatic chapter.

I'm not thinking anything to the limit trying to sing a siren outside the water emergency.

Of two things, one: 1) It's "the" habitat. I shrank up pretty much as everybody else begins this career. Come and meet me in the Greenness of my records. […] It is readily understood. Statue-made. Projective. Rotative. Hero. Here. Hers. Headeste fideles. I just wanted to become occidentaler going northward. Not by break alone does man live. But by every prey that proceeds from the mouth to the mouth. 2) Electra must conceive Electra, break the wreckage of two shells. It is necessary to find a male, Caucasian, of medium build. Likely cause of death, too many lives. Or a frog prince if it's in the last season, we'll see. Stay awake from this impasse.

[bittenpath-blog]

48cm:Rick Vosper: E-Bike Market Reality, part two: Inside the 'Invisible' EBD

In part one of this series, we discussed a core reality facing the IBD channel in the e-bike market. Although its share of market is growing, IBD brands still only represent a 25-30 percent of e-bike unit sales in the USA, depending on whose numbers you use. The ones shown here are from the BPSA’s sell-in data and the consulting group eCycleElectric (ECE), respectively. 

The other 70-75 percent of the market represents some 120-150 active e-bike brands, according to ECE managing director Ed Benjamin. Market share is further broken down into consumer-direct brands (including e-bikes from car companies and bikeshare providers) and an emergent independent sector, which I’ve labeled the EBD (as opposed to the e-bike sector of the traditional IBD, or EIBD).

It’s the EBD niche I want to unpack in this installment, both because it provides the most direct competition for traditional IBD brands and dealers, and because it offers the greatest opportunities for synergy as well. But part of the challenge is that no one, not even e-bike industry insiders I talked to, have any idea how many of these EBD businesses there are. There’s a lot of volatility in the space, they agree, with EBDs continuously popping in and out of existence like quantum particles, and about as predictably. 

So, who's number one?

At the BPSA/PeopleForBikes E-Bike summit in February, a data capture report from The NPD Group showed the leading EIBD brands as Trek, Specialized, Electra, Raleigh and Giant, in that order. This is a major shift from 2015, when the leaders were Stromer, Raleigh, Specialized, Haibike and Trek. Clearly the balance of power is still very much in flux. 

On the EBD/Direct side of the business, Benjamin is reluctant to discuss details, although he agrees major players include Pedego and Rad Power. Overall, he says, the EIBD and EBD markets are about equal in size, while the consumer-direct segment controls about half of all units, but significantly less in terms of dollars. Traditional mass market stores like Walmart aren’t even on the radar screen, he says, and few of the large sporting brands. And that spells opportunity for brick-and-mortar retailers of all persuasions.

There’s a little fudge factor in these numbers, since some primarily direct brands are also sold by EBD and even EIBD retailers. But the bottom line is: the traditional designations of independent, sporting and mass channels are breaking down, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the booming e-bike market.

Of the main non-IBD brands Benjamin tags as industry leaders, Rad Power is entirely consumer-direct, aside from the sales floor at its Seattle headquarters building. And then there’s Pedego, which has a sales model all its own. Two of them, actually.

“One of the things that's made us so successful is we don't have the bicycle industry mentality. I come from the auto industry, and we brought that model to the e-bike business. It's not necessarily better, it's just different, but it works for us,” said Pedego founder and CEO Don DiCostanzo.

It’s obvious DiCostanzo has given this speech a time or two before, but it hasn’t damped his enthusiasm. As he says, the Pedego retailer model is based on the automobile dealership: an independent retailer 100 percent devoted to the Pedego brand. In exchange for that exclusivity, he explains, Pedego retailers have a protected-by-contract exclusive sales area and enjoy sales and marketing support beyond what IBD brands traditionally provide. 

The traditional designations of independent, sporting and mass channels are breaking down, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the booming e-bike market.

Business is good, DiCostanzo claims, and getting better. “We currently have 108 Pedego retailers in the U.S. and Canada, including five or six opened since the first of the year. (That includes) two regular IBD retailers who’ve opened separate Pedego locations, and eight locations we own outright. We anticipate growing (the total) to about 150 in 2019.”

There’s another piece of the Pedego puzzle starting to fall into place, too. A hybrid retail model, a dedicated Pedego store-within-a-store concept, targeted at traditional IBDs who are willing to make Pedego their exclusive e-bike line. "We have applications from 15 retailers, currently signed three, working for a total of 10 in 2019 as proof of concept,” DiCostanzo says. “After that, we’ll see how it goes.” 

“We did $50 million out of 108 stores last year with zero store failures,” he concludes, “and that makes us bigger (in e-bike sales) than Trek. Maybe not Trek and Electra together, but certainly bigger than Trek.”

“One of the things that's made us so successful is we don't have the bicycle industry mentality." — Don DiCostanzo.

Since Trek doesn’t publish sales numbers, there’s no way to determine the accuracy of this statement. But $50 million in e-bike sales from a single brand is nothing to sneeze at, either. As a bench mark, recall that we mentioned in Part One that the NPD Group estimates retail e-bike sales, through all the channels it measures, at $143 million for 2018.

Once again, we need to be clear about what’s being measured. NPD’s $143 million estimate includes retail dollar sell-through from participating retailers, sporting channels including Dick’s and REI, selected consumer-direct companies, and Amazon Direct (although not third-party retailers on Amazon). More to the point, it specifically does not measure sales in the EBD channel, including Pedego’s. Here’s the complete explanation from the BPSA/People For Bikes E-Bike Summit last month (note that although it’s labeled confidential, the slide is also labeled for “External Public Use”).

When cycling cultures — and products and brands and channels — collide.

I’ll unpack all this in more detail in the final part of this series, which is scheduled to go live Monday, April 11. But for the time being, I’d like to focus on a single question: Will the e-bike ultimately become an integrated part of the traditional bike business (as mountain bikes have done), or is it sufficiently different that it will become its own semi-independent channel (as with BMX or triathlon)?

Let’s start with DiCostanzo:

“People who buy Trek bikes do it because they're Trek customers and their family all rides Trek. But among potential e-bike customers coming into our stores, they don't even recognize the name. And if they do, they don't associate it with e-bikes. (…) At the end of the day, bikes are all commodities, and the differentiator is how the experience is delivered to the customer and the support the brand gets from the home office.”

On the other hand, this is a man who’s launching a project to seed his product into traditional bike shops, so it sounds like Pedego’s founder is in the semi-independent camp.

I also spoke with Noel Kegel, president of the Wheel & Sprocket group of stores in Wisconsin and Illinois. W & S has 10 locations, including what its website describes as an “E-Bike Superstore." Kegel is a thoughtful guy, and he articulates his experience clearly.

"The e-bike superstore was an experiment,” he says. “We separated it with a separate entrance, separate sign, separate manager, and separate marketing, sort of making it a different store. Though it was in the adjoining space in the strip mall to our regular store, and had a pass-through to it, the experiment was to see if there was a different customer and a different experience that we could tap into.

“In five years, 10 years, they'll come in saying 'I'm looking for a bike' and they'll mean an e-bike."— Noel Kegel.

“After one season experimenting, we’ve concluded to discontinue the stand-alone e-bike store. What we learned talking to customers and in focus groups was that the Wheel & Sprocket brand was primary to the e-bike portion. Most of the people coming into the e-bike store said they were coming in looking exclusively for an e-bike. But when we measured the stand-alone's sales against our Appleton store, a high-performing traditional location with a significant e-bike inventory, the mixed environment performed every bit as well.

“In five years, 10 years, they'll come in saying 'I'm looking for a bike' and they'll mean an e-bike. The hard line between e-bikes and traditional bikes is blurring quickly — this will no longer be a niche. I suspect that might be challenging for the e-bike only shops of the world, where customers can only get that product and not all the other parts, accessories and service that go with it. Or maybe the family comes in and the mom is interested in an e-bike and the dad wants a road bike and the kids want something else.”

So Kegel seems firmly in the “one happy family” contingent. But perhaps by virtue of its size, his Wheel & Sprocket stores enjoy an advantage the enormous majority of traditional bike shops don’t: they can be very selective which brands are represented on the floor. Currently, Kegel explains, his stores carry e-bikes from Trek, Riese & Müller, Felt, Tern, iZip and Yuba. 

Finally, I put the same question to NBDA president Brandee Lepak. Here’s her take:

“As an association, we need to take a pause and think about what really helps our IBDs sell as many bikes as possible. And of course the same goes for EBDs too. We'd love to have EBD stores join the NBDA because we all learn from one another when we share best practices. I've seen an incredible opportunity for us in our own retail business (with e-bikes) and I'd like other retailers to have that opportunity, too."

Three industry leaders, three different views of where all this is heading for the traditional IBD channel. 

But the upshot is not just that the e-bike is here to stay and represents a large and fast-growing opportunity. It’s not even about IEBD vs EBD vs mass or direct. The big picture here is that the e-bike has the power to disrupt the traditional bicycle business at every level and across all markets, just as surely as the mountain bike did in the ‘80s and the drop-bar 10-speed did 20 years before that.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about in part three.

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2rfgObJ

Each year automobile manufacturers produce tens of millions of automobiles, most of which will be bought and sold a number of times before ending up being crushed and recycled. Normally no one will notice that the vast majority of these vehicles ever existed, but once in a while an everyday automobile will end up playing a role in some great tragedy or historic event and so will live on in—so to speak—long after most of its contemporaries have been turned into scrap metal. Of course, which vehicles deserve to join that list is largely subjective, but here is my list of the top ten most historically or notorious automobiles ever to roll off an assembly line. NOTE: These are not famous Hollywood cars like the Batmobile or the Delorean from Back to the Future which, in reality, are little more than props. These are real vehicles that people could have owned—and did, often to their detriment.)

#1 Jayne Mansfield’s 1966 Buick Electra 225 What Marilyn Monroe was to the fifties, Jayne Mansfield was to the sixties. With her platinum blond ‘do and buxom figure, she even closely resembled the more famous Monroe, though she was never able to quite eclipse her better known rival. She would never have the chance to do so either when she was killed, along with her lover, Sam Brody, when the Buick Electra she was a passenger in ran into the back of a slow-moving truck in the pre-dawn hours of June 29, 1967 near Slidell, Louisiana. The crash took the roof off the car as it slid beneath the truck, killing all three passengers in the front—Mansfield among them—but miraculously leaving her three young children, sound asleep in the back seat, with only minor injuries. Reports that she was decapitated in the crash proved to be unfounded, though she did die of blunt trauma to the skull. The one positive thing from the tragedy was that to prevent cars from sliding up beneath the back of tractor-trailers in the future, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began requiring an underride guard (a strong bar made of steel tubing) on all tractor-trailers, which ultimately became known as a Mansfield bar. As for the Buick she died in, like James Dean’s Spyder, it too briefly went on display before ending up in the Tragedy in US History Museum in St. Augustine, Florida until the museum’s closing 1n 1998. What happened to it after that is anyone’s guess, though rumors abound that it was bought by a Mansfield enthusiast for a hefty sum of money.

#2 James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder Not a lot of people today may know who James Dean was, but back in the fifties he was a top name in Hollywood and a rapidly up and coming actor famous for his smoldering good looks and intense style. He was also famous for his love of racing and fast, European cars, so it wasn’t remarkable that he would end his life in one. And that’s exactly what happened when, on the afternoon of September 30, 1955, Dean and his co-driver, Rolf Wutherich, were involved in a head-on collision just a mile west of the town of Cholame, California. Colliding with a monster 1950 Ford Tudor coupe as it made a turn onto Route 41 directly into the path of Dean’s speeding roadster (thought at the time to be doing better than 85 miles per hour), Dean’s much lighter vehicle flipped into the air and landed on its wheels some forty feet away. Remarkably, both men were pulled from the smashed Spyder alive, but Dean died at the scene, abruptly bringing an end to a most promising career. As for the smashed roadster, it was shown around the country for several years afterwards as part of a driver safety display but has since disappeared. No one knows its whereabouts today, though chances are it’s probably stashed away in some wealthy collector’s secret warehouse somewhere.

#3 Princess Grace’s Porsche Rover P6 3500 In a graphic demonstration that royalty isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, on the morning of  September 13, 1982, former actress turned Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly suffered a stroke while driving down a curvy mountainous road in Monaco (a small principality on the Mediterranean coast of France) and plunged into a ravine. The crash left her unconscious and with serious internal injuries that she died from the next day. (Remarkably, her passenger and teenage daughter, Princess Stephanie, survived the harrowing crash with just a few scratches and bruises.) Not surprisingly, like the Mercedes Benz another ill-fated royal, Princess Diana, was to die in fifteen years later, (see No. 4) the wrecked Porsche was quietly “disposed of”–supposedly by being crushed into a cube and dropped to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

#4 Adolf Hitler’s 770-K Mercedes-Benz staff cars Some automobiles acquire fame—or infamy, as the case may be—by being a participant in some great historical event or grisly tragedy. In this case, however, Hitler’s staff cars were involved in neither (unless you consider World War II to be both) but are famous for being owned by arguably the most notorious figure of the twentieth century. Der Fuhrer ordered several of these massive, armored-plated behemoths to tool around the Third Reich in and, remarkably, almost all of them survive to this day. Perhaps the most famous of these is the one currently on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Canada that was captured by an American soldier during the last days of the war. Confiscated by the army, it made its way through a succession of owners until finally ending up being donated to the museum in 1970, where it remains to this day. A second car was presented to Finnish Field Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim by Hitler as a gift and to cement the Finno-German alliance. Never a big fan of the German corporal, Mannerheim promptly had the car shipped off to Sweden for “safe storage” and promptly forgot about it. The Swedes eventually seized the car for back taxes  and sold it to an American industrialist in 1948, who used it for promotional tours and raising money for various charities. A third car resides at the Technisches Museum in Sinsheim, Germany while others reside in the private collections of several wealthy millionaires around the world.

#5 President Reagan’s 1972 Ford Lincoln Continental This vehicle became almost as infamous as President Kennedy’s Lincoln when newly elected President Ronald Reagan was shot while getting into the car in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. Unlike his unfortunate predecessor, however, the bullet proved to be non-fatal—though just barely—and “the Gipper” went on to serve two terms. The car was also at another presidential assassination attempt, this one involving President Jerry Ford back in September of 1975, when a woman named Sarah Jane Moore took a few pot shots at him from across the street as he was getting into the vehicle. Moore missed, however, and spent the next thirty years in prison thinking about it. Today the car resides at the Henry Form Museum in Dearborn, Michigan next to JFK’s assassination car to serve as a poignant reminder at just how difficult protecting a sitting president can be.

#6 Bonnie & Clyde’s 1934 Ford Model 730 Deluxe Sedan Few outlaws in history have managed to capture as much attention as did two young bank robbers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrows, during the Depression years, and few cars remain as famous as the Ford V8 they died in. Ambushed by police just outside of Bienville Parish, Louisiana on the morning of May 23, 1934, the couple were cut to pieces before they could surrender (if, in fact, they were ever given the chance) and died as fast and furious as they lived. It is said that between the two of them, they were hit by as many as 160 bullets, though this is an exaggeration. The bullet-riddled car itself became an icon of the gangster era and was put on display for decades by numerous owners before it ended up being sold to the Primm Valley Resort and Casino in Nevada for $250,000 in 1988. According to the internet, it has since been sold to the Terrible’s Casino in Nevada and is now supposedly on display at one of their casinos in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

#7 Princess Diana Spencer’s (Lady Di) Mercedes-Benz W140 In a modern fairy tale gone horribly awry, the world was shocked when it woke up on the morning of August 31, 1997 to discover that Lady Diana Spencer, the former wife of Charles, the Prince of Wales and, had she not divorced him, a potential future queen of England, had been killed in a horrific automobile accident on the streets of Paris, France early that morning. In an event that still generates much controversy today, the official story is that she died when the car she was riding in with her fiancee, Egyptian producer and billionaire Dodi Fayed and two other men, slammed into a concrete support pillar at high speed while purportedly trying to outrun the always present paparazzi. The crash killed both Fayed and the driver instantly and left a third man and Princess Di critically injured. Though apparently conscious immediately after the accident, she expired a few hours later at the hospital from massive internal injuries. Though blame for the crash was officially placed on the driver—whom tests determined to have had an extremely high blood alcohol level at the time—others blamed the paparazzi (several of whom were arrested but later released) for being a factor, though later investigation showed they were not near the vehicle at the time of the accident. Conspiracy theories that she was killed by British Special Forces at the behest of the royal family quickly spread and, though they have never been substantiated, they continue unabated today. As for the smashed Mercedes at the center of the affair, it appears to have disappeared immediately after the crash; most likely it was quietly “disposed of” in deference to the royal family and to keep it from serving as a morbid relic of the truly tragic event.

#8 Rosa Park’s Number 2857 1948 General Motors TDH-3610 City Transit Bus In one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, on the afternoon of December 1, 1955, a 42-year old African-American woman and Montgomery, Alabama resident by the name of Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger and was dutifully arrested. Little did she realize that her simple act of civil disobedience would start a firestorm that over the course of the next decade would not only end segregation throughout the south but would result in the sweeping civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The bus remained in service until it was retired in 1970 and was purchased by a gentlemen who left it parked in a field behind his home and used it to store tools. His descendants decided to sell it in 2000 and, after having it authenticated as the actual bus Mrs. Parks was on, eventually sold it via an internet auction to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan for a whopping $428,000 (about 250 times what the bus cost new in 1948)! Restored to its original condition and looking much as it did in 1955, today it is available for public inspection as one of the most historically famous vehicles of the century.

#9 President Kennedy’s 1961 Ford Lincoln convertible A participant in one of the seminal events of American history, few cars are as famous as the dark blue limousine President Kennedy was riding in when he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet on the streets of Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. In fact, few images are more iconic than that of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill clambering onto the trunk of the limo as it picks up speed in an effort to prevent Mrs. Kennedy, who had crawled onto the truck of the car, from falling off the vehicle. The car underwent a major facelift in the aftermath of the shooting—including turning it permanently from a convertible into a very hard top—and other major cosmetic changes that made it look considerably different than it did that day in Dallas. The car went on to be used by four other presidents before being retired in 1977 and today sits in display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Because it looks so different from the car they remember seeing in the video of the assassination, many people walk right past it, never realizing for even a moment how historically important the vehicle is.

#10 Franz Ferdinand’s 1911 Graf & Stift Double Phaeton I’ve chosen this vehicle as number one for one simple reason: it was the scene of arguably one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. The sort of car built exclusively for royalty, this was in this vehicle that Austro-Hungarian leader Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were riding in when they were gunned down by assassins on the streets of Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914. Due to the political tensions in the region at the time, the deaths became highly politicized and led to rioting by ultra-nationalist residents against local Serbs. In a series of one diplomatic miscalculation after another, the incident eventually escalated into full-blown war when Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia (whom it held partially responsible for the assassination), which was reciprocated a day later by Serbia’s chief ally, Russia, declaring war on Austro-Hungary. This, in turn, induced Austria’s ally, Germany, to declare war on Russia, which triggered declarations of war by France and England against Germany, until soon pretty much everybody was at war with everybody else, the result being the First World War and 16 million deaths. While urban legends swirled around the fate of the car (it was supposedly involved in numerous fatal accidents and bad luck for subsequent owners) none of these proved to be true. Instead, the car was put on permanent display in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria, along with assassin’s gun and other related items, where it remains to this day to stand as a mute reminder of how very large fires can be ignited by a very small spark.

Source: TopTenz