How delightful is this? Happy dogs, traveling in cars, with the wind in their ears.
 

 
Via Arbroath
 

 
Steve McQueen had a passion for cars, bikes and speed. Aside from his most iconic vehicle, the Highland Green Mustang GT from Bullitt, McQueen’s vehicle of choice was his 1957 Jaguar D-type XK-SS.

He first saw the car on a Studio lot off Sunset Blvd., in 1958. He was instantly smitten and paid the owner $5,0000 for it. His love of cars and bikes carried on throughout his life (hence Le Mans), though surprisingly he only carried out a tenth of the driving seen in the famous car chase in Bullitt.

After his success with The Towering Inferno in 1974, McQueen took time out to travel around the country in a motorhome, riding motorcycles across different parts of the country.

McQueen had been the ideal casting for John Frankenheimer’s classic film Grand Prix, until he clashed with Frankenheimer’s business partner, and the role went to James Garner.

In fact there were a lot of roles McQueen knocked back during his career,  including Dirty Harry, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (lawyers and agents couldn’t agreeing on who got top billing, McQueen or Newman), The Driver (another obvious choice); The French Connection, and even Close Encounters of the Third Kind (he told Spielberg he couldn’t cry on cue). Sadly, one of his best performances in the adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People (1978), was barely released and has languished ever since. Producers hated the way McQueen looked in the title role - he was bearded and overweight. Tragically McQueen died too soon in 1980 - he was just fifty - and in 1984, his beloved XK-SS was sold at auction for a reported for $148,000.
 
Via Retronaut
 

 
Sir Jimmy Savile’s Range Rover Carawagon is up for sale, with an estimated price of between £11,000-£16,000 ($17,000-$24,000). The vehicle is described as a:

‘...first-generation Range Rover was produced between 1970 and 1996. The original car was not designed as a luxury-type 4x4; whilst certainly up-market compared to preceding Land Rover models, the early Range Rovers had fairly basic, utilitarian interiors with vinyl seats and plastic dashboards that were designed to be washed down with a hose. Convenience features such as power assisted steering, carpeted floors, air conditioning, cloth/leather seats and wooden interior trim were fitted later. The Carawagon was a Land Rover approved special vehicle, built by Searle of Sunbury-on-Thames.’

Of interest to future biographers of the legendary DJ, TV host and marathon runner, is the conversions made to Sir Jimmy’s Carawagon:

‘Only very few Range Rovers were converted; probably due to the price of £3040 compared to £2450 for a 109 conversion with 4 beds, although they were still available in sales lists until 1980. Carawagon closed down in the mid-1980s.

This 1978 Range Rover Carawagon was ordered and supplied to Sir Jimmy Savile OBE, KCSG, disc jockey and television presenter, to aid him with his charity work, so when necessary he was able to remain on site and live at the location of the project. The vendor believes that this Range Rover spent much time parked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, an institution that benefitted hugely from Jimmy’s patronage. Finished in white, this Carawagon is fitted with a double bed, and comes with a wash basin fitted between the front seats and curtains.’

For indeed this may have been one of Sir Jimmy’s infamous “passion wagons”, in which he would get friendly with his fans.

The story of his passion wagon was a bone of contention with Sir Jimmy, when he was confronted by a TV audience of pesky kids, desperate to find out if the stories of his having sex with young fans in the back of his “nookie mobile” were true?

This happened on the BBC youth series Open to Question in 1989, where celebrities, from the world’s of entertainment, politics or sport, were quizzed by an audience of primed pupils from schools across the U.K. It was their job to pose those difficult questions grown-ups never did. And it was my job, as the show’s researcher, to ensure they were asked. For this I had to write a mini-biography for each guest, highlighting areas of interest for these youngsters to probe.

Guests ranged from royalty, Princess Anne, to entertainers, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, to politicians Neil Kinnock, and Senator Gary Hart (who was asked about fucking-up his Presidential ambitions through his association with Donna Rice).

So, the week Sir Jimmy (or plain Jimmy O.B.E., “old big ‘ead” as he joked back then) appeared on Open to Question, our band of keen interrogators asked the great man if the stories about his sex life and his means of seduction, the passion wagon (which had been described as a Bedford van with a mattress in the back) were true?

The great, shell-suited Mr Fixit didn’t like the tone of the questions and said he thought the youngsters had been put up to mischief by asking such. Well, in a way they had. But that was the program’s policy. The information the youngsters used had been taken from the great man’s autobiography and from published interviews. Thinking he was being set up, Sir Jimmy avoided the question. Yet, after the cameras were turned off, and the producer David Martin and myself made our way down from the gallery to the studio floor, Sir Jimmy started to answering impromptu questions from the audience. Whether he was telling the truth or, maintaining a myth, when asked again about his “passion wagon,” Jimmy Savile admitted he did have a passion wagon and that all the stories about his sexual shenanigans with young fans were true. This announcement seemed to endear Savile to the teenage inquisitors. Why, I don’t know. David Martin then turned to me and said, ‘I knew we should have kept the cameras rolling.’

The question now, is whether this particular Carawagon was one of Sir Jimmy’s vehicles of pleasure? If you’re interested in buying Sir Jimmy Savile’s Range Rover Carawagon, you check details here for further details.

As for Open to Question, Sir Jimmy went to the press (the Daily Express) and complained about the show being a fix, after he spoke to our born-again PA who ‘fessed up everything. Not that there was much for her to ‘fess up.
 

 

 
More pix of Sir Jim’s ‘Carawagon’, after the jump…
 

 
German TV. Man hums “O sole mio”, well, holds a note, but you couldn’t ask for more, as 15 cars drive over him. Don’t try this at home.

Taken from Wetten, dass…?, the longest-running and most successful Saturday night TV show in Europe, which was until recently presented by Thomas Gottschalk, who finds contestants willing to carry out impossible feats for a bet.
 

 
Via b3ta