68hemi

I recently bought the complete Route 66 TV series and am on season 2 disc 1 episode 6 and was shocked to see the Mako Shark with it's a double bubble top and side exhaust pipes being driven by a wealthy Mass. heiress. Of course the show was sponsored by Chevrolet and every car and nearly ever background is a Chevy but to see one of the Motorama cars being drive on a TV show was something else. This episode aired in October of 1961.


For those of you who may never have seen this car, here is a link to it:

https://www.gm.com/mol/9-1961-mako-shark-corvette.html

This series shows me what I had forgotten over the years as to how many un-paved roads there were in this country at that time. Route 66, the Mother Road from the Midwest to the west coast really opened up this country to coast to coast auto travel and truck transport and helped create building of many more paved roads west of the Mississippi.

Mike Terry

I have seen the Mako several times and it is an outstanding car.

jet-tech

I've been at the warehouse in Sterling Heights Michigan where they store all these amazing cars. It seems that they have almost one example of every car that GM has ever built. Took tons of pictures. Tim

desertpilgrim

There is a 1961/2 episode of Route 66 shot in Phoenix - when it had less than 300K people - the most interesting shot though, is at the end of the episode, when they back out of the hotel round-about entry and head north on a two lane gravel road. For those who have attended B-J and other Arizona events, that hotel is the Safari and that road is Scottsdale Road.

68hemi

Yeah in the beginning of that episode I believe they were checking into the Safari. The first B-J I attended in 1983 was at the Safari.

GTOguy

I got the whole series about 4 years before I got my '61. I'll have to watch it again. Excellent show, and really shows what this country once was. Great stuff! I was watching a car movie on TCM over the weekend called Sweet Revenge, and there is a junkyard scene with what looks to be a '63 SWC in the junkyard with full blown pearl metallic panel paint job and one quarter panel sawed off....just another car waiting to be crushed. The movie was from 1976. Movie was okay. Stockard Channing and a very young Sam Waterston.

SWCDuke

I'm currently in the process of watching the entire series that I'm getting from the LA County library system...currently on disk 16.

One of the things I noticed is that the inside dash mounted rear view mirror and sunvisors are missing on the solid axle cars... maybe because there was less clutter for the "through the windshield" shots.

I've seen a few shots where the center consul is shown, and you can see the car has a manual transmission, but in most of the scenes where the car is starting from a dead stop they appear to be Powerglides. What do you guys think?

No doubt they used at least a couple of cars and maybe a "buck" to shoot some "through the windshield" scenes with a blue screen and then edited in the background footage.

Another anomaly is that after the first episode with the new String Ray the next was back to the '62. I assume that the episodes are on the disks in the same order they were broadcast, but that was not necessarily the same order that they were shot.

If you're about halfway through you know that Buzz is in a hospital in Cleveland or somewhere and Todd talks to him on the phone in several episodes, then Todd just disappears (He wasn't "written out" of the script.) and Link shows up. I don't recall a back story on how Todd and Link met, and the only background on Link is that he is a recent Vietnam vet. Did I miss something?

Maharas was apparently having medical problems that may have been partially caused by the series grueling travel and filming schedule, and he wanted out of the part.

I recall when I watched the series as a young teenager I didn't really understand the underlying "theme" of some of the episodes, and I have to admit that I still don't "get" some of them now, but in any case Route 66 is definitely better than the sh...t on TV today that I quit watching about 15 years ago.

No doubt the car lit the "Corvette fire" for a lot of guys from maybe as young as 8 to over 40. Putting Todd and his buddy in that Corvette was a stroke of marketing genius and likely sold a lot of them over the ensuing decades.

Duke

GTOguy

In the first episode or 2, Buzz and Todd are driving a '60, and it was a red car that didn't photograph well in B&W. In '61, the car was Jewel Blue, and in '62 Fawn Beige, and in '63 it was Saddle Tan. George Maharis (who is still with us at 89) came down with a pretty bad case of meningitis, and that took him out. There were a few other issues, but from what I've read, he did not want to leave the shoe. Glenn Corbett, who was Maharis's replacement, was too much like Martin Milner.....clean cut and disciplined. The show didn't last much longer without the chemistry between the original duo. I remember one '61 episode where Todd is removing the air cleaner, exposing the dual 4 barrels, to enter a race at Riverside. The car was a 4 speed. I also read that Maharis bought himself a black '61 or '62 with a red interior, as he liked the Corvette a whole bunch.

SWCDuke

The red '60 was the car used in the original pilot episode that was filmed to test studio executive and audience reaction before CBS committed to the series. I'm not sure if that pilot is in the CD set. It wasn't at the beginning as I recall... maybe the end... anyone know?

BTW, I was reminded by a Route 66 aficionado that it's Tod and Buz, not Todd and Buzz.

They certainly had interesting chemistry stemming from their very different backgrounds. I like Link, too, but like you said, they were more alike than different. If anything, Link seems more cerebral than Tod.

I was glad to see that by the second season, Buz had taught Tod how to hold his own in a fight.

Duke

68hemi

I am only one season two disk 3. I believe the first 1 or 2 episodes of season 1 they were driving a 1960 but would have to go back and look. I bought the complete set. Sounds like the ones Duke is watching may be a different set unless he is counting all of the discs from the beginning. Mine are in separate cases per season with about 7 disc each with 4 or 5 episodes each.

I get a kick out of Buz"s signature move with both hands locked together for his "power punch."

I don't believe any of the cars so far were auto trans.