Illustration Friday: Cars

For Illustration Friday I give you a double whammy for this week's word "Cars" (click on the image to see a larger version). The first being a tribute to The Cars lead singer Ric Ocasek, and the second a tribute to my first car, a 1973 Lincoln Continental. What do these two have in common you might ask?

On my 16th birthday my dad gave me a little box tied with a bow. Inside were the keys to "The Batmoblie" the aforementioned '73 Continental that my dad had scored for $500 bucks, repainted its oxodized red body a glossy black, tinted the windows, polished its many layers of chrome, and outfitted it with some pretty pimpin' whitewalls and wire rim wheels. On the bug shield we placed a bat-insignia sticker and dubbed it The Batmobile. This car was long, measuring in at somewhere around 233 inches (that's nearly 19 feet of car, people). When you drove it you felt like you were driving a yacht. At 16 I wasn't thinking much about gas mileage, but what was important was that I could fit all of my girlfriends in this car, and we looked cool. People at school thought I drove a limo.

My dad has a real soft spot for old Lincolns. In The Batmobile era he owned and restored two other models, both equally sweet as mine. My dad is also a musician and always listens to music while he works on his cars (he currently owns a Bill Blass Model..and if that isn't the definition of pimpin' I don't know what is). One of his favorite bands in the 80s was The Cars, and I can't think of my dad with out thinking of Ric Ocasek and the catchy synthesizer riffs in many of The Cars tunes. As a kid I listened to a lot of The Cars with my dad, who can cover a mean version of Shake It Up. I put on my Cars album as I drew this and have to say I think they are still pretty cool, just like my dad.