I recently heard a fascinating story from ex-PHR editor, Cam Benty. Cam was PHR’s editor from 1982 to 1987, and worked with Pete Pesterre (then feature editor) and C. Van Tune (who was tech editor).
The movie, “Gumball Rally,” had been a big hit, and our emboldened staff decided to buy an ex-highway patrol car, and run it in the very real Four-Ball Rally—an illegal race from Boston to San Diego. In the original movie, two cops brought a police car, and changed the door stickers on the side of the car from state to state so they could drive flat out. When C. Van Tune got invited to the Four-Ball Rally, Cam bought an old ’81 Dodge Monaco cop car from the Culver City branch of the California Highway Patrol, and ran the build-up in PHR. This consisted for the most part of a camshaft, headers, wheels/tires, suspension, and some take-off parts from the Dukes Of Hazzard TV show. Cam’s roommate, Rich Sephton, had worked for the company that maintained the TV cars.
The Monaco was originally black, but that changed. Sephton had a buddy named A J Thrasher, who worked at Universal Studios. Thrasher was able to run it through the transportation body shop at Universal without getting discovered. Changed to dark blue, the Monaco looked a lot better.
During the actual Boston/San Diego rally, Van was in the driver’s seat when they went through a small Texas town. So many speeding cars were going through town that day that a disgruntled citizen took a potshot at the Monaco, and nailed it in the taillights, putting a bullet hole straight through it. Thankfully, no one was injured.
After the rally, Cam ran an ad in Auto Trader to sell the Monaco, and actor Dan Aykroyd was the only one who responded to the ad. When the call came, Cam was at the PHR Championships, and roommate, Sephton who seemed none the wiser, took the message from the ordinary-sounding caller. “When I got the message from Sephton,” recounts Cam, “it just had the words ‘Daniel Aykroyd,’ on it, and the phone number. He wanted to come take a look at it."
When Aykroyd showed up, he was visibly impressed with the car, but for $2,200, he wanted all the hot hardware back, which had been taken off to sell the car. Cam agreed, the deal was sealed, and a new friendship was struck. Aykroyd was particularly fascinated with the bullet hole in the taillights, and reportedly kept the car in that form. “He was a really nice guy,” says Cam. “He was making a movie called ‘Doctor Detroit,’ and asked us to come by the set in Sylmar. We went by for a few nights and hung out at his trailer on the set. It was real fun.”