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Jeff.Dunhams.The.Cars.That.Drove.Us.S01E08.540p.X265.AAC [Full Movie] [Full Version]Full EP - Full
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00:00Howdy folks! Hank Dunham at Dunham Family Motors and today I'm here with my boys
00:04Danny and Jeff. Boys, say hi to the nice folks at home. Hi! All right fellas, what
00:10do you want to be when you grow up? Danny? I want to run this dealership! Oh, that's
00:15great! And little Jeff, how about you? I want to be Ventura Quest. Son, I've told
00:21you before, you're not gonna amount to anything doing that. Now put that doll
00:24away. You want to sell cars, that's what you want to do. Let's show the folks what
00:28we have. This episode isn't about what you need in a car, it's about what you
00:35want. And for automakers, the sky's the limit. Not just the radio, not just
00:41leather. We're talking options that make you say, wait, that's factory? If they
00:48could dream it, they could build it, and they did. Welcome to the wild world of
00:53factory options. And finally, the creme de la creme of our dealership this week, the
00:581954 Kaiser Darin. This is a rare beauty right here. Wait until you take a peek at
01:03those doors. It'll make you say, wow, that's factory? Come on down to Dunham
01:07Family Mortars, where you're family too. Right, boys? It's not that bad. Hey, that was
01:14pretty good.
01:18Throughout time, humanity has been obsessed with getting places using anything but
01:23their own two feet. We've tried all kinds of things. Until finally, the greatest invention
01:30of all time, the automobile. Moron! These are the cars that drove us.
01:40Ah, the 1950s. A glorious time when every lawn was trimmed with military precision. Every fence was white and
01:48picketed. And safely within the confines of that fence were exactly 2.5 well-adjusted
01:55children frolicking in domestic bliss. Yes, sir, the American dream is alive and well. Vacuum sealed in suburbia and powered
02:03by a healthy fear of communism.
02:09But while Dad waxes the Plymouth and Mom starts the laundry, something cosmic was unfolding over those cookie-cutter rooflines.
02:18Space. Yes, space. The final frontier, now featuring Soviet metal beach balls like Sputnik beeping ominously as they orbited overhead.
02:28You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth-circling satellite. Sparking a full-blown American innovation panic.
02:36And that same feverish excitement made its way back down to Earth, showing up in kitchens, living rooms, and of
02:42course, car showrooms.
02:44This new futuristic technology that you were seeing in the outside world, you needed to have that stuff in your
02:50car.
02:51It was a vision of what the automotive future could look like. Fueled by the same engineering bravado that launched
02:56monkeys into orbit,
02:58the automotive space race often pushed creativity into overdrive, resulting in designs, concepts, and factory options
03:06that felt more sci-fi than street legal. In the early days of the auto industry, car makers weren't aiming
03:14for the masses.
03:16Automobiling, as it was called, was a hobby practiced by rich people.
03:20$12,000 for a car? This you gotta see.
03:23It was seen as something manly, and you're an automobilist. Oh, he's gone 50 miles an hour.
03:29As cars became more affordable, manufacturers found a new way to cater to the rich.
03:34Options come into the fold right there.
03:37If it didn't involve accelerating or braking, it probably started as a factory option.
03:42Automatic transmissions, power steering came in, air conditioning became very popular, very common.
03:48In some cases, paying for options was the equivalent of volunteering for a test flight.
03:53Volkswagen made a gas heater.
03:56You'd light it with a match, and you would use gas from your engine to heat the inside of the
04:01car.
04:01Yeah. What could go wrong there?
04:03Eventually, heaters became standard.
04:05But, ah, not that gassy VW one, of course.
04:09There were also concepts designed to meet the needs of the moment.
04:12Some of the car configurations that were developed were really around the emerging mobility of Americans.
04:18It was a time when, you know, motels were starting to appear, but there would be long stretches of American
04:24Highway where you couldn't really find a place to sleep.
04:26Now you can sleep in any car, but in 1936, Nash came up with a way for the whole family
04:32to take a nap, just so long as it wasn't barreling down the road.
04:35You can even get your Nash equipped with complete twin beds.
04:38So now on long road trips, you just sleep in your car.
04:41And road trips would be on the rise, thanks to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.
04:46The suburbs were getting popular, no one lives in cities, so now people were starting to commute to work.
04:51Some suburbanites were even buying two cars.
04:54And at that point, the sky was the limit. Putting just about anything into a car seemed like a good
04:59idea.
04:59You know what was a big thing? Plug in electric shavers for your car.
05:02The GM in-car electric shaver.
05:05Plugs into your life. You can shave while you're driving.
05:08Grooming while driving.
05:09Safe time. You know, you're looking in a mirror and get rear-ended.
05:12That is, if the potholes didn't get you first.
05:16What?
05:17As more Americans got behind the wheel, roads filled up,
05:20and so did the hours spent in cars that had little to offer in the way of entertainment.
05:25Today, we're used to the concept of having all kinds of great music in our car.
05:30But back then, you pretty much just had an AM radio.
05:32Oh yes, nothing says I'm driving under power lines like AM radio.
05:37But for those who could afford a little more, Chrysler had an alternative.
05:41Plymouth has everything. Even a highway hi-fi record player.
05:45Chrysler had something called the highway hi-fi.
05:49And it was the first time that you could take music out of your house and put it in your
05:53car,
05:53which was at that time, obviously, an actual record player.
05:57Although you couldn't actually use your own records.
06:00It only worked with proprietary records from Columbia,
06:03so you were also very limited on the music that you could play.
06:06For those who wanted to hear something other than the soothing swoon of Percy Faith and his orchestra,
06:11Salvation wouldn't arrive until the 1960 Dodge Polera.
06:15And the dealer-installed Chrysler-approved RCA Auto Victrola.
06:19What was great about this one was you could pick out your own records.
06:22It's a stack of 1445s from your own record library.
06:28Listen to that.
06:30Now that they had tunes, it was time to focus on the real innovations.
06:34Car manufacturers were simply experimenting.
06:36If somebody had an idea to put something in a car,
06:39somebody said, well, let's do it.
06:40Let's put a bar in a 1957 Eldorado Brougham.
06:44Named the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, engineers were handed a free reign.
06:48And free-flowing American whiskey all around.
06:51In all fairness, vices in the 50s were different.
06:54Luckies, viceroys, camels were just what the doctor ordered.
06:57This resulted in a boom in aftermarket cigarette accessories.
07:01You're driving along, you press the button, the cigarette would roll down,
07:06the thing would light it, and then the stupidest part,
07:10it would flick the cigarette up and you'd catch it, you know.
07:14Just the idea that you're in a coffee machine is throwing lit cigarettes.
07:20But nothing goes better with cigarettes than coffee.
07:23Volkswagen enthusiasts know about the esoteric options that could be had on the Beetle,
07:29one of which is often talked about is the coffee maker.
07:33Oh, the Hertella auto cafe machine.
07:36A coffee maker that mounted to the dash of your car.
07:41You're out here engineering portable kettles, but no one thought just to put in a cup holder.
07:46And while astronauts sip from high-tech Capri Suns,
07:49we Earthlings prefer a place to park our easily spillable drinks.
07:53So it's hard to imagine there was a time without cup holders.
07:57After three and a half decades of improvising...
08:00We came up with a doctor of cupology.
08:02We had cup holders that could hold anything and would clamp it like claws of the crab.
08:07You go to Europe, a cup holder holds a cup.
08:10He's got to hold a 44-ounce big gun.
08:12Now that's what I call a large.
08:16As Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard became the first men to voyage into space,
08:21their bravery inspired engineers and dreamers here on Earth
08:24to devise new and exciting ways to traverse the land.
08:28But one car dared to go beyond the land.
08:31With the flick of a switch, it becomes a boat.
08:34The Amphicar was marketed to the adventurous American outdoorsman.
08:39Lyndon Johnson, the president, made them famous.
08:41He had one on his Texas ranch.
08:43And whenever Khrushchev or world leaders would come,
08:46he'd take them a ride, and then he'd press the brake.
08:48Oh, oh, oh, we've got to go in the water.
08:50Oh, my God, the brakes don't work.
08:51And he would go in the water, and they would go,
08:52Oh, my God, what's going on?
08:53And then they'd go across the lake, whatever.
08:55Yeah, that was his big trick.
08:56These themed cars were made for a very specific customer.
09:00But there's another kind of themed car, one that didn't have a target demo.
09:04In fact, it wasn't even for sale.
09:06Well, a concept car is usually an engineer or a designer's idea of vehicle of the future.
09:13We're all set for auto control.
09:15There were a series of three concepts back in the 1950s,
09:19Firebird 1, Firebird 2, and Firebird 3,
09:21which were coincidentally all powered by turbid engines.
09:25Everything had an aeronautical look.
09:27And the idea that you could have an airplane on the ground
09:30that flew at, quote, airplane speeds, well, that was just unbelievable.
09:34While the first Firebird was a single seater,
09:37the second featured two rows of seats,
09:40perfect for families that wanted to feel like they were heading into combat together.
09:44Then there's the Firebird 3.
09:46Firebird 3 from General Motors with twin plastic canopies.
09:49It was brimming with concepts that would foreshadow things that are still maybe headed to production.
09:55Get ready for a ride in Firebird 3.
09:58Full autonomous driving.
09:59Want to sit back and relax?
10:00Set in the speed you want to drive.
10:03And switch over to automatic guidance.
10:06Release the stick.
10:08And Firebird 3 is on its own.
10:10Wait, a self-driving car in the 50s?
10:13Good luck with that.
10:15Considering this is what a computer looked like in 1959, you might be thinking,
10:19It's not possible.
10:20It's physically impossible.
10:22Computing technology, on the other hand, was coming along in leaps and bounds.
10:26But still, well, in those days, America's space program was using something much more reliable.
10:32The computing power of women.
10:34We have a brain.
10:36That I can work with.
10:37But meanwhile, the auto industry seemed to ignore women's intelligence and appeal instead to their vanity.
10:43A bunch of guys figured they'd design a car for women.
10:47Think of it as a series of car options for women bundled into one lovely vehicle.
10:52Designed entirely by men.
10:54And what did the husbands in Detroit name this beautiful car for their blushing brides?
10:59The Dodge La Femme.
11:00That's great.
11:02It's French.
11:03It was just a regular Dodge.
11:05They offered colors like pastel pink and white.
11:08They had a rosebud interior.
11:10It even came with a parasol and matching raincoat and a purse.
11:14Came with this purse.
11:16You open the purse up and look at the stuff that's inside.
11:19What woman wouldn't love this?
11:21Lipstick.
11:22Oh, a lighter because back in the 50s, everybody smoked.
11:25The change purse.
11:26Oh, oh, and the compact.
11:27I wonder if there's any makeup left in it.
11:29Hold on, let me see.
11:30Yes, there is.
11:31It's powder.
11:32Okay.
11:33There.
11:34I actually did that.
11:36Oh, my gosh.
11:37What did I do?
11:38There's powder everywhere now.
11:40This is the 50s.
11:41Is it carcinogenic?
11:43Hold on.
11:47As the 1960s moved into the 1970s, style became important again.
11:54Leading the charge.
11:55American Motors, they were the fourth largest car company in America.
11:59You know, the big three, and then there's American Motors.
12:02They needed something to help their brand stand out.
12:05If you had to compete for the three biggest car companies in America, what would you do?
12:10So American Motors thought, how can we, how can we make these a little fancy?
12:13Maybe we'll get together with some fancy designer like Gucci.
12:16Gucci designed an interior for the AMC Hornet.
12:20It was the perfect blend of European and American.
12:23It was pretty successful.
12:24Turns out, the unlikely pairing made a lot of sense.
12:27It got a lot of people into AMC dealerships, so they reached out to other designers.
12:31As a result, the world's greatest designers weren't headed to Milan, Paris, or even New York.
12:36They were headed to Detroit.
12:38The AMC Javelin, a really outrageous looking muscle car, had an interior designed by Pierre Cardin.
12:44And there was an AMC Matador with an Oleg Cassini designed interior.
12:48On the other end were the Levi's collaborations that AMC also did.
12:54So you could get a car that actually was upholstered with denim.
12:57Well, they look like denim seats, but the actual denim didn't meet the fire safety protocols,
13:03and so they actually made spun nylon.
13:05So this is dyed nylon.
13:06But it feels a lot like denim.
13:08But then, look at this.
13:09You got the tags, just like on the Levi's jeans, and then you got the buttons.
13:13It's just goofy fun.
13:15Jeans are all about comfort, but when you want to impress,
13:17the idea of having leather in your car, well, you must be special.
13:20And along comes Ricardo Montalban, the actor.
13:25I know my own needs.
13:26And what I need from an automobile, I know I get from this new Cordova.
13:31That voice.
13:32Montalban's voice could make you feel welcome.
13:34Welcome to Fantasy Island.
13:36Or terrified.
13:37This is City Alpha 5.
13:39As to the car itself, it was a big, comfortable car.
13:43It only had two doors because it was for somebody who didn't have a family or wanted to pretend they
13:48didn't have a family.
13:49That's actually a pretty good tagline.
13:52The Cordova sold luxury on a budget.
13:55One thing that people wanted were supple leather seats.
13:58But Chrysler didn't line the Cordova with just any old leather.
14:02They used soft Corinthian leather.
14:05The name was infectious.
14:06Rich Corinthian leather.
14:09Rich Corinthian leather.
14:10Rich Corinthian.
14:11Rich Corinthian leather.
14:13Suddenly, I had to have Corinthian leather.
14:17America was obsessed, begging the question.
14:19Why didn't all cars have Corinthian leather?
14:22One question would lead to another.
14:24What was so special about Corinth that they had these special cows that made this unique leather?
14:29Yeah, about Corinth.
14:31It was something that an ad agency came up with.
14:33The writer, Jim Nichols, who wrote the commercial for Chrysler for me at that time, found, he wanted to find
14:40a word that sounded sort of elegant that I could say with a little verb, you know.
14:44And I saw Corinthian.
14:46Oh, yeah.
14:46You know what I mean?
14:48But does it mean anything?
14:50Nothing.
14:51Yeah.
14:52Corinthian leather was completely made up.
14:54It was just standard leather from New Jersey.
14:58Ah, Jersey cows.
14:59The Cordoba somehow turned real leather into faux leather.
15:03But what came next was really real.
15:06Real, undeniable change.
15:08By the 80s, high tech and digital tech started to invade the automobile.
15:13Please turn off your light.
15:15French maximum.
15:17While the formal space race wrapped up in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz test project, the world's obsession with the
15:24stars was far from over.
15:25We have ignition.
15:27We have a liftoff.
15:28And in 1977, the universe was expanding, and we were searching for ways to be a part of it.
15:36This was the era of Star Wars.
15:40Even legendary interior designer John Shetler was captivated by the space drama.
15:46What was the most exciting part of the Star Wars movies?
15:49I have you now.
15:51And they were in the Starfighter trying to take down Death Star.
15:58Although, John appreciated the sequence from a certain point of view.
16:01But it was all interior looking to drop that missile.
16:05Great shot, Jim.
16:06That was one in a million.
16:07The 80s was packed with legendary sci-fi vehicles, each with their own futuristic interior.
16:13A cue the real-life auto industry would begin to pick up on.
16:16You had things like digital dashes.
16:19No more were there analog gauges.
16:21Those weren't cool.
16:21Those weren't futuristic enough.
16:23While some of the vehicles Hollywood envisioned were odd, one would border on prophecy.
16:29Amazing.
16:30And it's like mission control.
16:32I'm into gadgets.
16:33When Knight Rider came out in 81, yeah, I thought that was fantastic to see the car.
16:39You could talk to it.
16:41Come on, kid.
16:42Say something to the bear.
16:44I'm sorry, Michael.
16:45I have nothing to say.
16:46It was wonderful.
16:47While you couldn't banter with the cars of the 80s, the 1981 Datsun Maxima offered a one-sided conversation.
16:53Maxima!
16:54That's in Maxima.
16:55Lights are on.
16:56Thanks, Maxima.
16:57Your door is ajar.
16:59You know, when I was a kid, the car talks down.
17:01It's cool.
17:02You know, that was the idea.
17:03And then after your third conversation with the car, he shut up.
17:06The 1984 Nissan 300ZX.
17:09I have an affinity for this vehicle because this very car right here is the first thing that the dummies
17:14paid for that was kind of expensive.
17:16I love this thing because some of the factory options are great, but the number one is the talking car.
17:22It was one of the first talking vehicles.
17:24For example, let's leave your lights on.
17:29Lights are on.
17:31But the conversation was just getting started.
17:34From advanced technology comes a new kind of luxury car.
17:37The Chrysler New Yorker.
17:39That's right.
17:40Corinthian's biggest leather man was back.
17:42And Ricardo Montalban had become the voice of Chrysler cars.
17:46With electronics so advanced, it even monitors itself.
17:49But unfortunately, not the actual voice of the actual talking Chrysler car.
17:54All monitored systems are functioning.
17:57A real missed opportunity.
17:59Love is the creative energy of the universe.
18:02Without it, life would be hell.
18:05Anyway, the options of the 80s and 90s brought the focus back to comfort.
18:09Meanwhile, the auto industry took a slightly more down-to-earth approach, offering features people actually wanted.
18:15They're old ideas.
18:16The technology is new.
18:18The reason why we're putting them in the car is the same reason that we put record players in cars
18:22in the 1950s.
18:24It was to make the car feel more like the home.
18:27What else did every home have?
18:29In 1984, Buick actually offered, as an option, a car phone.
18:36To be able to talk on the phone in your car really felt like the future.
18:39Now you were a member of the elite.
18:41The name Buick has always stood for automobiles that are well above the ordinary.
18:46And in some ways, it set the table for what was going to happen over the next 20, 30 years.
18:51I mean, it wasn't until 2004 that you could finally send a fax from your Audi A8.
18:56Just in case your Blackberry was on the fritz.
18:58I think the car industry is most exciting when there are new vehicles coming, when they're challenging each other.
19:06The goal is let's do something that nobody has ever done before.
19:10They push boundaries.
19:11They challenge conventions.
19:13It's an exercise in exploration.
19:15From hybrids to EVs.
19:17Augmented reality windshields and self-massaging seats.
19:21From self-braking to self-parking.
19:24The car packs itself.
19:25It's smart.
19:26It's wicked smart.
19:27Today's cars are packed with tech once reserved for sci-fi.
19:31Shields of 60%.
19:33Auto manufacturers are still chasing that space race energy.
19:37Only now it's software over steel and battery hum over engine roar.
19:42Even what we could have imagined back in the 50s, the 60s, 70s, the 80s, even the 90s.
19:50The cars we have today.
19:52They're not just cars anymore.
19:54They are mechanical and technological marvels.
19:58The mission, go further.
20:00Do more and spark the imagination.
20:04Ideally without catching fire.
20:08Kids, don't smoke.
20:10And whichever element we conquer, be it space, sea, or land, we're all set for auto control.
20:19We'll be there, embracing whatever the future holds.
20:23As long as it still holds a cup.
20:25If you don't have good cup holders, you don't have a car.
20:39I kill you!
20:40I kill you!
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