Damn Kids. Never Put Their Toys Away

I had wanted to make a statement with my car. It's just a car. I'd driven it for 10 years and put 160,000 miles on it. It's value to me was beyond the few hundred dollars that someone could have offered  me for it. People in this culture get so wrapped up in their possessions and that is magnified when it comes to automobiles. There is an awful lot of emotional energy that goes into in these metal boxes. People derive their individuality from what they drive. Yet there's somebody three blocks over and two down that has the exact same vehicle. If someone really wanted to express who they were through the automobile they drove, they could decorate them with cheap plastic toys. It's just a car.

Pretty quickly though I found that the epoxy wouldn't hold, so I experimented with various caulks and even bondo. I've been told that the results are striking.  And I branched out from using just army men so that it now includes Ninja fighters, Cowboys & Indians, Revolutionary war soldiers, Astronauts, Fish & Divers, Planes, Dinosaurs, Insects and Jungle animals.
 

  This is an interesting form of artistic expression.
First,  anyone can do it. You have a car. You buy some glue. You find some crap. You use the glue to to attach the crap to the car. Then you're an artist.
Second, everyone appreciates this. Even the road-raged-out yuppies in their BMWs and Minivans smile as they go by.
Third. it's performance art. Everywhere you go, it's an art show. I got allot of comments, questions and praise  every time I parked it. It would always attract a crowd. That's where the working title came from. I would come out of the store, look at the car and say,  "Damn Kids. Never Put Their Toys Away." It was always good for a chuckle.
It's also fun to watch people as they look at the car. There's a bit disbelief  and curiosity. And it's also a humor test. If they can get this, they're not too far gone.
I was watching one woman as she touched one of the soldiers. It came off in her hand. She had a panicked look on her face as she tried to figure out what to do. I think she knew that if she just put it back on top when the car was moved, it would fall, so after looking around for a few seconds she stuck it on the antennae and hurried off.

I'm still working on the title, for now it's, "Damn Kids. Never Put Their Toys Away." Other title ideas include, "War is Heck", "Battle For the Soul of a Piece of  Tokyo steel", "Toy Story, The Truth" and "When You Write Code for 15 Hours Straight, You've Just Got to Get Out." Another friend with a digital camera took the rest of these pictures.
 

It's kind of hard to make out details from these pictures. There is another page with pictures of individual scenes. And there's another one with pictures of my parents in the car. And some other pictures of individual scenes:
Some cave men who have caught a triceratops straying from the herd;
Crash landing on an alien landscape;
Reptile sneaking up on a soldier;
A Reptile makes a catch on the rear bumper.
The Roof.
The Water side, back.
The Hood, along with The Row of Alternative Hood Ornaments.
Battle on the Hood.
Front View.
The Airplane side, back.
The Airplane side, front.
This could be my son's car when he turns 18.
 

It was a very interesting experience driving around an art car. Every day was parade day. Almost all of the responses that I got were positive. And there were a lot of confused looks.
Unfortunately the Army Man car has a bad set of rings. It uses as much oil as gas and I don't dare drive it on the freeway. So, it has gone from being a Rolling Object of Art, making a comment on the American Car Culture to being a way to block the sun from the weeds trying to grow through the driveway.
Now I drive a Non Art Car all the time. And no one looks.

I had the car at the San Francisco Art Car Show September 25-27, 1998.