Saturday, February 09, 2008

The Tommy Hilfiger experience

At the end of October, as world finals came to an end, we were feeling a little down after having killed a piston and missing our chance at the blown fuel record.



As we were collecting or equipment and getting ready for the long drive home, we were suddenly faced with an entirely different option.



A location scout by the name of Todd knopke approached us to let us know that Tommy Hilfiger really like our car and would like to know if we would be interested in staying an extra week to be a part of the photo shoot for their upcoming Spring Summer line. That's Todd on the left.


Hmmmmmm.. That one really threw me for a loop. After some discussion with my pit crew (aka Fiance and friends) it was decided that it sounded like fun and that we were in.



As we discussed the shoot more with the company it turned out that they were still looking for 2 more vehicles of similar appearance, so I let them know that I had one more old race car back at the shop. Bill Burke's original racecar:



and that we could build them another car from an old tank I had hanging from the ceiling.



They liked that idea, so I flew home and my buddy Logan Davis slapped a rolling lakester together in 2 days, and our friend Jerry shot the paint. The color has picked by the art department, not me. haha
And we headed back out to Bonneville with the 2 extra cars.





The 3 day photo shoot went great.




I got to drive the Crow while they shot some video. Here is the You tube:



Here is some of the finished product. Keep an eye out for billboards and magazine ads






While I was there, they asked if I would be interested in bringing the car out to Amsterdam for their runway show. Sounds good to me, I said.
But first we had get all this stuff back home.

On the way home from Bonneville Drew and I stopped by the "old sign graveyard"




and then shot machine guns at the local shooting range.

I think the oversized grin on Drews face pretty much says it all. hahaha

I was excited about the Amsterdam offer, and proposed that Myself, my fiance Carol and my friend Drew be flown over to help with the logistics.
However, shipping a car over to Europe is no easy task as I soon learned over the following few months. By the time we had finished all the details on negotiations with the rental of the car, it was too late to ship out of Los Angeles, so instead the car had to be trucked to New York and put on a container there and shipped to Antwerp, Belgium. Shipping out of New York shaves off about a month of travel time across the ocean.
But once we knew the car was safely in it's container and on the open ocean, the three of us hopped on a Swiss air flight to Amsterdam.

Here is the view from our hotel room



Luckily I had a friend in Belgium.

Hans, seen here in the photo is a vintage motorcycle collector and he helped me get the car from the shipping company in Antwerp.





We transfer it to the Hilfiger showroom in Amsterdam. About a three hour drive.



Once we arrived at the Hilfiger showroom, the front window of the building had to be removed and a crane helped pickup the car from the trailer and hoisted it into the showroom where it will live for the next month. It was quite a production.








We were in Amsterdam for 2 weeks and had a nice time except for the freezing wind and rain that greeted us everyday. (Note to self,..don't go to Europe in the winter)
We drank loads of Belgium beer and met some great people. As illustrated in the following pictures.






All in all it was an wonderfully interesting experience and all thanks to the crazy world of Hot rodding, land speed racing and the fashion industry.

To view more pics of our adventure, follow this link:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bellytank/hilfiger%20story/

16 comments:

Tikiguy said...

Congrats Bobby, looks like fun was had by all. I've been following the saga of the Old Crow since the article in Garage way back when. It's nice to see everyone's hard work get some well deserved exposure.
Tiki

Unknown said...

Congratulations! Really cool blog by the way... I'm also beginning to do auto projects like this one for a hobby and my friend recommends me these eibach springs. Do you think this will do?

Bad Bob said...

I'm not exactly sure how I stumbled on your blog, but that is a pretty cool experience! I used to build custom sheet metal intake manifolds for Pro-Mod drag racers here in Spartanburg, South Carolina for Fulton Competition.
Bob

32vertex said...

Hello Bobby,

I checked your blog before, but saw only today that your bellytank was in Amsterdam ! I am from Eindhoven, Netherlands, and think your tank is ACE ! Is it allready back to the US ?
I am in Trashers CC (www.trashers.nl) and we bought a 1970 F4 Phantom tank, to build our clubracer; hopefully to race it on the Salt.

Please let me know if the Old Crow is still in Amsterdam, I'd love to check it out in person (and maybe take some measurements while I am at it...)

best regards

Erwin Planting

Sandhya said...

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Anonymous said...

hey that's an interesting article , i really like the cars very cool, nice post, keep it up...

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Frank Sider said...

Hi Bobby
very nice blog and pict
u guys are cool
take a look ther when u have time
Frank
http://southsiders-mc.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

Great Information. That sounds pretty cool. Really helpful thanks for the Article, Great job, Keep posting interesting matters here. Looking forward to it. Thanks and keep it up! All the Best.
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Andrew Jacob said...

nice car friend...........

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Unknown said...

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MICHEL said...

Its really cool ADD man... keep on posting such HD version adds ...


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