Vitals

James Taylor as “The Driver”, laconic race car driver

Arizona through Tennessee, Fall 1970

Film: Two-Lane Blacktop
Release Date: July 7, 1971
Director: Monte Hellman
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Monte Hellman’s offbeat cult classic road movie Two-Lane Blacktop was released 55 years ago this week on July 7, 1971, starring musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson as the unnamed driver and mechanic of a ’55 Chevy gasser that picks up a hitchhiker (Laurie Bird) and falls into a cross-country race for pinks against the blustering driver of a new Pontiac GTO, played by Warren Oates.

Always an unorthodox maverick, Hellman was inspired to cast Taylor after spying his face on a Sunset Boulevard billboard, recalling that he “just flipped over his face.” Both Taylor and his late co-star Oates recalled the first-time actor feeling frustrated with his lack of control as Hellman and his 30-person crew shot the film in sequence, offering the cast only a few pages of the script at a time. “I’m not talking out of turn when I say Jimmy Taylor had terrible struggles relinquishing control to Monte,” Oates later shared.

The on-set strife reached a point where Hellman convinced Taylor not to quit the production by finally allowing him to read the entirety of Rudy Wurtlizer’s screenplay… which he didn’t do. Still, Taylor didn’t see Two-Lane Blacktop as the detour to a new path in his career, explaining in a contemporary interview with the Los Angeles Times that “I’m not an actor. I’ll never do this again. If I ever did another film I’d have to be the director and writer, I’d have to be in control.” To date, this remains the six-time Grammy-winning Taylor’s sole big-screen acting credit apart from cameos.

As this summer’s Car Week feature stretches on, let’s follow Sweet Baby James in that primer-gray Chevy along America’s blue highways stretching east from Arizona.

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What’d He Wear?

James Taylor maintains a simple and ultimately timeless casual wardrobe as “The Driver”, possibly a mixture of the musician’s own clothing and the costumes that Richard Bruno’s costume team sourced from thrift stores. Though Two-Lane Blacktop was filmed in 1970, the driver’s chambray shirt, plain tee, and dark jeans wouldn’t be out of place in any decade since then. And while the simplicity of his look serves Taylor’s laconic characterization, it was probably also much easier for the traveling skeleton crew to not have to account for the driver and mechanic wearing more than an outfit-and-a-half each. (The “half” being the sweater that the driver occasonally pulls on as needed.)

This light-blue chambray cotton work-shirt has a spread collar, front placket, button-throguh chest pockets, and button cuffs that he typically wears undone and rolled up. The shirt’s dark-blue plastic buttons on the placket and pockets contrast against the lighter cloth. Taylor wears the shirt both tucked and buttoned and untucked and fully unbuttoned, revealing the olive-green cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt he always wears beneath it.

The driver’s dark-indigo denim jeans are the classic Lee 101Z, with the brand’s characteristic “lazy S” stitching across the two back pockets. These zip-fly jeans follow the typical denim configuration of five pockets—including a watch/coin pocket inset on the front right pocket—and belt loops, through which Taylor wears a black leather belt that closes through a squared gunmetal single-prong buckle.

For cooler days and nights, the driver pulls on the extra layer of a slubby olive wool sweater with ribbed sets along the neck, cuffs, and hem. It presents like a turtleneck, but it is actually a mock-neck as you can see the neck is all one continuous piece rising from the sweater body.

The driver’s dirty off-white canvas slip-ons may be the most unexpected part of Taylor’s wardrobe, as something like work boots or Chuck Taylors would speak the same sartorial Americana language as the rest of his look. But our driver puts function before form, in case his primer-gray Chevy with a roaring 454 bursting from under the hood didn’t make that clear.

Though these aren’t specifically driving shoes—a term typically reserved for the European moc-toe loafers with rubber-dotted soles—they feel road-tested as footwear that the driver would accept as both comfortable enough for hours of driving and nimble enough to move among brake, gas, and clutch while manning the Chevy’s four-speed rock crusher. They have white rubber otusoles and short white elastic side gussets that ease the wearer’s feet into them.

Taylor wears a simple steel-cased wristwatch on the inside of his left wrist, strapped to a black leather band. We don’t get nearly as close a look at this watch as we do the mechanic’s red-dialed 17-jewel Desotos, though we can guess it’s something reliable as our serious driver would accept no less when timing his laps.

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What to Imbibe

No brands are specifically mentioned or visible, but the driver orders “a shot of rye and a glass of beer” at a Santa Fe bar. He drinks them separately, but dropping the shot into the beer would convert his order into a Boilermaker—perhaps the toughest of American tough-guy drinks, originating among Montana miners in the 1890s. (At the next bar, his order is slightly more sophisticated when he asks for “a double Scotch on the rocks.”)

Assuming your plans are to stay put and watch Two-Lane Blacktop (and not drive!), a Boilermaker would pair well with the screaming V8s and existentialism as our unnamed quartet chases each other across the country.

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The Car

James Taylor and Dennis Wilson travel the country in a 1955 Chevrolet 150, a two-door sedan that was part of Chevy’s economy-level lineup through the mid-’50s and implied to have been heavily modified by Wilson’s mechanic to allow Taylor’s driver to ably compete in races. Originally painted powder-blue, the production team repainted the cars in a matte-gray primer to maintain a no-nonsense appearance.

Chevrolet intended the 150 to be primarily a fleet vehicle when it was introduced for the 1953 model year, a no-frills alternative to the mid-level 210 and premium Bel-Air lines. Initially, the 150 only featured a straight-six engine mated to a three-speed syncro-mesh manual transmission, but the two-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission became an option for ’54, and a 265 cubic-inch “Turbo Fire” V8 was introduced for the 1955 redesign.

“The Chevy, an unconventional hero car for 1970, became The Driver’s ride when, during pre-production for the film, associate producer, Gary Kurtz, consulted car builder Richard Ruth about fabricating cars for the movie,” writes Rob Finkelman for Street Muscle Mag. “Ruth had recently built himself a big-block ’55, and the two men did a bit of street racing in it around LA’s San Fernando Valley one day. By the time they were done, Kurtz was hooked on using a ’55 Chevy for the movie and contracted Ruth to build three cars for filming.”

At his North Hollywood shop, Ruth transformed two ’55 150 coupes and a Bel-Air into identical star and stunt cars, stripping out the insides and replacing the stock steel doors, trunks, and hoods with lighter-weight fiberglass units, in addition to mounting mailbox-style air scoops on the hoods. The side glass windows were also replaced with sliding plexiglass windows. “All three cars were equipped with 1960s Oldsmobile Positraction rears with 4.88:1 gears, straight axles with coilovers, and four-wheel disc brakes,” adds Finkelman. The American Mag 200-S five-spoke “daisy” wheels measured 15×6 on the front and 15×10 on the rear, alternating between Firestone Grand Prix tires for the street and M&H Racemaster drag slicks for racing.

Two of the cars were powered with the new 454 cubic-inch big-block V8, which Chevrolet had just introduced for the 1970 model year. Ruth installed these with aluminum heads, a Weiand tunnel ram, and dual 4-barrel Holley carburetors, all mated to a four-speed Muncie M-22 “rock crusher” transmission to help the Chevy run “well into the 12s”. The remaining stunt car received a 427 cubic-inch “L88” big-block V8 from the late ’60s, mated to a four-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic transmission.

“396?” asks a curious gas station attendant, to which the driver responds: “454.” “What kinda transmission?” another asks. “Four-speed.” “Dual headers?” “Yeah.”

1955 Chevrolet 150

Body Style: 2-door hardtop coupe

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 454 cubic inch (7.4 L) Chevrolet Performance LS7 V8 with dual Holley 4-barrel carburetors (aftermarket)

Power: 465 hp (347 kW; TBD PS) @ TBD rpm

Torque: 610 lb·ft (827 N·m) @ TBD rpm

Transmission: 4-speed Muncie M-22 manual (aftermarket)

Wheelbase: 115 inches (2921 mm)

Length: 195.6 inches (4968 mm)

Width: 74 inches (1880 mm)

Height: 60.5 inches (1537 mm)

The three screen-used cars sat on Universal Pictures’ prop lot for over a year after filming concluded. After one of the 454-powered Chevys (which had used for interior shots) was sold to a studio mechanic, Hollywood again came calling for the two remaining cars when Gary Kurtz was hired as co-producer on American Graffiti and pictured the mean ’55 Chevy gasser as the ideal ride for Harrison Ford’s swaggering local cowboy Bob Falfa.

The two Chevys were repainted a glossy black and finished with chome exterior details, new windows, and full interiors, with the twin-carb 454 serving as Bob’s “very wicked ’55 Chevy” hero car while the 427 fitted with a rollover cage met its end during American Graffiti‘s culminating race scene.

The Mechanic: You’d have yourself a real street-sweeper here if you put a little work into it.
G.T.O.: I go fast enough.
The Driver: You can never go fast enough.

Note: This same text was previously published when I wrote about Dennis Wilson’s style as “The Mechanic”.

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How to Get the Look

Just like Two-Lane Blacktop itself, James Taylor’s style as the driver transcends time with its simplicity: a classic blue chambray work-shirt, worn in various states of buttoning over a plain olive tee with dark jeans, slip-ons, and a trusted tool watch.

• Light-blue chambray cotton work-shirt with spread collar, front placket, two button-through chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Olive-green cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt
• Olive-green slubby wool mock-neck sweater
• Dark indigo denim Lee 101Z five-pocket jeans
• Black leather belt with gunmetal squared single-prong buckle
• Off-white canvas slip-on loafers with short side gussets and white rubber outsoles
• Stainless steel wristwatch on black leather strap

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.