Now this is something a bit off the beaten path, even for Eugene. A jacked-up, big-wheeled BMW 325Is. And no, it’s not AWD. Has the SUV fad gone a bit too far?
It certainly has plenty of ground clearance.
Shell buckets to keep one well in place over wildest terrain.
And a brush bar in front.
Yes, there was an AWD 325Ix, but this ain’t it. Just to be sure, I looked behind the front wheel for the tell-tale sign of a drive shaft: nada.
The front fender has been cut out for more clearance. And Felix the Cat is ready to provide a bit of motivation.
And now for the kicker: as I was shooting this Felix the Cat Bimmer, a woman walked by behind it wearing a…black kitty cat hat. Seriously.
The shot was fuzzy to start with, so this crop is pretty bad, but the black cat ears are there. What can I say? Meow!
Wow, Felix the Cat! If that has not become an obscure reference, I don’t know what is. Why on earth do I still remember the lyrics to the Felix the Cat song?
Felix the cat
the wonderful wonderful cat
whenever he gets in a fix
he reaches into his bag of tricks
I guess this BMW is that bag.
Obscure trivia: a Felix the Cat statue was the star of one of the very first experimental TV broadcasts. Don’t think he was a BMW owner at the time, though.
Right! My first thought too. It was RCA’s first experiment with television in 1928. That was a mechanical system then. A big disk with holes did the scanning, 40 lines per frame. The lights required were so bright and hot they couldn’t use a human subject, so Felix on a turntable saved the day.
I love this site! You never know what kind of off-topic but fascinating things will come to light.
The disk is called a Nipkow Disk. It is actually a fun project to build a mechanical TV and there used to be kits to make the TV.
When I was younger, I read all there was to know(at the time) about John Logie Baird who was a UK mechanical TV pioneer.
Early TV and radio interest me.
Of course my dad tells me that back when he was younger there were only about 4-5 channels and there was really nothing worth while(to him) to watch. Now we have 400- 500 channels and there still is really nothing to watch.
Great bit of television trivia. It’s a shame there isn’t any footage of those first television experiments with Felix. I guess it makes sense since there probably wasn’t any means to record them.
In fact, it appears there aren’t exactly a lot of Felix’s early, silent cartoon shorts (1919-1928) around, either.
Felix the Cat cartoons were brought back in as a new series in the mid-1990s as The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat . Twenty one episodes were made and these had the same surreal humor as the original cartoons. You can find some of the new cartoons on YouTube.
There is a recreation of what it would have looked like here but it doesn’t have any motion. Commenters noted that of course the first television broadcast in history was a cat video.
There were in fact recordings made in 1927-28 by John Logie Baird, a Scottish TV pioneer. The pictures were so small and coarsely scanned that the signal could be recorded on a conventional record. You can see what it looked like here.
The second refrain might be more appropriate:
“You’ll laugh so much your sides will ache
Your heart will go pit-a-pat!”
After poking around Wikipedia a bit, I learned that this “Felix carrying a bomb” emblem is actually the insignia for US Navy Strike Fighter Squadron 31:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VFA-31
I would speculate that the owner of this car may be a veteran of that squadron.
Yup. Came here to say that.
I think this BMW is a rally toy for ‘bombing through the woods’.
Here in LA, we relate Felix the Cat to Chevrolets, not BMWs
I worked for Felix Chevrolet/VW around 1984. Remember that sign well. Was actually VW of Downtown LA, but was in the same building, we shared parts/service departments. The building had rats that looked more like possums. Nasty, hissy, big grey sewer rats running around the parts department!
Around 2007 the city tried to get the sign removed, but supporters had it declared a historic landmark and it was saved.
i dont know what to make of this. i drive a 2001 330xi as a daily driver (all wheel drive) and i do have a soft spot for this gen of bimmers. they did put BMW on the map in the usa. if the owner saved it from the crusher…..then its cool!! if he mutilated a perfectly nice 3 series for this ……not so cool!! i remember watching felix the cat when i came home from school…thanks for the memories!!
This is exactly where the SUV fad needs to go to catch my interest.
VFA-31 Tomcatters call sign Felix. Prior to VFA-31, they were VF-3 (WWII), VB-6B (bombing squadron 6), adopted by VB-2B ( bombing squadron 2) in the 20’s.
VB-2B
On a less than auspicious Navy plane
“It is my belief that any commander that orders pilots out for combat in a F2A-3 should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground.” – Surviving VMF-221 Officer after the Battle of Midway
Last week I was behind a Dodge Neon on which the owner had placed one of those “Trail Rated” badges off of a Jeep. I thought that was kind of silly as the Neon obviously isn’t an off road vehicle. On the other hand, this BMW may well be worthy of being called Trail Rated.
Probably a joke, like a ‘police interceptor’ emblem on a Prius.
I think a modern Prius is quicker than an early ‘80’s Dodge Diplomat. Though not as fast as a Motorola, as the saying goes.
Y’all beat me to the VFA-31 references… I have a t-shirt with that logo on it.
As far as the Bimmer, I like it! I doubt a pristine car was “butchered” to make this, more likely it already had issues and someone said, “Here, hold my beer!”
You know what this reminds me of? Does anyone remember the show Junkyard Wars that aired on TLC in the early 2000s (IIRC it was called Scrapheap Challenge in the UK)? Two teams competed to build a machine using only materials they could scavenge from a junkyard. This kind of looks like something that would have gotten built on that show. It’s not pretty, but it does the job and was probably built using whatever vehicle and components the owner had on hand.
I would do a variation of Wheeler Dealers and Junkyard Wars. You have to rebuild to running condition and sell at a profit as many of the vehicles in a salvage yard as you can. No outside parts, cannibalization only.
I remember it fondly! Great show.
This sort of reminds me of the car I saw in a movie just last night: a jacked up, big wheel, RWD, orange 65 Mustang. The movie was Cherry 2000, starring Melanie Griffith as a sort of female Mad Max.
I’d say it was more like Blade Runner, given that the opening presentation of the fururistic world of 2017 was a dense urban dystopia with robot people, but the budget was too low to actually make much of anything look futuristic(past the protagonist’s 3 wheeled sports car), so they just set most of it in the desert, and threw in some Mad Max style anarchy along the way. Melany Griffith’s character was basically the equivelant of Deckard – he was a blade runner, she was a “tracker”.
I just saw this recently too, I had nobody else to talk to about it or understand the references lol
Ooh, pretty!
If I remember Melanie Griffith was looking for another android so some guy could put the chip from his android wife into it. Basically it’s American Pickers meets Mad Max.
My only question is has anyone checked on our BMW loving Brendan to make sure he’s not passed out cold somewhere at his first sighting of this post??
This may be painful for the BMW purist, but I can think of worse things:
“Wanted: Pristine BMW Z8 for conversion to off-road/demolition derby vehicle. Low mileage and always-garaged examples preferred. “
As for past-their-prime BMWs, there was the shiny red BMW 325 that our town’s firefighters used for an extrication demonstration. It hadn’t been wrecked, either. By the time it was over, the doors had been torn off their hinges, the pillars were cut, and the roof had been thrown into the back seat.
Surely they could have found a nice…Citation, instead?
“Surely they could have found a nice…Citation, instead?”
I doubt anyone could find ANY Citation, much less a nice one…
Ooops-
Proved myself wrong-
https://rockford.craigslist.org/cto/d/1982-chevrolet-citation/6479486060.html
Now I’m seriously tempted…
Thats a nice citation, i’m tempted to just buy it and keep it.
A former work colleague replaced a perfectly good 1980 Mercury Capri (the Mustang-based one) with a Renault 5 ‘monster truck’ – that was the weirdest thing I had ever seen up to that point.
That reminds me of the 325i pickup I spotted recently:
I feel like I’m between generations for Felix the Cat, other than as a historical reference. Now Fritz the Cat, that one was closer to home.
Hmmm..wonder what a jacked up Tempo AWD would look like?