The Durango 95 Purred Away Real Horrorshow
28. Aug, 2020 
1 Comment
Clockwork Orange‘s Durango 95
is actually the car of the (1969) future
The M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16
look ma, no doors!!
#OTD 1969: Blue Peter looked at two cars from opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum. Which is better, new-vintage or old-futuristic? pic.twitter.com/MTyV3ik6pE
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) November 17, 2017
designed by brothers Dennis and Peter Adams
only 3 Probe 16s were ever made!
(and yes, there was a Probe 15)
the Clockwork Probe, known as AB/4, had the license plate JFB 220H (and DAV 485Q in the film)
The Chequered Flag garage sold it to one Robin Gibbons, who was THE kind gentleman that lent the car for a few weeks to Kubrick’s Polaris Pictures company for the Clockwork Orange shoot
below is a photo of his Probe 16 in the parking lot of Gibbons’ place of work, the Ford Motor Company in Ilford, East London
shortly after the filming ended or the films’ release, Gibbons sold the car
not sure if there was an owner in between, but it passed onto to someone by the name of Mr Lyndon-Dyke (or perhaps Lybdon-Dyke), and then eventually made its way to America and was showcased by the Pollock Auto Showcase of Pottstown, Pennsylvania
and in the 1987, ended up back in the UK, in the possession of scientist and motorsportsman Dr. Colin Feyerabend, apparently yellow and in need of a lot of work (not sure how it became yellow or lost its bottom)
which led him to plead the British show Top Gear to help restore it, and they even featured it on the show for a contest segment hosted by James May called ‘Restoration Ripoff‘ that aired in 2004…
sadly the Probe 16 didn’t win the contest, and the one that did led to some sort of hullabaloo
well, what was once silver, then yellow, is now, restored by Club Autosport, like clockwork – ORANGE!
which has now been showcased the world over in all its glory!
and I saw it with mine own eyes at the amazing Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition held at the Design Museum of London
as for the other two Probe 16s…
the first one ever built – AB/2, license plate MJO 145H – was sold to American songwriter Jimmy Webb (best know for ‘Up Up And Away‘)
(sadly cannot find a picture of Mr Webb with his Probe):
it eventually fell into disrepair, found abandoned in the 1980s at a Los Angeles tow pound by a one David Farmer of Antelope Valley, California, and it looked like this…
the other M-505 Probe 16 – AB/3, license plate PWV 222H
was originally owned by Cream bassist Jack Bruce!
who then gave it as a b-day gift to Mountain drummer, and co-bandmate in West, Bruce & Laing, Corky Laing, seen here in the car
Laing had trouble maintaining this low to the ground car, residing in the overly snowy Montreal, and later cobblestoned, salt watered streets of Nantucket, and so he sold it to a Canadian university mechanical-engineering professor named Clyde Kwok, seen here, in 1979, with his son Hugh, in the car
then, perhaps, it came under the ownership of a one Guylain De France De Tersant of Montreal, who was looking to sell it in 1980
the Jimmy Webb and Jack Bruce Probes eventually came into the possession of Canadian collector Phillip Karam, who restored them both. he sold the Webb Probe, AB/2, to a one Dr. Mark Geach of England in 2016
the Jack Bruce one, AB/3, appeared alongside Malcolm McDowell at the 4th annual Ottawa Comiccon in May of 2015. Karam got McDowell to lend his autograph under the hood! (even though it wasn’t THE Probe used in filming)
and this Jack Bruce Probe JUST sold for $184,800!!!
REAL horrowshow!!!
