While I was in LA, I got a chance to catch up with a friend of mine who is a stunt driver. She does movies and commercials and perhaps even Broadway shows, if they ever need someone to drive a full-sized car on stage, somehow. She was telling me about a movie she worked on where she was hoping the director was into or at least had some knowledge of cars; unfortunately, those hopes were dashed when she heard him request, for the hero car, “the one with the horse on it.”
The one with the horse.
Oy. That doesn’t bode well. But it did make me think of the fun I could have if I was the car-wrangler working for such a director. For example, I think my biggest temptation would be to bring him this car with the horse on it:
Then it’d be fun to watch him splutter and rage and dodge the coffee being thrown at me as I yell “What? There’s a horse on it right there!”
I’d probably be sent out again to “do it right this time,” in which case I think maybe I’d like to come back with one of these:
Look at that bold horse! That has to be what he meant! A fine Iran Khodro Soren! Of course, then he’ll probably really lose his shit on me, and I’ll get worked up too, telling him do you know how fucking hard it was to get a car from Iran over here?
Okay, okay, fine. It must be some other stupid car with a horse on it. Fine. Could he mean this one?
Perhaps he confused the unicorn for a horse on this lovely 1926 French Corre la Licorne V14W4? That’s a pretty prominent equine-badge, and it wouldn’t be so shocking to think that’s just a hornless horse instead of a horned horse, right? This is a good hero car, after all.
But that’s not it, and the director is getting really apoplectic by this point, because I’ve spent a ton of money acquring these cars, and they’re not the “one with the horse on it” he wants. Fine. Okay, one more go. This has to be it:
An Asquith! This is definitely what that director meant. Asquith Motors, a company that makes vintage-looking delivery vehicles on modern Iveco truck chassis, sports a very prominent horse on their badge. This absolutely has to be what that director was thinking of!
And, he’s livid. Livid! He keeps throwing things at me and screaming like a big dumb baby. Fuck this. I quit! I don’t need this bullshit! I’m going to get into my Mustang, drive home, polish my Bronco, and then go see my friend’s new Ferrari.
The one with the horse on it. Motherfucker, please.
Then when he says, “No I meant a Mustang, you moron!” you bring him a P-51.
Actually the movie was ‘Poor Things’
Go Emma Stone.
It would be amusing to present the director with a Lamborghini and convince him the logo is actually a specific and obscure breed of horse.
From Reddit, probably lifted from somewhere else.
I just saw a period movie where one of these drove through frame… not exactly a stunt…
The Horsey Horseless was an early automobile created by Uriah Smith, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, and inventor, in Battle Creek, Michigan. It contained a wooden horse head and neck attached to the front of the car, intended to make it resemble a horse and carriage so it would not frighten horses on the road. This vehicle is known to have been invented in 1899, but it is unknown whether or not it was ever built. The horse head was hollow, also serving as the fuel tank. It was included in Time Magazine’s 2007 list of “The 50 Worst Cars of All Time”.
As someone who’s been around horses in harness a bit, I appreciate the guy’s intent, if not his execution. “I don’t care what anybody does, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses” is a good way to prioritize things when you have multiple vehicles/implements hitched to horses around. One horse startles and you can have a multi-hitch wreck in minutes.
What about a Nissan Stagea?
Being a movie director, he was probably requesting the car over by craft services that had a key of heroin in a box sitting on the hood.
‘…vintage-looking delivery vehicles on a modern truck chassis…’
!!
-off to search Asquith
I really thought it was going to end up being a Porsche.
<single tear>
Judging from the header image, I was expecting a deep-dive into one of the earlier horseless carriage that advertised the “horsepower inside” or something. Man, this article was an adventure for us all.