Dan Aykroyd has starred in a lot of motion pictures that includes some fairly iconic props, and it seems that he truly saved one in all them. Weirdly, he didn’t take dwelling Ray Stantz’s proton pack from Ghostbusters, or his latex Coneheads scalp, and even the black leather-based bondage ensemble from Exit to Eden. However he did drive away with one of many automobiles from The Blues Brothers.
Probably the most well-known automobile in The Blues Brothers was, in fact, the Bluesmobile, Elwood and Jake’s decommissioned Mount Prospect police automobile. Technically, there have been a number of Bluesmobiles in The Blues Brothers — 13 totally different Dodge Monacos had been used within the stunt-heavy manufacturing, however solely 5 of them housed Aykroyd and John Belushi. They had been initially California Freeway Patrol automobiles, repainted to resemble black and white Mount Prospect autos.
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The Blues Brothers filmmakers additionally purchased 60 outdated cop automobiles for the damaging chase sequences. For the reason that automobiles needed to be reused in a number of scenes, the manufacturing ran a “24-hour physique store” close to the West Facet of Chicago with the intention to keep on schedule.
Whereas an precise Bluesmobile would have been an incredible collectible, reportedly all 13 of them had been “destroyed” throughout filming. Even the Bluesmobile in Illinois’ Volo Museum is a top quality duplicate.
There have lengthy been rumors that director John Landis gave Aykroyd a automobile as soon as filming wrapped. Nicely, Aykroyd simply sat down for an interview with the YouTube present Jake’s Takes, and addressed this very subject. “The best piece of memorabilia that I’ve ever owned from the flicks was a fully-marked Illinois State Police automobile, with siren and lights and plates and all the things,” Aykroyd defined.
After all, the Bluesmobile didn’t have a siren, so evidently Ayrkoyd saved one of many many different cop automobiles used throughout filming.
Weirdly, he simply used it as an everyday automobile whereas dwelling in Manhattan, and was someway by no means busted for impersonating an officer. “I drove (it) in New York for 3 years after the film. Absolutely-marked. Driving down the streets of New York. No one regarded twice. ‘What’s a man serving a warrant from one other state?’” Aykroyd reasoned.
The Saturday Evening Reside star even used the automobile to satisfy girls. “I used to select up dates in it. It was unbelievable,” Aykroyd defined, earlier than arguing that it wasn’t truly the automobile that impressed folks. “All the women that I ever dated again then had been so cool, I might have picked them up in a rubbish wagon and they’d have been wonderful. Magnificent girls, all of them.”
So what occurred to this piece of film historical past/Dan Aykroyd relationship historical past? “I offered it, and it ended up at a racetrack someplace.”
Apparently, this automobile has been fairly a subject of dialog amongst Blues Brothers super-fans over time. Again in 2012, customers of a message board dedicated to Bluesmobile replicas famous that one other fan was promoting a Bluesmobile on-line, claiming that it was used within the film, simply not as a Bluesmobile. It was supposedly the identical automobile that Aykroyd saved, which he then gave to his brother-in-law on the time, who had the automobile painted to match Jack and Elwood’s journey.
It’s unclear no matter occurred to this explicit automobile, or whether or not or not the present proprietor has discovered that it’s improved their love life.
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