A 1968 Ford Galaxie Once Recorded A Number One Single In The UK

Generally, automobiles don’t record many songs. There’stwo main reasons for this: there’s a lot of stigmas around non-humans in the recording industry, and cars lack the vocal cords, pulmonary, and nervous systems of human beings that are usually required for composing and singing a song. While cars do tend to have horns, their use in songwriting or performing is mostly limited to novelty accompaniment. Still, that didn’t prevent a 1968 Ford Galaxie from allegedly recording a song that made it to number one on the British charts in 1988. That song was The Timelord’s Doctorin’ The Tardis, and remains the only hit single ever to have been recorded by a Ford, or, really, any car.

If there was any question about whether or not this single was actually the product of a car, I think the sleeve for the single should have eliminated all doubt, as right there on the cover, in large, easy-to-read type, is a quote from the car itself, pictured right there on the cover:

“Hi! I’m Ford Timelord. I’m a car, and I’ve made a record.”

I mean, it doesn’t really get any clearer than that: that’s a car, and it made a record. Pretty straightforward, right? I bet you’re wondering exactly what this single was like, aren’t you? Well, I can tell you that, even though this car is a Ford Galaxie, built in Detroit, the single is about as British as possible, seeing as how it’s about the long-running and often confusing BBC sci-fi show, Doctor Who. The “Tardis” in the title is kind of a giveaway, as that was the larger-on-the-inside police box the Doctor traveled around in.

Here’s the song, and video:

As you can see, Ford Timelord, the ex-police Ford Galaxie, stars in the video, which is full of half-assed home-built Daleks and a lot of samples from the Doctor Who theme song, which itself was a groundbreaking piece of music, being the first piece of electronic music used as a theme song for television.

That song made it to the number one slot on the charts for one week in June of 1988, despite music critics describing the song as “pure, unadulterated agony … excruciating” and “rancid reworking of ancient discs.” Other critics weren’t so kind.

Still, the masses seemed to like it, and Ford Timelord was more than happy to be interviewed about the song’s surprising success:

That’s a very satisfied-sounding car-musician right there.

So, what’s the story behind all this? I will admit that I am a little skeptical that this somewhat battered ex-cop car had the connections and wherewithal to record a hit single. So what actually did happen?

The ’68 Galaxie was owned by Jimmy Cauty, who, along with Bill Drummond were the talent behind not just The Timelords, but also a band known as the JAMs and, as they were eventually better known in America, the KLF. The Galaxie also appears in the video for the KLF song 3am Eternal:

The car seems to have come to the UK around 1986, brought over by Pinewood Studios during the filming of Superman 4, where it was used in the background in a deleted fight scene between Superman and Nuclear Man. If this is accurate, the car seems to have been just a black sedan, not a cop car, and was given the police livery treatment when it was converted into a Blues Brothers-tribute cop car by the keyboardist for a band called T.C. Lethbridge.

Cauty bought the cop-livery’d car from that fellow musician, and it became the official car of the JAMs, where they used it for stunts like driving it to Sweden to attempt to get the members of ABBA to drop legal action against them for using an unauthorized sample from Dancing Queen.

When the duo recorded Doctorin’ the Tardis, they seemed to be very aware that they were doing something maybe a little less than ideal, as the label of the record itself unashamedly notes, under “other data,” that it is “probably the most nauseating record in the world.”

That could be why they attributed the song to the hapless Galaxie, which had to bear the burden of authorship and take interviews, voiced by their publicist hiding under a blanket in the back seat.

The fate of the Ford isn’t really clear; it may have been used in banger and demolition derby racing, but it also could still survive, because looking up its number plate shows that t is still registered and paid up until this coming Valentine’s Day.

Personally, I hope Ford Timelord did survive; there’s only one car in history that has a number one single under its beltline, and I think that’s something worth celebrating.