I’m Not Sure How You’d Explain To A Normal Person Why This ‘Eleanor’ Built From A Mustang II Is So Hilarious

Part of being in a specific special-interest community is that there is a shared pool of knowledge that, to an outsider, seems baffling. Baffling and esoteric, and, maybe worst of all, boring. Of course the gearhead community is one such community, and as such is full of facts and trivia and details that almost anyone in the community can be reasonably expected to at least be aware of, along with bits of lore and cultural references and inside jokes. At this moment there is a car for sale on Bring a Trailer – it’s one of those “Eleanor” Mustangs from the 2000 remake of the 1974 movie Gone in 60 Seconds. 

Now, an Eleanor build is nothing special anymore, really. There have been so many of those that they spawned a lawsuit from the people who hold the film rights to the franchise against all of the Eleanor replica builders, only to have a court call the Eleanor Mustang “not especially distinctive“:

“Affirming the district court’s summary judgment, the panel held that under the Towle test, Eleanor was not entitled to character copyright protection because it (1) did not have conceptual qualities, (2) did not have consistent traits, and (3) was not especially distinctive.”

What makes this particular Eleanor build so much more interesting than the usual ones is that this one is built on a Mustang II instead of the expected 1967 Mustang fastback. And that makes such a build hilarious, but hilarious in such a way that I think it would prove to be a colossal ass-pain to try to explain to someone who didn’t really care about cars.

Just so we’re all on the same page here, this is the traditional ’67 fastback-based Eleanor that you can find all over the place if you have about $200,000 you’re desperate to separate yourself from:

…and this is the Mustang II-based “Li’l Eleanor” currently for sale:

As you can see, it absolutely looks like what has been established as the “Eleanor” look: the deep metallic gray paint, the extra close-set driving lamps, the horizontal-bar grille, hood scoop, air dam, the side exhust pipes, C-pillar scoop things, the stripe kits, etc.

Whomever built this car did a fantastic job with it; it’s not just built on any Mustang II, even, it’s built on the pinnacle of the Mustang II ziggurat, the 1978 Mustang II King Cobra:

But, even with that elevated example, it’s still a Mustang II, the least-respected member of the the Greater Mustang Family. The Pinto-based Mustang II is generally seen as something of a black sheep by the Mustang community, a Malaise-Era aberration that most Mustang fans would rather forget existed.

In fact, I went to a huge gathering of Mustangs a while back, and out of the one thousand Mustangs that showed up, precisely one of those was a Mustang II. One! Out of a thousand!

 

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The Bring a Trailer ad shows pictures of a 2009 issue of Muscle Car Magazine that did a story about the car, and the subhead for the story is pretty, um, telling:

“An Interesting Build Choice…” it says, and that “interesting” is doing a hell of a lot of euphemistic heavy lifting.

I think it’s safe to say that the Mustang II gets no respect. So, the idea of making an Eleanor replica – a car that generally sells for, on average, over $200,000 – out of the least-loved-and-valued Mustang is already pretty hilarious and wonderful. But there’s more levels here!

The other level is that, in a way, this Mustang II Eleanor is a sort of commentary at the whole concept of Eleanor Mustangs themselves. They’re still selling for big money, but at the same time, there’s something kind of silly about them. They’ve become clichés, and if you’re going to drop the kind of money they still command on one of these, do you really want something that has already been done to death?

For this movie that, itself, hasn’t really aged all that well?

So what we have here is a sort of a matrushka of inside car jokes: it’s a car that is a replica of a car used in a 2000 movie that was based on a (different) car in a 1974 movie that uses a different version of the car that is considered the least desirable version of that car and yet is made to look remarkably close to the car from the 2000 movie that is now, in many parts of the car world, itself is sort of becoming a bit of a joke due to how often it has been remade and how dated it’s starting to seem.

So… how would you explain this to someone who isn’t completely slathered in the world and lore of cars? Is there an analogy a normal, healthy, well-adjusted non-car person could understand? What about this: this car is like Beef Wellington, but instead of making from a beef tenderloin coated in paté and wrapped in proscuitto, then carefully encased in puff pastry, it’s made from Spam coated in canned tuna, wrapped in bologna, and then encased in Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough, right from the can.

Does that get the idea across? Something well-known and iconic, still carefully prepared but made from far less desirable ingredients? Would that track?

Could I explain why this is funny to my mom? I’m not sure I could. Would it be worth a try, at least?

No. Probably not.

Top images: Ford; Bring a Trailer; Classic Recreations