My Mother the Car

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"My Mother, The Car" is also an episode of Arrested Development.

My Mother the Car was an American television situation comedy which aired for a single season on NBC between September 14, 1965 and September 6, 1966. Thirty episodes were produced in all.

The show follows the exploits of attorney David Crabtree (played by Jerry Van Dyke), who, while shopping at a used car lot for a station wagon to serve as a second family car, instead purchases a dilapidated 1928 "Porter" touring car. Crabtree heard the car call his name in a woman's voice which turned out to be that of his deceased mother, Abigail (voiced by Ann Sothern). The car, a valuable antique, is a reincarnation of his mother who talks (only to Crabtree, of course) through the car's radio. The dial light flashed in sequence with "Mother's" voice. In an effort to get his family to accept the old, tired car, Crabtree brings it to a custom body shop for a full restoration, which in turn brings it to the attention of a rather shifty car collector.

For the rest of the series, Crabtree is pursued by the avaricious Captain Manzini (Avery Schreiber), who is determined to acquire the valuable automobile from Crabtree. In a running gag characterizing his shifty nature, Manzini (who resembles a 1920s silent film villain) always mispronounces Crabtree's name when speaking to him. "Now, then, Crabapple..." "That's Crabtree." "Whatever."

Others in the cast included Maggie Pierce as wife Barbara and Cindy Eilbacher (the sister of Lisa Eilbacher) and Randy Whipple as the kids, Cindy and Randy.

The show belonged to the genre of TV sitcoms popular at the time that featured supernatural characters and cartoonish situations, such as Bewitched and My Favorite Martian, but it failed and for many years afterward was widely ridiculed as the quintessential "worst show of all time," though many competitors have vied for that title since then. It did not help that the highly respected Dick Van Dyke Show, starring Jerry's brother, was still on the air at the time on another network. It might also be argued that the show was somewhat ahead of its time. Audience demographics was an emerging science in the mid-1960s. "My Mother the Car" was a huge hit with younger viewers, but no one at the time knew just how to exploit the youth market with anything other than cartoon series.

The show was created by Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, who had better success with Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Munsters, and Get Smart (which debuted the same season). AMT Corporation, a producer of plastic model kits, introduced a 1/25-scale model kit of the Porter in late 1965.

Scan of original 1965 box art of AMT's "My Mother the Car" model kit

The car used in the show was an amalgam of different cars. "Mother" was built by Barris Kustom Industries and was powered by a 283 cubic inch (4.6 L) Chevrolet V8 and Powerglide automatic transmission. The carnation red body with white top was created from parts of a Model T, a Maxwell, a Hudson and a Chevrolet. Mother's hood, radiator shell and "Porter" radiator script were custom made. The design was anachronistic in many ways, with features from vehicles of the early 1920s and even the 1910s.

In order to create the illusion that the car was driverless whenever "Mother" drove it, a second car with its floorboards removed was used. The driver could then be placed out of sight and could drive the stunt car with the aid of mirrors. "Mother" number one, the stunt car, is currently on display at Tennessee's Star Cars Museum. Number two is in the hands of private collector David Bodnar of Edmonton, Alberta. The Porter wore a genuine yellow-on-black California license plate with the number PZR 317 throughout the show's run, a sequence that would have been current in 1965.

In 2002, TV Guide proclaimed the show to be the second-worst of all time behind The Jerry Springer Show. The Simpsons parodied the show in "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" episode with "The Lovematic Grampa" in which a reincarnated Abe Simpson helps Moe in the guise of a love tester machine. The series is also referenced in the eighth episode of Fox's Arrested Development which is entitled "My Mother, The Car".

[edit] Trivia

Jerry Van Dyke turned down the offer to star in the title role on the CBS hit series Gilligan's Island, which debuted the year before, and even turned down the offer to replace actor Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show (the role eventually going to Avery Schreiber's erstwhile partner Jack Burns) in order to do this series.