H.B. Halicki in Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Vitals
H.B. “Toby” Halicki as Maindrian Pace, insurance investigator and car thief
Long Beach, California, Spring 1974
Film: Gone in 60 Seconds
Release Date: July 28, 1974
Director: H.B. Halicki
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Fifty years ago today on July 28, 1974, independent filmmaker and stunt driver H.B. “Toby” Halicki released Gone in 60 Seconds, a high-octane parade of car chases and crashes.
In addition to directing, writing, and producing the film on a $150,000 budget, Halicki also starred and did his own driving as Maindrian Pace, a curiously named car thief whose respectable day job as an insurance investigator covers his criminal activity.
Working with a ring of professionals, Pace is hired to steal 48 very specific cars ranging from limousines to semi-tractor trucks and even Parnelli Jones’ famous ’71 “Big Oly” Bronco. Each of the target cars is assigned a female codename, with the final car—a bumblebee-colored 1973 Ford Mustang—designated as “Eleanor”.
After two attempts to boost Eleanor, including one that Pace had to abort after his fiancée Pumpkin (Marion Busia) insists on only stealing insured cars, Pace finally pinches a pristine yellow Mustang from the underground parking garage of the International Towers in Long Beach.
This last job should be simple enough for a pro like Maindrain Pace, but Pumpkin’s bitter brother Eugene (Jerry Daugirda) tips off the fuzz, resulting in an epic 40-minute final chase that reportedly resulted in the destruction of 93 cars.
Eleanor takes her climactic leap in Redondo Beach.
Fifteen years later, the 48-year-old Halicki and his wife Denice gathered a horde of 400 crash-ready cars to begin production on the sequel, but the auteur died on August 20, 1989 while preparing a stunt sequence gone tragically wrong.
Gone in 60 Seconds was loosely remade in 2000 with the same title and starring Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie, but many gearheads—including Kim (Tracie Thoms) in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof—consider Halicki’s symphony of speed to be “the real one”.
What’d He Wear?
Though he cycles through everything from disco-collared sport shirts to white tie and tails over the course of Gone in 60 Seconds, Maindrain Pace often builds outfits based around a light-blue pinned-collar shirt, navy tie, and black trousers held up by a belt with a hefty buckle.
During the opening sequence, he wears this under a dark indigo denim Levi’s “Type III” trucker jacket when stepping out of a ’73 Cadillac to inspect a train derailment. Considerably later, while scoping out potential Eleanors to steal, he bicycles through Long Beach in the same shirt, tie, and trousers but with a very ’70s brown leather zip-up jacket with cognac suede patches across the shoulders and over the hip pocket flaps.
For the climactic Eleanor chase, Pace builds a more professional appearance with his black-and-white glen plaid sport jacket, scaled so fine that one of the pursuing officers describes it over the radio as a “gray sports coat.” The jacket is likely several years old, as the details and shorter cut are more aligned with fashions of the 1960s than the excess of the ’70s.
The peak lapels are of moderate width with short and straight gorges, rolling to a single dark-gray mixed button which matches the two smaller buttons on each cuff. Lined in a cornflower-blue satin, the double-vented jacket features straight jetted hip pockets but lacks an outer breast pocket.
During the extended sequence of Pace walking through the garage filled with the stolen cars, he slips out of the jacket and leaves it on the fender of a rust-colored Cadillac, only to pull out in Eleanor (the non-insured one he intends to return and replace), retrieve the jacket, and leave.
While I remain mystified as to why the auteur chose to include this activity with the jacket, it does provide a closer look at his regular shirt and tie. His light-blue shirt appears to be an oxford cotton cloth, personalized with a navy-embroidered “MP” monogram over his left breast. Though oxford cloth shirts are often associated with the sporty button-down collar and button cuffs, Pace’s light-blue oxford shirts are more fussily detailed with squared double (French) cuffs that he fastens with gold oval links and a club collar that he pins behind the substantial Windsor knots of his navy-blue neckties.
While Pace’s sport jacket may be dated to the ’60s, his black flat-front trousers are more contemporary to the ’70s with their medium rise, close fit through the hips, and flared plain-hem bottoms. They lack back pockets but are rigged with the full-top “frogmouth” western-style pockets that were fashionable through this era. (Though they often appear black and are described as such in dialogue, they also occasionally appear to be a very dark navy, which would also coordinate with the rest of the outfit.)
Pace holds the trousers up with a black leather belt mated to one of his usual buckles, an oversized brass-toned oval buckle with a roped border.
Pace’s black leather pull-on boots have raised heels and layered shafts that extend at least as high as his ankles if not higher, well-covered by the voluminously flared trouser bottoms.
As illustrated by the lineup on his dashboard during the opening title shot, Pace cycles through several pairs of sunglasses through Gone in 60 Seconds, often wearing multiple sets with a single outfit. Perhaps the most prominently featured sunglasses with his outfit are detailed with squared gold-toned frames and rose-tinted lenses.
Pace also rotates through a selection of gold watches, though he reserves the most traditional-looking of them for this dressier outfit. The yellow-gold rectangular case contains a white rectangular dial, marked with black Roman numeral hour indices, and is strapped over his left wrist on a flat gold bracelet. The style is similar to contemporary watches by Cartier (specifically the Tank Cintrée), Hamilton, and Universal Genève.
Wary of fingerprints in his larcenous profession, Pace often wears black leather gloves, detailed with cream-colored leather lining and gold-trimmed white snaps to close over the wrists. A logo on the back of each wrist depicts a white-embroidered laurel wreath, narrower than the familiar Fred Perry tennis wear logo and likely representing a consistent motorsports brand.
As mentioned, one of the pursuing officers describes Pace’s garb as “gray sports coat, black trousers,” which works out in the thief’s favor when he swaps the damaged Eleanor for a fresh one at a Long Beach car wash. When the police spot the gray-haired, mustached manager in a gray jacket and black trousers, he’s mistaken for the thief they’ve been pursuing through the Los Angeles DMA for the last forty minutes and briefly detain him… just long enough for Pace to discard his wig, mustache, and jacket while making a clean (so to speak) getaway.
In the wrong place and the wrong time, this was a bad day for the unfortunate car wash manager to wear a gray jacket and black trousers.
The Car
One of the most famous movie cars, “Eleanor” presents Maindrain Pace with the greatest challenge among the Cadillacs, European sports cars, and even one-of-a-kind celebrity Bronco his team is hired to steal. The dialogue describes it as a medium yellow gold 1973 Ford Mustang, though Gone in 60 Seconds exclusively used two 1971 Mustangs that Halicki painted a less expensive “School Bus Yellow” and modified to resemble the newer model with ’73 grilles and custom black-painted accents.
One of the best-known cars even to non-enthusiasts, the Mustang established the dominance of the “pony car” segment when it was introduced in April 1964, two weeks after the Plymouth Barracuda. As its features and engine options evolved through the decade to include an increased focus on performance, the Mustang’s body underwent several facelifts during this first generation.
Introduced in September 1970 for the ’71 model year, the final first-generation Mustang was also its biggest, extending the formerly 108-inch wheelbase by an extra inch and widening the engine bay to accommodate the hefty big-block 429 cubic-inch “Cobra Jet” V8 engines. The 429 would be discontinued after the 1971 model year, but the ’71, ’72, and ’73 Mustangs all offered the 250 cubic-inch “Thriftpower” straight-six, 302 V8, and 351 V8s in 2-barrel and 4-barrel carburetor options.
From all I’ve been able to tell, the two ’71 Mustangs that were cloned to resemble the ’73 for Gone in 60 Seconds were both powered by the 4-barrel 351 cubic-inch “Q-code” Cleveland V8 engine. In 1971, this Q-code was rated at 285 gross horsepower, though American automakers’ switch to net horsepower the following year makes it difficult to compare to the 243-horsepower rating of the ’72 and ’73 Mustangs. Though the soundtrack offers the sounds of a manual transmission shifting gears, interior shots of Eleanor clearly show the pedals and gear selector of an automatic transmission.
“1973” Ford Mustang SportsRoof
Body Style: 2-door fastback coupe
Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)
Engine: 351 cu. in. (5.8 L) Ford “Cleveland” V8 (Q-code) with 4-barrel Autolite carburetor
Power: 243 hp (181 kW; 243 PS) @ 5400 RPM
Torque: 314 lb·ft (426 N·m) @ 3600 RPM
Transmission: 3-speed automatic
Wheelbase: 109 inches (2769 mm)
Length: 193.8 inches (4923 mm)
Width: 74.1 inches (1882 mm)
Height: 50 inches (1271 mm)
Despite the extensive stuntwork, Meghan Drummond reports for CJ Pony Parts that only two ’71 Mustangs were actually used to represent the total of four ’73 Mustangs depicted on screen—one remained in decent shape while the other was almost totally destructed as the stunt Mustang that Pace drove hard to evade Long Beach’s finest.
For the 2000 Gone in 60 Seconds remake, Eleanor was reimagined as a Dupont pepper gray 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500. Following Halicki’s example of modifying another Mustang to look like the desired Eleanor, the filmmakers reportedly built 12 versions of the car from non-Shelby ’67 fastbacks.
How to Get the Look
H.B. Halicki in Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Maindrain Pace’s smart disguise of a glen plaid sports coat, pinned collar, and tie allows him to look more professional than one would expect of a car thief… while also coming in handy when he needs to deflect attention to an unfortunately similarly dressed car wash manager.
- Black-and-white fine-scaled glen plaid 1-button sport jacket with peak lapels, straight jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and double vents
- Light-blue oxford cotton shirt with pinned club collar, double/French cuffs, and left-breast monogram
- Navy-blue tie
- Black flat-front trousers with belt loops, full-top “frogmouth” western-style front pockets, and flared plain-hem botttoms
- Black leather belt with large brass-toned ornate oval buckle
- Black leather pull-on ankle boots with raised heels
- Gold square-framed aviator sunglasses with pink lenses
- Gold tank watch with white rectangular dial (with black Roman numeral hour indices) on flat gold bracelet
- Black leather gloves with cream leather lining, gold-framed white snaps, and white-embroidered laurel wreath logos
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
I should have read my horoscope this morning.
The post Gone in 60 Seconds (1974): H.B. Halicki’s Glen Plaid Jacket and “Eleanor” Mustang appeared first on BAMF Style.