LV 3
all pics: L.A. Johnson
LincVolt’s zygote, a ’59 Lincoln Continental Mark IV powered with a gas gulping 429 cubic inch Ford V-8, left San Francisco in September of 2007. George W. Bush was the President of the United States of America. War raged from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean for reasons I am unable to comprehend. War’s way, way bigger now – still don’t get it.
At the wheel sat The Driver, beside him the late great Larry Johnson. Great friends and collaborators for decades, they had a plan to make a film about their trip to turn this gorgeous car 21st Century green. I never actually saw the plan but I heard all about it. Larry and The Driver reckoned they’d drive the big Lincoln convertible to Wichita where a mechanic named ‘Johnny Magic’ would somehow convert it into an electric powered piece of American automotive history. En route they’d randomly meet fellow travelers, pull out the cameras and talk about the coming demise of the petro-based transportation era and the rise of the electric vehicle age. Once the Wichita switch to e-power was complete they planned to revisit those same people on the homeward run to San Francisco in LincVolt.
It was a pretty good plan and they did meet some really cool people on the trip. But the plan changed. The Lincoln evolved. Time passed.Larry and The Driver never did make that homeward leg in LincVolt. Instead, the story took a whole new direction. We’ll get to that later.
During the ongoing process of editing The LincVolt Years we’ve watched all the scenes with all the people Larry and The Driver talked to on their epic run. But because the plan changed and the story changed with it, a lot of them didn’t find room in the final cut of our documentary series. Nonetheless their beautiful human contribution is deeply appreciated here in the edit suite and we’d like to acknowledge them by introducing you to Jody and her man.
There’s just one more thing. It falls under the general heading of planning. The LincVolt Years takes you right inside the core of an idea. An idea that grew and grew then changed a few times then transformed completely on an ongoing basis. It took a pretty flexible plan to see it through. Some very cool planning stuff that we’ll cover in the future.
For now though what you most need to know is that The LincVolt Years flows through a dream we all share about making the world better. And it follows the journey of a car and a team that boldly hit the open road to chase that dream. Fully armed with a kind of loose plan. So if you too are a dreamer, plan your journey well but remember the prime constant – things change.
onward
the passenger