The Story Of The Real FAB 1!
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2024
- When The Live Action Thunderbirds Movie Hit The Big screen In 2004, All eyes Were On The Real FAB 1 Made Especially For The Movie, Except It Seemed Everyone Had Forgot About Original Full Size One Made Back In 1968...
This, Is The Story Of The Real FAB 1!
As a long term Mellor Coachcraft employee I was there when Lady Penelope was rebuilt, she was in a sorry state when rolled into the shop. Everyone there had a great time working on her from the M.D Les Procter, Production Manager Geoff Hudson, all on the shopfloor and paintshop, wonderful and sometimes hilarious memories. The highly skilled panel beater Bill Freeman(a.k.a. Billy Whizz) remade the exterior panels and trims, a local aircraft repairer reproduced the perspex canopy. The paint was matched by our paint supplier and christened "Lady Penelope Pink". I am pleased to know that the car has a good home.
The full story of her rebuild would be the subject of first class and often hilarious article in a car magazine. Mellor went on to do further work for Peter Nelson including, the James Bond Aston DB5, James Bond Toyota open top sports car, Batman's car(in which we found a pair of black silk underpants!), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and many other projects. All made life fun and memory packed.
That's amazing!! Thankyou for sharing! 😁
If you are able, could you share some more tales from your time?
The "Toyota open top sports car". That shows how much you know about that classic. If you had a clue what you were working on then I doubt you would have butchered such a work of art by chopping the roof off.
Surely you didn't call FAB-1 "Lady Penelope"
Batman's or Robin's ?
FAB 1; more tasteful than a current Rolls Royce 😂
Patsy & Edwina Monsoon falling out of the back seats with a Bottle of Bollinger and smoking a cigarette 🚬
I'm surprised that Rolls Royce has never made a "real" high-quality FAB 1 themselves. Just imagine publicity they'd garner for themselves.
I agree, but I think the RR management of the time thought it was all rather beneath them, and embarrassed that they couldn't stop their name and image of a futuristic version of their cars being used on a childrens tv series (!). They sound like a very stuffy, snobby and boring bunch of suits - all they wanted to do was send FAB 1 to the crushing plant.
There is the Rolls Royce Arcadia Droptail. I think it's as close as can be for a practical impractical car
@@frglee It sort of makes sense. Their core buyer demographic are arrogant, ignorant assholes who don't care about anything but money so obviously the company has to be like that too.
RR..sees FAB....oh ugh, the commons are at it again...
@@frgleeagree, RR really missed some great product placement and publicity with their stuffed shirt management attitude, much the same story with the 'Italian job' Austin Rover couldn't have been more unhelpful supplying vehicles and help for the film, any other manufacturer would've given their right arm for all that publicity.
In 1965 I was a ten year old, and was blown away by the Thunderbirds on TV. My mother let me go all the way to the big city on my own. When I got there, there were lots of other kids with their toys and models. We all loved each other and the Thunderbirds, and it was the sweetest moment of my life. Some of the girls that were there, dressed up as Lady Penelope. A child's memory will last forever.
Very enjoyable, I cannot believe I was 14 when the show debuted, and, even more amazingly I'm still alive!!
You & me both. Cheers from Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺
The refurbishment of the roof perspex roof was carried out by an Oldham company called EDM,my father worked on it and I have the pictures showing it when it was completed.
Brilliant! I had the FAB 1 Dinky toy. Revolving number plates, that'll confuse 'em 🤣.
Great for beating the Ulez charge, although it probably not take them long to track down a big pink 6 wheel roller 😂😉👍
Like a local guy who crashed his Ferrari and hid behind a bush to elude the cops :-)
Rolls Royce had a real sense of humor failure about this and the Beast.
The Beast does have a Rolls-Royce engine although not one intended for use in a car. At the time of this case you could go to almost any motorcycle race meeting and there would be lots of bikes bearing the names of well-known motorcycle manufacturers, on which the engine was made by that manufacturer but hardly anything else was. None of these manufacturers complained about this.
@@cedriclynch At least at some point it had an engine from a tank, which is kind of a car.
truth, they couldn't accept Free publicity, and as I said in my post, they should be punished severely for wanting FAB 1 destroyed,
@@cedriclynch Dodd's Daughter has very firmly informed me. The Beast has a Rolls Royce Merlin, though from a Boulton Paul Defiant , not a Spitfire.
Although they were less upset about the Paris Dakar rally car in the 80s.
Jeremy Clarkson impersonator. That was funny as hell.
I sat in the FAB 1 in the 60's when it was part of the Carnival here in Bletchley, it was then on show in a local show room where I sat in it with my sister, the James Bond DB5 was at the Carnival at the same time, oh the memories
Ha, Ha, that's great and as a Bletchley lad did exactly the same, it sat in the Cowley & Wilsons showroom for a while near the old market if you recall.
On a side note, I've seen some Blue Peter shows on UA-cam and the efforts they went to to make that show interesting are pretty amazing. That high tracking shot as FAB 1 entered the studio is a bit of high production value that you just dont see these days.
The current generations are kind of science deficient, and what is really needed is a show that captures the imagination of kids (if you can wrest it away from handheld devices) and give the kind of relatable information that Blue Peter used to give back in the day.
The manically laughter at the end was awesome and why I loved a lot of these 60's/70's acid fuelled gems!
I remember sitting in the original at a local fete in Gerrards Cross in the early 70s. The Outspan orange car was next to it.
Me too, but in Farnham Common
The vertical slats of Rolls-Royce radiator grilles actually did rotate, under thermostatic control so that they blocked the flow of air through the radiator until the engine was fully warmed up.
Early Rolls Royces' used a shutter system but they stopped using that just before WWII Radiators and grilles separated with the Phantom III I can be clear the Silver Shadow did not have shutters and neither did the Phantom VI......source Rolls Royce factory manuals.
@@adriaandeleeuw8339...correct! The Cloud Series and Shadows never had moving shutters! Old school for sure!!
@@steelman86 I knew about the radiator shutters from two Rolls-Royces that my late father owned in the 1960s, a 1935 model 20/25 and a 1938 model 25/30. They cost him £300 and £450 respectively, and he later sold them for more than he paid for them. He said that this made the old Rolls-Royce cheaper to run than a modern car bought new, which would at that time have cost about £700 and become worthless due to rust in a few years. Another interesting technical feature the Rolls-Royces had was a duplicated ignition system like on an aircraft engine, with a switch on the dashboard so you could switch off each system to check that the other was working. One of the ignition systems on the earlier model was a magneto, so the engine could run completely independent of the battery if you started it with the starting handle.
@cedriclynch I can imagine, cars up to the 1980s broke down and rusted a lot. The 1990s to 2010s were very good in retrospect, despite every brand having their fair share of engines with chain & belt issues, most daily drivers easily keep up 30 years. I've been in a few cars from 2020s and we seem back at fundamental issues, like battery wear vs replacement cost and single point if failure in electronics
I'm surprised no rich billionaire has ever tried to comission Rolls Royce to build their own Fab 1
They're too busy posting childish memes and compensating lack of character by building increasingly larger rod shaped rockets
Awesome video!
As a kid during the 1960s the Thunderbirds were a regular topic of my schoolyard discussions out in California and hold some fond memories.
I LOVE that to promote a PUPPET MOVIE all the effort was gone to build an actual FAB 1 for promotional purposes. The mechanical design for the car is AMAZING. I'm so glad that it has been restored and preserved and pompous Rolls Royce can go SCREW ITSELF!
Rolls Royce are seen as rather vulgar cars by the British upper classes. Driven by such undesireabkes as Bookmakers, members of popular beat combos and East End mobsters.
When I was a kid in the early 70's FAB1 was behind a car garage in Bedford covered by a tarp. Needless to say, every boy in my middle school went to have a look at it, including me. After that, the next time I saw her was in the 1990s when my wife and I had a couple of hours to waste in Keswick and the car was in the Cars of the Stars museum. Crying shame that FAB1 and the rest of the museum's collection went abroad when it closed in 2011.
In Christmas of 1967, my brothers and I were given enough money to buy some great all-metal toy cars from a very large toy shop in London. Of course, amongst those cars was FAB-1. This little car had missiles firing from the rear and the radiator folded down to shoot out a larger (plastic) missile from the front. One would push the missile into the receptacle behind the radiator grill and then press down firmly on the front wheels to shoot. I don't know what became of that model.
I'm glad to say that I still have mine. It was made by Dinky Toys.
As a Canadian older millenial, I was surprised to find out that THIS was Thunderbirds, and that Thunderbirds 2086 was only borrowing the the name for international licensing.
Seeing FAB1 on the Blue Peter set with Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves brought back memories and made my day! Thanks!
I was astonished at the age of 8 or 9, visiting a petrol station in Bournemouth to pump up my bike tyres using their air line, to find FAB1 at the pumps, no doubt taking on a large quantity of fuel at something like 3s6d a gallon!
"Debuted!!!!!" 🤣
You would think someone would have realised there was an original Fab 1? Perhaps it was more a case of ''lets bring it up to date' and spend a lot of money doing so. To me it would be like having a Rolls Royce in a period drama! I remember going to the museum long before it closed and seeing Fab 1. It looked so graceful just standing still never mind wafting around who knows where. 👍👍
Rolls-Royce were initially happy (under a couple of stipulations) for the model to be used as a Rolls-Royce in the TV series, one of those was that it always be referred to as "the Rolls-Royce". A full-size replica did put their nose out of joint and they have attempted to have it destroyed more than once.
At the time the live action film was in production, Rolls-Royce were approached and refused to give permission, hence the FAB Ford which was based on the then current Thunderbird.
@@StephenAllcroftc
Rolls Royce really hated Fab 1 since day one, seeing it as a Ford Edsel if Fab 1 was ever built by Rolls Royce, or The Homer in The Simpsons that bankrupted Herb Powell's car company. How ironic that the 2004 Thunderbirds had Fab 1 made by Ford.
Ouch, you shouldn't be showing a clip of what happens behind closed doors at #10 Downing Street when they are discussing what to do about raising the minimum wage.
The only wage they'll be thinking of raising is their own
As the meme goes: remember Jack Stackhouse isn't suicidal
Interesting as I was told it was based on a London brick lorry known as a Chinese six.
I might add by someone who worked there building the Shadow cars for UFO.
The Chinese Six were so named as they had four wheels were at the front. two at the rear.
I've always heard that it was a Bedford Coach chassis. I'm fairly certain that the plaque at Cars of the Stars said so too.
Do you know if it's true that Ed Straker's UFO car built around a clapped out old banger that could barely make 20mph and relied on camera trickery to make it look fast?
In the very late sixties FAB 1 was on my friends very rusty E type and lived near Redbridge Station.
1:00 "Aloy-sis" is actually pronounced "Al-oh-ish-us". Fun video, though!
And it is 'prem-e-air', not 'prem-ear'.
That laughing clip at the end XD
Wow , fantastic exposé.. Was a big fan of the thunderbirds back in the 70s , thanks for bringing us this vid, and a very big thank you to the Anderson's for creating such an iconic series . F.A.B.
As a TV and Movie car toy collector for over 30 years I need to visit that Museum in Orlando! I had not heard of it. ❤
🔔 Unexpected treat when starting this video: You have a mellifluous voice (slighly reminiscent of Piers Morgan). Voiceover work is definitely something that you should pursue! 👍
Your last sentence was hilarious 😂 wonderful research thank you for a cool look at TB 🤟🏻
Too bad they didn’t turn the Lightning into Thunderbird 1.
Now that would have been SOMETHING!
As a kid living near High Wycombe in Bucks, one Saturday morning on the way back from shopping, mum & dad pointed out Fab 1 parked outside what I think was the Vauxhall dealer in Wycombe Marsh. Unfortunately dad didn’t stop for us to go & look.
Great historical presentation…thanks for sharing…always loved Thunderbirds 5 4 3 2 1 🚀👏
I remember seeing Fab 1 as a small child outside the cinema in South Norwood (near the railway station) as part of the promotional tour for the Thunderbirds movie, seeing the pictures brought the memories back (I would have been 4 or 5 years old at the time).
Fantastic well produced and researched documentary Jack!!!
Well done 😃👍
As a Creighton by birth, I thank you for pronouncing it correctly.
Thanks my guy
Real Person not AI Voice..........
Shame he couldn't say 'premiere' correctly.
Or Aloysius (/ˌæloʊˈɪʃəs/ AL-oh-ISH-əs) @@Gambit771
Great vid - what a thought, the 'real' FAB 1 being based on a Bedford VAL coach chassis!!
That was a great trip through history. Thank you. I had no idea that a real FAB1 had been built. I must try to see it if I ever find myself in Florida. Cheers from Canada.
You give us a nice story about FAB 1 being saved then you traumatise us with Thunderbird 6!
Somewhere around 1970's I visited Herstmonceux Castle and Obversatory and on the grounds I saw a FAB-1 or a downscaled replica of it. It was in a bad state. I took some pictures of it and if I'm very lucky someday I will find the negatives of it in my archive.
Cracking video, thank you for putting the story straight..it’s still an amazing car!
and thus after years Team America World Police was born
I saw FAB 1 on its promotional tour when it was at a car show room in Leamington Spa in 1968.
It is awesome.. But boy ohh the puppets.. Need Live action movie!
I'm from the U.S. and I never heard of 'Thunderbirds' until the mid-90s when I was collecting toys.
I love it when real cars have functioning James Bond / Batman / Thunderbirds style gadgets!
Cool video!
Wow! So Homer’s design car was real!👋🤣👍
HEY THUNDERBIRD 6 IS A GREAT FINALE TO THE SHOW!
I went to school in Heathfield in the 80s and Heathfield wild park backed on to the school. One day sitting on a wall waiting for the bus I glanced over into the grounds and house of Heathfield park I saw a large car with double front wheels peeking out from under a tarpaulin. I knew instantly what it was as I had seen it on display at the park in the 70s. It wasn't long after that it was "discovered ".
Nice that it still exists.
I almost didn’t recognise James May, he’s so young there.
I knew of the Rolls Royce version but I had been lead to believe that it was actually commissioned by RR. Interesting that that idea, long held, was wrong. I was completely unaware of their antipathy to the full size FAB1.
There is another FAB1, the one comissioned by Gerry Anderson in the late 80's or early 90's... he acquired an early Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit and had the front stretched with a second front axle, suitable adjustment to steering geometry, and even fitting a hydraulic "booster" motors to all fron hubs. It was given only cosmetic resemblance to the original, with a hot pink livery, otherwise it was still standard Silver Spirit cabin, and hard roof.
A real Rolls-Royce would have had whisper quiet hydraulic door and canopy lifters, and probably a V12 engine. What gets me is that what sort of complete idiot would allow a creation like this to just sit somewhere and rot. And what a stunning creation it was, almost like the ultimate American limousine.
Rolls Royce seriously dropped the ball by not building a genuine version of FAB 1 themselves. The publicity alone would have been worth it - and every rich nerd would have been ordering a Rolls in Lady Penelope Pink for their spouse or debutante daughters - yes, pink Rolls Royce Limousines would have become a thing - even back then.
Unfortunately, they were too short sighted to grab such a project by the reins and run with it.
Extremely unfortunate indeed. 😢
Having seen all 3 "Thunderbirds" films, I have no problems stating my preference for "Thunderbird 6" over the more recent live-action/CGI "reboot" film. Most people seem to have forgotten that for many of us, the fact that we were watching meticulously designed & built miniatures were a large part of the attraction to the Century 21 Supermarionation shows. Oh, well... Hopefully some fans somewhere will be able to make something without being sued off the surface of the planet...
"Scenes of Cliff Richard exploding". 😅
Say no more,Sir.
“Aloysius” (Parker) is pronounced “alooicious”. Great vid, btw.
So you are saying Thunderbirds 6 was a failure because it featured a board meeting of the Rolls Royce idiots who were trying to destroy that labour of love?
I was doing some research into this with a view to making a model (For my collection, of course!). I found some drawings by Derek Meddings and some basic dimension details on the internet but was left wondering about the dimensions. It seems that the promotional car was actually 8ft. wide, as per the design, so that motor must have been an absolute barge!
I'm glad you pointed out which was Gerry and which Sylvia.
I recall with horror the abomination that was the Ford version in the live-action film. As if Lady P would be seen in a Ford!
Needs to be played after school five days a week so twenty years from now our infrastructue will have been inspired better
Not “ah-LOY-siss”.
It’s pronounced “a-low-ISH-uss”.
Sweet video though… thanks for that!
In the 70's this car was parked on the forecourt of a garage in Chesham and was there for quite some time and was out in all weathers.
Absolutely enjoyed this show growing up. One of my favorites other than Johnny Quest & Looney Tunes.
Thanks for the laughing marionette nightmares, i was looking so hard and I thought all the shops aan out!
I watched the thunder birds in the 60's growing up
I remember seeing the original one parked outside the Cinema at Mile End in East London in the 60’s
It's like if Homer Simpson combined his Homer concept car with his ordinary sedan.
What confuses me is that in the RAF it takes a huge amount of support staff to keep one pilot in the air. The Tracey's do it all on their own.
In the mid 2010s there was a new Thunderbirds series and Fab one made an appearance in a couple of episodes of the new series. It was literally a running gag where one of the newer rookies I forget what he got in trouble for and got saddled with dealing with Fab one the original and was making all sorts of gags and cracks about how old and Tiny the vehicle was and ended up having to do a Thunderbirds mission in original Fab one I forget if Parker was with him or if it was supposed to be Lady Penelope and there were several comments about don't you scratch the paint and things like that. The series had a updated version of Fab one which appeared in most episodes but the vehicle that was supposed to be the original Fab one was in a few episodes. I've always wondered what does Fab one stand for//?
Here in Nova Scotia I'm pretty sure I still have the license plate I ended up with a license plate that was Fab followed by a series of numbers I think it was 621 or something like that or 136 I have to go dig the license plate out see if I can find it. I used that plate for like five or six years and was often teased about your vehicle is fabulous. Not many people made the Thunderbirds connection and I was always scratching the back of my head wondering what Fab one stood for
Geez, now I know where the Goodfellas, night club scene where everyone is laughing came from.
The Ford one is just ugly.
I agree. Also about TB2 & quite a few things that Mr J Frakes (?) altered in the film.
@@DavidSimons-ss5kn Yes. That's another one.👍TB2 is my favourite and they pretty much ruined it.
I had a thunder bird 2 loved it
This phantasy car inspired Pininfarina designer Paolo Martin when he designed the Fiat 130 Coupe and the Rolls Royce Camargue.
There is a copy of the FAB 1 in UK. I saw it on the road in my home town a few years ago. Some time in the 2000's.
Lady Penalopy was looking good in that movie too.
Wow i want that car in scale 1:1😎😁💯
This brought back memories! I went to see it at a car showroom in Manchester (Blakes motors, perhaps??) way back then, I remember sitting in the back with "Lady Penelope" and falling in love with her 😍😂 (And the car, of course..) Wish I had a camera back then!
creator of other classic tv shows : list of absolutely UNKNOWN tv shows
ROFL Never heard of any of those in all my 48 years
I understand why Rolls Royce wanted to disassociate with the Beast. The body work and interior were not high quality. As they said at the time, they didn't build it. However, RR should have wished to be involved in FAB 1 both in the TV series and the movie. I am sure plenty of Thunderbirds fans grew up aspiring to own a Bentley due to RRs' excessively snooty attitudes.
Fantastic.
Jeff Tracy, not mentioned?
I visited cars to the stars just before it closed. Strangely I don't remember if I saw the Rolls there at that time though.
A real Rolls-Royce never broke down, it just failed to proceed.
As a log term fan THANK YOU. Great video.
I've got a really naff memory from childhood about FAB1. My mum had seen in the local paper, that the car was going to be on display down at Hove Lagoon. This was during the school holidays. When I got there, it was pissing with rain, and apart from a load of scruffy kids, there was nobody around, except for some bitpart player dressed up as lady Penelope who had locked herself in the car. Us urchins were left standing there in the rain, looking at this thing and, occasionally going "where's Nosey Parker?", until we all got fed up, and drifted off home, dripping wet and cheesed off.
Edit- Penny Snow. So that's who she was. Still doesn't answer our kiddy question from 1968, though. Where WAS Nosey Parker that day?
I remember seeing the car as a child parked up in a field somewhere on display, would have been the late 70’s I think, the canopy wasn’t there it was open to the elements, and was looking pretty tired, just in front of it was some kind of vertically standing bomb or rocket or something, I don’t remember where that was, maybe someone else reading this knows where that was.
12:03 I can see the Critical Drinker using that clip.
Top Gear also remade it, James May drove it and hated it saying the length made handling a monster.
I knew a guy who worked on it and he said that the engine is a vauxhall cresta 2.2 and the boot is completely empty
I know that at my age my memory is a little dodgy on some things but I'm sure I read in one of the 'official' books that the original TV series Fab 1 was made with input from and the approval of RR
I saw the original once in a Plymouth UK showroom.
If they made another live action Thunderbirds, Roland Atkinson would make a great Parker. He is an talented high performance driver an he looks a bit like Parker. Oh, and he is one of the funniest me on the planet.
It was at Heathfield when I saw it.
I saw it there as well.
That last clip is....terrifying
Kind of ironic that the British Fab 1 is in America and the American Fab 1 is in Britain