"There are 106 miles to Chicago. We have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses". That quote sums up the Blues Brothers as a film in fewer words than we could ever try. It's a movie loved as much for its absurd car chases and crashes as it is for its awesome musical numbers.
The Blues Brothers is famous with petrolheads for one reason. The 1974 Dodge Monaco Police Interceptor driven by Dan Akroyd with John Belushi riding shotgun. Is this iconic classic car still around today? Let's try and find out.
Today, let's take a look at the police car from The Blues brothers and where it is today.
The Movie
If you haven't seen the Blues Brothers, you're doing yourself a disservice. It's got a little bit of everything for fans of several different kinds of movies. For fans of star-studded casts, the film stars the late great John Belushi at the top of his game and a young Dan Akroyd as Jake and Elwood Blues. Musical numbers starring jazz and blues legends like Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Cab Calloway are wonderful enough to listen to on their own and we highly recommend listening to the movie album online.
Jake Blues is none too pleased to walk out of Ilinois State Prison to find his brothers picking him up in a Dodge Monaco Police Interceptor which he acquired in a trade for a microphone. Expecting him to arrive in this Cadillac they'd driven before he got locked up, Jake makes his complaints known. Brother Elwood scolds Jake for bellyaching about his wheels by promptly jumping a lifted draw bridge.
1974 Dodge Monaco
[The Bluesmobile has just jumped an open drawbridge.]
"Jake: Car's got a lot of pickup.
Elwood: It's got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas. So what do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?
Jake: Fix the cigarette lighter."
There's a lot to unpack with this quote, first of all, there's no such thing as "Cop Tires" or "Cop Shocks". Tire companies often offer high-performance tires to police departments for discounted rates or even for free in some cases, but tires made specifically for cop cars don't exist. The 440 Chrysler were indeed found in many Mopar squad cars of the period, the Dodge Polara Police Interceptor which was produced with the Moncao could reach 170 mph, just as fast as Ferraris of the day.
Still, that hardly makes it a "cop motor" the 440 was available in a number of Mopar products from Plymouths to Dodges to Chryslers. What does make a difference is the lack of catalytic converters. We're never told exact numbers, but we wouldn't be shocked if that engine made 300 plus horsepower. It may not be as fast as Dubai's Bugatti Veyron police car, but it's just as cool in our opinion.
Making The Film
13 Monaco Interceptors were purchased from California Highway Patrol for the filming of The Blues Brothers. Some were tuned for speed, others for jump stunts, and others for cornering. A 24-hour body shop was always on standby at tapings to maintain the 60 plus cars that were used to film this movie.
The final chase scene in the movie ends with the car disintegrating in front of Chicago city hall. All this modification took months to finish and added hundreds of thousands to the film's budget
The Iconic roof-mounted speaker is designed to look like a cold war air-raid siren and was linked to the car's PA system. The cars are set up took look like decommissioned Mount Prospect PD patrol cars, and look vicious with blacked-out wheels and tires.
Where Are They Today?
Today, one example used in the film is on display at Volo Auto Sales and Museum in Illinois. If you don't feel like potentially damaging a one of a kind movie prop, there are a number of different companies that make replica Bluesmobiles for use in promotional television.
The builder of one of these machines is the founder of Celebrity Machines Inc Travis Bell. He drove his exact one to one replica of the Bluemobile sans megaphone to the same mall in Harvey, Illinois that the Blues Brothers drove their car through in the movie. His plan was to take the car along the same path from outside the mall, through the Toys R Us, through the mall itself, and back out again. When the Harvey, Illinois PD arrived at the now abandoned mall, they only kindly asked to have their photo taken with the replica Bluesmobile.
Skylights in the mall's ceiling had long ago caved in and a mixture of snow and broken glass coated the surface of the inside of the mall. Even so, Bell and his friends spent the whole day thrashing the car around the interior of the mall. We highly recommend watching the video; it's a wild story.
Sources: www.bryantmotors.com, muscleorperformanceautorestoration.com, www.volocars.com