The LipsMobile
PLEASE NOTE: Before the LipsMobile was ravaged by sun, wind, torrential downpours; alcohol; mosquito and alligator bites; mad, middle-of-the-night motorcyclists; and Lips’ less-than-average driving skills, She was a 1974 Chevy Impala, known as “The Impaler.”
After an exterior paint job of a buncha pairs of painted lips and a rooftop snakeskin job by her friends in Houston, Artists At Large, Carolyn & Mitch Cohen, She began a five-year promenade in the Houston Art Car Parade, the Impaler became resplendent and was thereafter affectionately referred to as “The LipsMobile”
Photo credit: Carolyn Coates, 1996:
“My car started out life as a 1974 Chevy Impala until my friends painted a buncha pairs o’ lips all over it and we christened it The LipsMobile, Ladies & Gentleman, it was like a Ride at Disneyland, a work of art, craft unsurpassed in American ingenuity: A Thunderin’ dual four-barrel 425 hp 409 engine, roomy interior and a trunk that seats 30! You know what else? You know what else?” [from the song “The LipsMobile”]
Sold to My Dad by my Mom’s cousin’s husband Morris Erickson in My Mother’s home town of Twin Valley, Minnesota, My Mom sold to me in 1993 after my Dad’s passing. We drove it down the Mississippi River the Summer of the big floods that Summer wherein coffins were getting carved out of cemeteries, floating down the Rivers…
Drove to New Orleans and then home to Houston where we frolicked several years in the Houston Art Car Parade, both seulemente and carting Lips & The Trips playing mostly “Hot Tub” one year and mostly “The Texas Queen Snake Shake” the other one. It poured rain the year we won an award–sort of last band standing type of thing. What a Romp!
When she would only drive in reverse and transmission was going to cost $3,000 I didn’t have, we set her on fire and drove her off the Jackson Avenue pier, off to Valhalla !!!
SIZE MATTERS Interior: The Back Seat Over 5′ long and 2-1/2′ wide Exterior: 12′ long, 6-1/2′ wide in back, 6′ wide in front
The FurryMobile
Since the demise of the LipsMobile in late 2002, Lips tooled around town in her 1971 Plymouth Fury III. Thanks to Tommy who spotted her with a For Sale sign in a bad part of a bad part of town, jumped in it, replaced a pump of some sort and I paid $800 to make her mine. R&S was still in business then and had pampered the LipsMobile (“we started out on these kind of cars!” Sam told me)
Gold & black to signify the Saints Football Team Spirit, its 318 engine, supposedly the best Mopar ever made, made it more than a Ride at Disneyland [thank you again Carolina!].
Was a Real Beaut! After 20 years, and finally having enough with towing and repairs, retired her to The Sierra Club where I am sure she had a great afterlife as a planter in someone’s backyard.
Lips & The Trips 