A Lotus 23 is better than an X-Wing.
You were where in 1966? George Lucas was at Willow Springs Raceway, California, leading a small group of people off-track and on-track as part of his senior project. This short film, 1:42.08 captures Lucas’s passion for cars.
The clip is just seven minutes long and features Pete Brock. Brock’s motoring career includes automotive design with the Shelby American and racing, photography and literature as an author. He was driving a yellow Lotus 23 and turning laps in front of the camera. This is what is technically called a tone poem. There’s no dialogue, no music. The Lotus’ high-revving engine is the only sound, mixed with various scenes of Brock pushing the car to its limits. It’s everything petrolheads want.
Although Lucas is most famous for his Star Wars story, he was also influenced by the Southern California car scene in the 1950s and 60s. His 1973 classic American Graffiti captures a small part of the California cruising scene that was set in 1962. Replicas of the yellow 1932 FordDeuce still grace car shows all over America. Not to mention the 1955 Chevrolet driven by Harrison Ford in the film. The long pod racing scene in Star Wars Episode 1 suddenly makes sense.
1:42.08 is one of the earliest Lucas films. It’s an artistic embrace of automotive appreciation by one of sci-fi’s greatest storytellers.