Monte Car-lo

Box office records would indicate that not many of you went to see the 2003 film, "Looney Tunes: Back in Action." Critical reviews would indicate that you made a good decision to see something else. Nonetheless, a piece of memorabilia from that movie now resides at your Virginia Museum of Transportation.

In the film, Nascar driver, Jeff Gordon, makes a cameo, driving his trademark #24 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. After the abuse it took in the film (being hijacked by none other than Yosemite Sam), it wasn't exactly fit for the race track. Another detriment to its racing condition would be that it lacks an engine. So, Warner Brothers shelved the car.

Four years and several lawyers later, the car afficionados on the VMT Board of Directors managed to bring the car here to Roanoke.

At first thought, a car used in a movie bears only the slightest relevance to the Official Transportation Museum of the Commonwealth of Virginia (I just thought that looked better with capital letters). It rolls on tires and carries people (well, a person -- there's no passenger seat), so it is transportation, in the academic sense, but what about relevance to Virginia?

Well, according to Wikipedia, Mr. Gordon was born in California, raised in Indiana, and currently lives in North Carolina. No Virginian ties there. However, he has raced numerous times at Virginia's major raceways, winning some and losing some.

Though Nascar's formal development owes much to Florida and North Carolina, its roots go back to Prohibition, when bootleggers would modify their own cars (stock cars in the truest sense of the term) to help them evade police. Bootlegging was prominent throughout Appalachia, most certainly including Virginia. As the sport grew from the tradition, its strongholds in the south cemented.

Auto racing represents an important element of Virginia's transportation heritage. It was the efforts of racers to modify their vehicles that drove innovation in auto technology. As automobiles developed, so too did the roads need to develop to support them. This is the principle theme of our Auto Gallery, so despite its Hollywood glitz, our new car has a legitimate story to tell.

Let's just hope its story gets better reviews than the movie in which it starred.