The Life And Death Of The KJR Super Car

Pat O’Day greets Jimi Hendrix at Seattle’s Garfield High School.

You can keep yer Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and your Pope Mobile, and yer Batmobile, too. When it comes to mighty advertising novelty cars, the northwest corner of these United States had the mightiest, baddest ‘mobile’ of them all – the KJR SUPER CAR!!! Nothing was more massive and intimidating. Designed to literally fly over the traffic with a jet engine, the sight of this monster zipping down Interstate 5 was an awesome sight. You DEFINITELY got out of it’s way!

In the feature photo, at the wheel of the mighty super car is none other than the greatest hypester radio DJ of them all – PAT O’DAY! (in the back seat, looking scared, is the notorious Ian Roberts). When it came to pushing a publicity stunt down the throats of American youth demographics of the mid ;60s, there was none more astonishing and more powerful than the Tacoma-born Pat O’Day. O’Day (taking his surname from Seattle’s O’Dea High School on Capitol Hill) tirelessly promoted rock and roll radio to national extremes (being one of the first to promote a ‘top 40′ format – in his case expanding it to a ‘fab 50′), and constantly bringing it all back home by endlessly promoting local bands on his station. The Ventures ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ was picked out of the blue – out of nowhere – to be his signature calling card and radio theme song. He virtually broke ‘Louie Louie’ onto the national airwaves… read more >