Is a movie really that bad when it stars one of Chrysler's Ghia-built Turbine Cars?

By Richard Truesdell

I'm often asked where I find the inspiration for my road trips. Can you believe that some come from favorite movies?

Over the years, cars and film have gone hand in hand like bore and stroke. Some have been big-buck, big-studio productions. Grand Prix starring James Garner and LeMans starring Steve McQueen immediately come to mind. What about lesser productions, the kind you're almost embarrassed to admit you enjoy watching? The 1964 movie The Lively Set, starring James Darren, is one such movie for me.

Darren was a teenage heartthrob from rock's infancy. He is best known as Moondoggie from the Gidget series of teen flicks, and later as Officer James Corrigan, the co-star to Star Trek-captain-turned-Priceline-pitchman William Shatner on the 1980s police drama T. J. Hooker.

So why is The Lively Set a guilty pleasure? To start with, there's the acting quality and a plausible plot--or, in this case, the almost complete absence of either. The Lively Set is the story of Casey Owens, a young ex-G.I. mechanic who has dreams of setting a world land-speed record with a turbine-powered car of his own design. While there are some similarities to the story of Craig Breedlove, in reality, The Lively Set is as much a remake of a 1954 guilty movie pleasure, Johnny Dark starring the late Tony Curtis.

You also can't help but notice the similarity to the Speed Racer cartoon show that would come three years