TWO-LANE BLACKTOP

The Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) are roaming from town to town, city to city, in a funky Chevrolet 150 sedan, challenging people to street races. On their journey they pick up the Girl (Laurie Bird) and take on the eccentric GTO (Warren Oates) in a cross-country race to Washington, D.C. While slim on plot, Monte Hellman’s cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop is an experiential time capsule of early-’70s America: open-road bohemianism, hitchhikers, free love and the gritty cool of street racing—all reflected in an existential filmmaking style of a bygone era.

In this discussion join the ultimate car guy, Road & Track’s senior editor John Pearley Huffman, to celebrate the film’s real stars—the understated 1955 Chevy 150 and the slick 1970 Pontiac GTO—and to examine how car culture became the counter-counterculture of the 1970s.