Yahoo Autos You Can Buy Eddie Munster’s Custom Schwinn Stingray and Drag-U-la Replica
While the midcentury Southern California car scene suffered no shortage of creatives, hucksters, and raconteurs, few managed to tap into the main artery of the Hollywood studio system as successfully as George Barris. The self-professed King of the Kustomizers, Barris famously created the Batmobile and numerous other highly visible Hollywood cars for stars both on and off the screen. When it comes to kooky, spooky wheeled creations, however, few can match the inspired lunacy of the Munster Koach, Grandpa’s Drag-U-La special, and the long overlooked Chain Stingray bicycle created for The Munsters character Eddie Munster. Serving as inspiration to a generation of goth wannabes who were born decades before there was such a thing, two of these artifacts are now for sale on the auction site where most legendary collectibles go to find equally demented and obsessive new owners: eBay.
Let’s get this straight right out of the squeaky, cobweb-ridden wrought-iron gate: The Drag-U-La special being sold here is a replica. Built by car customizer Rucker Posey, the car has spent its life on tour with Butch Patrick, who has turned his brief role playing Eddie Munster into a seemingly lucrative lifelong career of public appearances.
Although Patrick’s interest is largely financial, he’s also a devout gearhead. His father owned a car dealership, and he’s a current member of a New Jersey hot-rod club. His Drag-U-La Special is powered by a 400-cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8 with a functional dual quad intake producing a claimed 400 horsepower. The car is fully street legal, although Patrick has been quoted as saying the ride is too stiff to drive it for any length of time. Still, given the relatively large number of Drag-U-La clones circulating-even though the original appeared in only one episode of The Munsters, titled “Hot Rod Herman”-this car carries about as much provenance as any aside from the original. (The original car was also featured in the full-length 1966 motion picture Munster, Go Home.) Curiously, the video for Rob Zombie’s 1998 song “Dragula” uses the Munster Koach instead of Grandpa’s Drag-U-La Special.
The Munster “chain” Schwinn Stingray bicycle up for auction, on the other hand, is 100 percent legit. Instigated and conceptualized by Barris, the bicycle’s construction was entrusted to Barris employee Skip Barrett, who enlisted the assistance of the now legendary Von Dutch. The project appealed to Von Dutch, a man of many quirks, who reportedly began immediately welding up the chain links using a standard Schwinn Stingray as a template.
Although the bicycle never got any screen time on the show, it remained at the studio for the exclusive use of Butch Patrick while he was on the set. Reports of Patrick cruising the Universal Studios lot in full makeup and costume were common at the time.
Barris sold the bike to Brucker’s Movie World Cars of the Stars museum a few years after the series ended. It was eventually sold at auction in the mid-1980s. After drifting through a few owners, Patrick purchased the bike from a collector sometime around 2014 to use in his public appearances. Now it and a version of the coffin-themed Drag-U-La roadster that set a million teenage minds in the right wrong direction are ready for their new owners.
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