The Munster Koach is the family car that was used in the television series, The Munsters . The show's producers contracted George Barris to provide the Koach. Barris paid show car designer Tom Daniel $ 200 to design the car, and had it built at Barris Kustoms, first by Tex Smith, but finished by Dick Dean , his shop foreman at the time. The Munster Koach appeared in over twenty episodes throughout the series' two-year run, and was also seen in Munster, Go Home! using different wheels. Tom Daniel's original drawing of the Munster Koach had it supercharged with a hood scoop and thin, round disc lights. Barris chose the ten-carburetor setup with the ten air horns and lantern lights.
24-553: DRAG-U-LA , along with the Munster Koach , was one of two cars on the television show The Munsters designed by prolific show car designer Tom Daniel while working for George Barris and Barris Kustom Industries. The fiberglass body of DRAG-U-LA was built from a coffin that Richard "Korky" Korkes, Barris's project engineer, was able to purchase from a funeral home in North Hollywood . Korkes said in 2013 that it
48-496: A 1964 + 1 ⁄ 2 Mustang. It was built with Jahns high compression pistons, 10 chrome plated Carter WA-1 carburetors , an Isky cam , and had a set of Bobby Barr racing headers . It had a three-speed toploader manual transmission . Hollywood Christmas Parade The Hollywood Christmas Parade (formerly the Hollywood Santa Parade and Santa Claus Lane Parade ) is an annual American parade held on
72-411: A 1/64th scale die-cast model of the car. An unauthorized reproduction Koach was built on speculation and presented to Barris, but he declined to buy it. Tubbs Johnson, Barris' paint man, purchased the unauthorized Koach and later sold it to Jay Orhberg. Barris auctioned the original Munster Koach in 1983 with oversized gas lights and different tires and wheels. In 1984, Barris wanted a Munster Koach for
96-658: A Jaguar limousine owned (and raced) by the Munster family of England, Grandpa builds the DRAG-U-LA, using the motor from the Munster Koach, so Herman can drive it in a cross-country automobile race. Munster Koach It stands in the Volo Auto Museum . Only one Koach was made for the television series and feature film. It was made from three Ford Model T bodies and is 18 feet long. The 133-inch frame
120-419: A color guard, drum line, and bugle corps. The parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 due to World War II and reopened in 1945 with record attendance. In 1947, Gene Autry asked his vice president and business partner song writer Oakley Haldeman to write a Christmas song for Gene Autry's first Grand Marshall appearance at that years Santa Claus Lane Christmas parade. It was wife Dixie Haldeman who came up with
144-426: A skull cap. Both reproduction cars have been restored, but the original has not. Series star Fred Gwynne never sat in the seat to drive the Munster Koach. Instead, he sat on the floor on the ermine-fur rugs. During the time of the television series there was a song released as a single by Decca, called "Here Comes the Munster Koach". The engine was a 289 cubic-inch Ford V8 originally configured for installation in
168-403: Is a wide opening where those headers were located on the original. There were five walnut blocks between the spokes of the mag wheels in rear. The rear slicks were Firestone eleven-inch pie crust slicks. The Astro mag wheels were painted blood red just on the outside of the five spokes. There was no skull radiator cap on the original Munster Koach in the 1960s. Only later did the Munster Koach get
192-600: The City of Los Angeles created a new parade to replace the Hollywood Christmas Parade, entitled the Hollywood Santa Parade and produced on the weekend after Thanksgiving (the original parade had traditionally been held on the Wednesday evening before the holiday). Participation in the new parade became by invitation only, and Bob Barker , fresh from his farewell tapings as host of The Price Is Right ,
216-577: The Hallmark Channel , and in traditional syndication in later years. Since 2015, the parade has been recorded and edited, then aired as a part of The CW 's annual holiday programming, still being produced by ATI (thus airing on KTLA locally as a part of the CW lineup). Lifestyle also carries the parade internationally. The parade was not held in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic . Instead,
240-553: The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced it would discontinue airing the parade on KTLA and other Tribune Broadcasting stations due to rising production costs. In March 2007, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce decided to end the parade's run due to lack of celebrities and a loss of $ 100,000 for the 2006 production, which The Associated Press said cost about $ 1 million to mount. However, later in 2007,
264-496: The Hollywood Christmas Parade . He had Dick Dean build a second authorized Munster Koach. Dick Dean's son, Keith Dean, helped build it. This Koach was restored in the summer of 2011 with new black pearl paint, pie crust cheater slicks, new brass lantern lights, torque thrust mag wheels, smaller skull radiator cap, and had the dummy crank lever removed and sealed. They did not have Bobby Barr Headers, and there
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#1732787756104288-589: The Atlantic City location, the car was auctioned off to John Sbrigato, who also owns a Munster Koach. It currently stands on display in Gatlinburg, Tennessee 's Hollywood Star Cars Museum . On The Munsters television series the car was created by Grandpa so he could win back the Munster Koach, which Herman had lost in a drag race in the episode " Hot Rod Herman ". The 1966 movie Munster, Go Home! features an alternate origin. After Herman crashes
312-516: The Sunday after Thanksgiving in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California . It follows a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) route along Hollywood Boulevard , then back along Sunset Boulevard , featuring various celebrities. Traditionally, Santa Claus appears at the end. Beginning in 1928, Hollywood merchants transformed a one-mile stretch of Hollywood Boulevard into "Santa Claus Lane" to boost shopping. Part of
336-704: The automobile, such as the tires, for different aspects of filming for the television series and for the movie Munster, Go Home! . This car was sold at the closeout auction of the Chicago Historical Antique Automobile Museum in Highland Park, Illinois , in 1985. The original 1966 car was housed in Planet Hollywood in Atlantic City, New Jersey , where it hung from the ceiling. Upon the closing of
360-501: The car in lieu of a standard exhaust pipe , and mounted antique lamps on the front and rear. The front of the vehicle sported a marble gravestone—supposedly Grandpa Munster's license plate "from the Old Country"—with the inscription: "Born 1367, Died ?". A "hidden" radiator was topped with a small golden casket. The driver sat in the rear of the vehicle behind the engine , under a plastic bubble. Subtle changes were made to
384-611: The celebrities highlighted were either older or lower-tier actors exclusively starring on NBC series. Inexplicably, the special ended with a completely unrelated stunt involving a 170 foot (52 m) fall by stuntperson Mikal Kartvedt off a 12-story building to promote the Blockbuster-exclusive home video rental release of the film XXX (the actual parade would air without any of the Bain-produced elements on Christmas morning on KCOP-TV ). The following year,
408-648: The parade as a primetime special on NBC sponsored by Blockbuster imperiled the future of the parade, as the presentation was lowly-rated. Renamed the Blockbuster Hollywood Christmas Spectacular and produced by Bob Bain, the parade was nearly completely dispensed with for pre-recorded and rehearsed spotlights in the vein of NBC's popular Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade , pre-recorded musical performances from LeAnn Rimes and Destiny's Child to promote their new holiday albums, along with much lower wattage star power, as most of
432-513: The promotion was a daily parade featuring Santa Claus and a film star. Originally called the Santa Claus Lane Parade , the inaugural event featured only Santa Claus and the actress Jeanette Loff . The parade continued to grow in scale with the help of local businesses and the community. In 1931, Santa Claus rode a truck-pulled float instead of the reindeer-pulled carriage of previous years. American Legion Post 43 marched with
456-469: The pull type throttle actuation modified into a pusher type. The rear tires were 10.00-15 Firestone racing slicks, mounted on custom 10-inch Radir aluminum and steel wheels. Each hubcap was decorated with a large silver spider. The front tires were 4-inch Italian tires on Speedsport English buggy wire wheels. To extend the Gothic motif further, Barris installed four Zoomie style organ pipes on each side of
480-426: The title verse " Here Comes Santa Claus Right Down Santa Claus Lane " on June 21, 1947. Autry would become a perennial Grand Marshal of the parade thereafter. The parade continued to grow throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, adding floats, animals, bands and celebrities. By 1978, the parade had been renamed the Hollywood Christmas Parade in order to attract more celebrities, and was broadcast locally on KTLA (which
504-430: Was illegal to sell a coffin without a death certificate, so he made a deal with the funeral director to pay in cash and have the coffin left outside the rear door to be collected after dark. The car had a 350 HP , 289ci Ford Mustang V-8 engine with a four-speed stick shift. It had two four-barrel carburetors mounted on a Edelbrock Ram-Thrust manifold. The carburetors were mounted backwards in an effort to save space and
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#1732787756104528-432: Was made by hand, as were the brass radiator and fenders. It has a blood red interior and black pearl paint. It took 500 hours to hand-form the ornate rolled steel scrollwork. The front end had a dropped axle, split radius rods and T springs. Its design featured a custom hearse body. AMT produced a plastic model kit of the car during the series run. It has been reissued several times since. Johnny Lightning has also produced
552-412: Was purchased by Autry's Golden West Broadcasters in 1964) with the help of Autry and Johnny Grant . This change coincided with a shift in the parade's scheduling from Thanksgiving Eve to the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and continued to be a decades-long tradition on Los Angeles's channel 5, even after Autry's sale of KTLA to KKR in 1982, then Tribune Broadcasting in 1985. In 2002, an attempt to present
576-467: Was that year's Parade Grand Marshal. 2007 and 2008, KTLA aired the new parade on a tape-delayed basis. It was later announced that MyNetworkTV would telecast the 2009 parade (with the Hollywood Christmas Parade name restored) in two consecutive prime-time showings: the first scheduled for December 10, the second for Christmas Eve night. The parade has since been produced annually by Associated Television International , which then coordinated airings on
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