Le Poster

When I was a kid, my folks got all their gasoline from Gulf gas stations--they had a charge card there. Does anybody do this anymore?

In 1971, Gulf had a tie-in with the new Steve McQueen movie, Le Mans, and were giving out a poster of him, much like the one shown above. It ended up on my bedroom wall, and in anticipation of the movie, I became a five year-old Steve McQueen fan. This was also at a time when racing was a big glamor sport, and people like Paul Newman and James Garner were playing race car drivers in movies (and sometimes racing in real life). There wasn't some over-inflated culture clash thing going on like there is now, when some people are supposed to love Nascar and some aren't. It was also before the big oil crisis, so driving like hell and using tons of gas seemed like a fine idea.

Anyhow, I was down with the program, too. I had a red nylon windbreaker that had an STP patch on one arm and a crossed racing flags patch on the other. And I think we ended up going to see the movie, though I'm not sure about that.

In the 90s, I watched it on VHS, and found it somewhat mystifying. As Wikipedia says:

"The film is today still popular among race fans as it is a relatively accurate depiction of the era, with a lot of racing but very little dialogue. Due to this, and partly to the American market's general low awareness of the Le Mans 24 Hour race, it was only a moderate success at the box office there."

The lack of plot and dialogue makes it a bit thick for someone who doesn't get really excited by racing cars.

But I thought the poster was cool!