Stars And Their Cars - Reg Mombassa, Artist-musician
The Age
Saturday January 17, 2009
CARS sometimes make this famous artist and musician mental as anything. Reg Mombassa (aka Chris O'Doherty) says he could always find his way home in his mid-1950s Rover - he'd follow the trail of oil back to his doorstep.
Mombassa purchased it for about $200 in 1971. By his own admission, it was a big, heavy gas-guzzler that was difficult to work on."The head gasket wore out but I kept on driving for several months," he says."It was an ecological disaster. I couldn't afford to keep the oil up to it because as soon as I'd pour it in, it would run back outagain."Service station mechanics (who obviously felt sorry for him) would give him sump oil that had been drained from people's cars. "It was filthy and full of iron filings," Mombassa says. "And I went through it so quickly that I'd keep old wine flagons of it in the boot."By the time Mombassa had helped form the rock band Mental As Anything in 1976, he'd bought himself a very groovy mid-'60s Valiant AP5, which featured on the cover of the band's Best Of album."It was the best car I ever owned," he says. "My wife, Martina, was driving it home one day and a drunk driver smashed into the side of it and wrote it off. I was very sad."After Mental As Anything's huge number of hits, Mombassa spent his new-found wealth on a second-hand, 1980 V8 Commodore station wagon, which he kept for 11 years.He was so inspired by the car, he wrote a song about it, I'm In Love With My Car, which appeared on one of the band's last albums. Nowadays he gets around in a 1998 V6 Commodore. "My car history is not very environmentally sound," he says. "When I sell this one, I'll buy something that's a bit more eco-friendly. On the other hand, none of the kids have their own car, we all share the Commodore, so that's not such a bad thing, is it?"He admits he'd love a mid-'60s Lincoln Continental or Cadillac Eldorado "but only if I had a mechanic to keep it running and someone to look after it, because my cars aren't taken care of".-- STEPHEN LACEY
© 2009 The Age
