Hero: Dean Jeffries and his Kyote II EV

You might not recognize the name Dean Jeffries, and he's probably OK with that... but chances are you know his work customizing and building cars. He's done work for James Dean, Parnelli Jones, Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen, and Carroll Shelby (and many, MANY others) and even developed his own paint, "Jeffries Indy Pearl." He's also built a lot of famous cars for TV and movies, to include the original Black Beauty cars from the first Green Hornet, the Monkees' Monkeemobile, the moon buggy from James Bond - Diamonds Are Forever, and even worked on the Batmobile! He's also an accomplished stunt man, with many credits in movies like Die Hard, Bad Boys, Death Race 2000, and The Blues Brothers. Jeffries even created the famous flying eye design  that made Von Dutch famous. You can see a lot of his work at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles.


As a stunt man on the film Honky Tonk Freeway, he made a five-ton truck jump a 110 foot gap over a collapsed freeway overpass; he succeeded in the jump, but the shock system in his seat was too stiff. In his own words in a AAA.com interview, upon landing, "I broke my back. Now I’m in a five-ton truck going over 100, and my legs don’t work, so I picked up my right leg with my hands, put it on the brake pedal, and pushed as hard as I could.” He was able to safely stop the truck, but when he got to the hospital, no one helped him for an hour... so what did he then do? He went to his shop, made a custom brace for his back out of aluminum and got back to work. “I was stunt coordinator, we still had one more to do that day. Wasn’t no big deal.”


So, other than being one of the toughest guys to ever make a cool car, how did he come to make it to our "Hero:" category on ForgetOil.com?

In the midst of making crazy dune buggies, super hero cars, and basically being an indispensable part of SoCal Car Culture and Hollywood history, his philosophy, skill, ingenuity, and attitude he holds have made him known as a great person to nearly everyone he's ever met... and he also built a pretty cool electric race car, the Kyote II EV way back in 1970! It's pure electric, and based upon his standard Kyote (pron. "Coyote") II dune buggy. Here's a few videos of it in action:

In all of this business of reducing the world's dependence on oil as a fuel, we have to remember to have fun, we have to innovate, and we have to work to capture the imagination. It seems like Jeffries' Kyote II EV did just that, over 40 years ago.


Jeffries says in his AAA article, “I’ve been very lucky. I didn’t plan nothin’. I just took things day by day. There’s been some bad times, but that’s just life, you know? Now I wake up every morning happy that I woke up. I love what I do, and I’m thankful for every day I get to do it.”


Keep going Dean, we're fortunate to have you.