The Wayne’s World AMC Pacer Is Finally in Excellent Hands

“I think we’ll go with a little Bohemian Rhapsody, gentlemen?”

With a “Good call!” from best friend Garth, so roll the opening credits to 1992’s Wayne’s World featuring the most famous AMC Pacer of all time: the Mirthmobile. A 1976 model painted light blue, wearing mismatched wheels and a tongue-in-cheek flame job, it was the vehicle that transported Mike Myers into his early unlikely movie stardom and, unexpectedly, the band Queen back into popularity with U.S. audiences. Party on! Excellent!

If that scene in the Pacer felt real, that’s because it was. Growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, Myers used to cruise around with his brothers and friends in their powder blue Dodge Dart Swinger (in one version of the story he also remembers the car as a Corolla), and when Bohemian Rhapsody would come on the FM radio, everybody in the car would sing along. There were strict rules: each person got one “Galileo!” and if you hit the wrong one, you’d get a friendly punch in the arm.

As a working-class kid dreaming of hitting the big time in show business, Mike simply wrote what he knew into Wayne’s World, including the riding around in cars part. One problem: he never actually learned to drive. Luckily, Garth was around for the movie, as this little fact was a surprise to the director when filming started.

It was also fortunate that Myers stuck to his guns when the studio tried to replace the Queen anthem with a Guns N’ Roses song. It got to the point where he threatened to quit, and, no offense to Axl and Slash, but Wayne’s World just wouldn’t be the same without the gang all adding in their mamma mias.

Last, and luckiest of all, the Mirthmobile still rides, thanks to its new Canadian owners. You can get a look at it yourself at the Petersen Automotive Museum, as it’ll be there over the next year. Feel free to do a few “We’re not worthy” bows if you go.

An AMC Pacer is, of course, pretty good comedy shorthand for pointing out that Garth and Wayne are kind of dorky (a Gremlin might also have had a similar effect). But if it was out of place in 1992, it was at least a pretty interesting design when it debuted in the 1970s. It’s one of those cars that probably deserves a bit more respect.

The Mirthmobile certainly deserved better. It spent years rotting outside before a slightly rushed, not-very-exacting restoration for a reality show appearance. Happily, thanks to its current caretakers, it’s back to a higher level of accuracy, properly deserving of being shown in a museum.

You’ve met Kevin and Brandon Mindel, father and son, on this site before. Owners of a large collection of movie replica cars, they were happy to share their Ecto-1 with us for last year’s anniversary of Ghostbusters. Kevin’s the traditional car guy, Brandon’s the movie fan, but both are the type of people who obsess over getting the details right. We’re talking frame-by-frame rewatches to get things faithful to what was on screen.

“It’s one of the real crown jewels of our collection,” Brandon Mindel said.

Over the years, Garth’s beloved Pacer had drifted away from originality. After filming wrapped, the Mirthmobile was just a used prop. In an effort to drum up publicity for the movie’s release, the hero car used in filming was listed as the main prize in an MTV giveaway. The winner, a woman from Oregon, sounds like she got the experience of a lifetime: a flight for her and a guest to New York, a hotel stay, the Pacer and a white Stratocaster guitar like that featured in the movie, tickets to a showing of Saturday Night Live, and a private screening of Wayne’s World, along with stars Mike Myers and Dana Carvey.

Upon returning to Oregon, the Mirthmobile was either loaned or donated to a museum in Eugene, where it unfortunately ended up stored outside at some point. Yes, there was cult appeal, but it wasn’t exactly a Batmobile. Over the years, the sun and wet Pacific Northwest weather did their work.

Next bought by an owner in Florida, it arrived in rather poor, non-running condition. This is where reality TV stepped in, when the car was bought by the History Channel show Pawn Stars. The Mirthmobile was restored to the tune of $18,500, but some cosmetic shortcuts were taken, including painting over the silver-painted plastic dashboard trim and carpeting over the lower door sills.

Some years back, the Mindels acquired a standard Pacer and began the process of converting it into a tribute to the Mirthmobile (they’ve done so with a number of movie cars from the Robocop Taurus to the Pizza Planet pickup from Toy Story). Brandon says the opportunity to get their hands on the actual car wasn’t just about adding to the collection. “It was a chance to check your work.”

Some extra items, like the roof-mounted licorice dispenser, proved to be accurate. Others, like the can crusher mounted to the dashboard, were missing, but their work on the replica confirmed the particular type identified from the movie and where it needed to go. The carpets needed redoing, that silver bezel repainting—all little touches that a casual fan might miss, but a purist couldn’t stand to see wrong.

In this way, it’s not unlike preparing a prewar car for a concours: A similar amount of time goes into researching what’s correct to the car as it was in the movie. The Mindels pored over documentation and pre-restoration photos of the car. They have plenty of projects on the go, so they didn’t immediately start work when it came into the collection, but when The Petersen came calling, it was just the impetus to get to work making it right.

When the Mindels took the Pacer down to Los Angeles, they couldn’t let it go into the museum without hitting up a couple of film locations. They took photos of the car in front of the house used as Wayne’s parents’ place, and parked outside Cassell’s Music—incredibly, the store still has the original Stratocaster display case used in the film.

At the Petersen, the Mirthmobile was first displayed alongside the original DeLorean DMC-12 Time Machine from the first Back To The Future movie. This placement was coming full circle for Brandon and Kevin, as it was a replica DMC-12 time machine that started them off on their movie car collecting quest.

And, in a way, it’s coming full circle for the actual Mirthmobile itself. From late-night cruises on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, to New York and the pressure cooker of SNL, to Los Angeles and Hollywood, it’s come home to small-town BC and a family of movie car collectors who care enough to preserve it as it was. That certainly does not suck. Party on Garth. Party on Wayne. Party on, AMC Pacer.