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Well, let's try this:

From 1968-1974 General Motors produced a number of hard tops similar to Nigel's mystery car, all sharing chassis, running gear, engines, and a lot of the sheet metal of their X-platform.  The X-platform goes back another 4 or 5 years earlier, as a replacement for the Chevy Corvair, a remarkably good car killed by Ralph Nader's misleading data and suspension illustrations.  Those earliest cars were Chevy Nova, with Pontiac joining them a couple of years later with the Ventura and the GTO.  The type of body Nigel's picture suggests are the '68-74 versions.  After that the Oldsmobile Omega, Buick Apollo and the Acadian Canso (Canadian Buick) also used the next revision to the X-platform.  The shape of the back seat side window is not quite right, but the rest looks right for the '68-74 Nova/GTO.  Perhaps this is a prototype or styling buck for the '68, which had some changes to it before going into production.

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Trying to narrow-down the list of 'Location' options was this car/bodyshell used against a 'green-screen' (Blue-Screen in the photograph?) for filming studio-based close-up scenes and the car is it still in situ whereby visitors doing a studio-tour can take the place of a famous actor in a famous scene and be filmed whilst doing so?

I ask because, several years ago, my daughter 'flew' a broomstick with the eponymous schoolboy et-al in 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'. We still have the DVD somewhere...

Philip.

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It’s a production model of the ‘68 Malibu - but it has been modified to recreate a frame from a high speed film camera recording of a “performance” or maybe a “happening” and that is why it is located where it is (though it was somewhere else in the US in 2010)

It’s a bit niche so I’ll put the full image up later to see if anyone knows.

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Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

(They were draining and refilling the "pond" on that day)

Edited by NigelG
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That led me to Mr. Google telling me about the artist, Gonzalo Lebrija's History of Suspended Time, for which he dropped a Malibu from a crane into a lake, using a high-speed camera to capture the moment the car broke the water's surface.  He repeated that in Mexico City, and for a while a static version was on the plaza outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in  Denver, and at the Palm Springs Museum of Art.  Your image looks like the Palm Springs location.

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I forgot about the car - We saw it last fall in Palm Springs

 

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Thank you, Nigel.  Let's try this one.  All the usuals.

 

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