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1965 was the year when everyone and everything on TV came back from the dead or from being lost, it seemed. But someone at NBC took the term reinCARnation a bit too literally.
NBC was the butt of innumerable jokes for airing the show in the first place - and leaving it there for an entire season. Still, 'My Mother the Car' was probably worth it to the network as fodder for 'Tonight Show' punchlines for the next three decades.
He (naturally) buys the car against the wishes of his family, who (naturally) think he's gone crazy. Just like another popular sitcom of the day ('Mr. Ed'), the car won't talk to anyone but Dave, so (naturally) hilarity ensues when everyone continually doubts his sanity. Avery Schreiber appeared as the show's villain, Capt. Manzini, a ruthless car collector who felt an unnatural urge to own the Porter himself. Ann Sothern ('Private Secretary') was the voice of mom. Kids tuned in, but the critics were merciless.
Fact is, 'My Mother The Car' had a terrific cast and stellar writers/creators - no less than Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, soon to be the multiple Emmy-award winning creators of 'He and She' and 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'. Maggie Pierce was particularly good as the wife and anything with Ann Sothern can't be ALL bad!
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(Video clips in this article are from the unseen pilot episode, provided courtesy of "Kingpin" Harold Balde.)
"When
reading about 'My Mother the Car' you mentioned a Randy Whipple as one
of the kids. For the past several years or so, he's been an anchor at
KVAL Channel 13 in Eugene, Oregon. His biography at kval.com says he
"played Jerry Van Dyke's son on an NBC sitcom." Of course, he now goes
by Randall, but I remember watching him on KVAL's news when I was enrolled
at the University of Oregon."
- Bill Griffiths
It
seems that he was responsible for breaking Red Skelton's finger in a
live sketch on his famous TV variety show. Red went on and finished
the show, but Randy didn't work in TV for quite a while after that.
Not
too many kids in TV get two "bad breaks" in a single career.
(His
third strike in showbiz came when he infected me and the entire cast
of 'The Music Man" with rubella one week before opening night.)"
- A Reader
BAD
CAREER "Jerry
Van Dyke gave up the chance to play Gilligan on 'Gilligan's Island'
to take the role in 'My Mother The Car'. He did this because he thought
the Gilligan script was "silly"." - Mastro A TV
Guide's My Favorite Martian Page,
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With
the unexpected success of 'Bewitched' and 'The Man From Uncle' in 1964,
the networks unleashed an assault of way-out, fanciful shows in 1965.
'I
Dream Of Jeannie', 'Lost In Space', 'Get Smart', 'Green Acres', 'The
Smothers Brothers Show' (the sitcom where Tommy came back as a ghost
to haunt his brother), 'F Troop', 'Wild, Wild West' were just some of
the weird programs that debuted in 1965.
Outlandish
as some of those series were, it was 
'My
Mother The Car' followed the antics of lawyer Dave Crabtree (Jerry Van
Dyke from 'Coach'), a typically hapless sitcom family man who discovers
that his 
Maggie
Pierce was cast as wife wife Barbara, and Cindy Eilbacher and Randy
Whipple played the 2.5 kids.
"'My
Mother The Car' tried combining the U.S. fascination with cars, sex
and Mom," a scathing 1965 review in Time magazine went. "But
something happened in casting: Mother (who returns to earth from celestial
regions, using the car radio as a voice box) is an invisible Ann Sothern;
and as for Hero Jerry Van Dyke, he has finally answered the question,
what is it that Jerry hasn't got that brother Dick has?"
So
why wasn't the series cancelled sooner if it was considered such a flop?
Probably because it was effective in drawing the young viewers - the
competition on the other networks were all adult dramas ('Rawhide' on
CBS, 'Combat' on ABC).
Demographics was a brand new concept in 1965, the networks were looking
for overall large numbers, not audience segments like they do presently
- or 
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