CHARIOT OF IRE

LR man's ‘Obama car’ stolen, stripped, defaced

Tyrell Tennyson's Obama Car had been a familiar sight along Little Rock streets after President Barack Obama's election until it was stolen, stripped and abandoned in Pine Bluff.
Tyrell Tennyson's Obama Car had been a familiar sight along Little Rock streets after President Barack Obama's election until it was stolen, stripped and abandoned in Pine Bluff.

— The “Obama” car was a familiar sight in Little Rock, a ’78 Oldsmobile Cutlass in the “theme-car” style with an American flag motif, an image of the president on the side door - head cocked, seemingly in mid-rhetorical soar - and “Yes, We Can”, “Yea, We Did” emblazoned on either side.

Tyrell Tennyson was the proud owner. By his estimate, he had sunk $16,000 and hundreds of hours of his own labor creating a premium ride - new motor, top-shelf sound system, a sunroof,expensive wheels, spinning rims: the works.

“The car thing is real big around here. Guys want to have the nicest car,” Tennyson said last week. “Everyone knew my car. Not nobody in Little Rock who didn’t know that car. If you don’t know it, then you know somebody who does.”

People asked to take pictures of it. They waved. Gave the peace sign when they saw it roll past, he said.

No more. In late August, the 32-year-old woke up to find it gone from his aunt’s Little Rock house, where he was living.

A few hours later the car was found in Pine Bluff. Stripped of all its finery. And Obama? The president’s image - created out of a vinyl reproduction “kind of like a big sticker,” Tennyson said - was totally obscured, wiped away with black paint.

“My Dad was joking, maybe Republicans took the car,” Tennyson said. “I just think it was someone who was jealous, like they did it out of spite.”

Another theme-car, “Hawaiian Punch,” that belonged to a friend was torched last summer, Tennyson said.

“I thought for a second it might be a hate crime,” Tennyson said about Obama car’s fate. “But, no, it’s almost like if they can’t have it, then they’ll burn it up or trash it.”

The car sits in a Pine Bluff impound lot while Tennyson works out the insurance paperwork. He sees it as a total loss. A devastating one.

“Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck,” he said.

Tennyson’s friend, Larry West, paused from putting a bright purple paint job on a car at West Paint and Body Shop on West 33rd St. Friday and agreed it had been a tough blow.

“It was the first one that anybody did with the president on it, period. It kind of set the standard ’cause everybody else was doing candy like Skittles, Snickers. Frosted Flakes. Silly stuff like that,” West said. “He did it best with Obama. That’s the one that really stuck out.”

No one has been arrested. Lt. JoAnn Bates of the Pine Bluff Police Department said stolen vehicles from Little Rock often end up in her city and vice versa.

“Older cars are more stealable and oftentimes the parts go to chop shops or they use it for their own. We have chop shops all over,” she said.

Bates hadn’t heard about “spite” thefts.

“Not with these special type vehicles, and we have a bunch of them,” she said.

West demurred, speculating that somebody merely coveted the rims.

“First off, a lot of people wanted to buy his wheels off him. Nobody really had what he did. People had the same kind of spinners and floaters, his were different. The best way to do it was to take it from him,” West said.

The theme-car’s day as a trendsetter is “already past and gone,” West said. People now prefer a simpler “custom candy” look without the product logos, he said.

Tennyson is thinking along similar lines, but remains undecided on a new look. A lot depends on how much his insurance company will pay him on the Obama car.

“I’m a car dude. I want to be able to ride clean. I’m into spinning wheels, into the candy paint job, you can’t get that for three or four thousand,” he said.

If the Obama car is history, it will be remembered. Four men washing their cars and talking Friday at a car wash at the intersection of Wright Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive knew the car.

They hadn’t heard of its untimely demise, but had theories about motive. Especially after learning that Obama’s image had been defaced.

“That look like a statement to me. It’s Arkansas, they didn’t vote for Obama,” said a man who identified himself as “Footlong C.”

Whatever political future awaits the incumbent president, Obama is unlikely to reappear on whatever Tennyson drives next. He got the idea in 2008 while watching Obama on TV with his then girlfriend.

“I just kind of blurted it out. Honestly, man, I’m not that big into politics. Just big into the car thing,” he said.

Tennyson didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 and he won’t be casting a ballot in 2012, although he’d like to - he lost his voting rights after a robbery conviction. He was released in August 2007.

“Really, that car was to help remind people to vote,” Tennyson said. “It was something I could do since I couldn’t vote.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/10/2012

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