We've all been living under a rock to some degree for quite some time now but it would be hard for someone not to be aware of the song "Driver's License" written and sung by Olivia Rodrigo of Disney Channel fame. The spartan, seemingly simply produced teenage-angst heartbreak song has ear-wormed it's way into our collective psyche like few songs have over the last ten if not twenty years or so and it's remarkable performance on the pop charts is proof of that. One week on the top of the chart? Record label games and manipulation. Two? More of the same shenanigans. A song gets to three weeks up there and it might, just might be making an impact. However, when a song about a girl who wants to celebrate getting her driver's license with a boy she's in love with debuts at number one and stays there for eight straight weeks, something's going on above and beyond gross music business politics.
All that said, this is a blog about cars and you're probably here because you googled something like, "Driver's License car" or "Olivia Rodrigo car" and ended up here. Well, thanks for stopping by. Seems there are plenty of folks who find blogs about cars featured in movies, TV shows and music videos interesting and they are among-st my more popular soliloquies. So, without any further adieu, let's get to "Olivia's car" which is...a Mercedes-Benz 450 SL. A car that, much like the song "Driver's License", was transcendental and game-changing. The exact model year of the car? C'mon, now. Can't give you everything you're looking for all at once. Read on.
While the song, "Driver's License" is transcendental and the gifted ingenue that is Ms. Rodrigo as well, the old Mercedes being in the video is, if anything, a bit of a head scratcher. As we've pointed out time and time again, car casting can be very important to any production but knowing much of the production of the video for the song was happenstance, seeing a 17, 18 year old girl or boy who's apparently just gotten their driver's license behind the wheel of such a car should\could mean everything. Alas, in the video for "Driver's License" it's nothing above and beyond an alluring, interesting looking set-piece. It might as well be the funky cool house featured in the video.
Don't get us wrong - that's perfectly fine. What's more, we love the fact that Ms. Rodrigo has a dream of owning a "vintage, white Mercedes" and admitted she loved the car so much that during filming she wanted to drive off with it. Damn, girl, you go! Furthermore, snaps to her in an age when it's said, and we concur, that young people don't care about cars let alone getting their driver's license.
Mercedes-Benz' fabled "SL's" are a series of sports cars the German automaker first put into production in 1954. The most famous of them, arguably, the gull-wing models of 1954-1957. The SL featured in "Driver's License" is part of the third-generation of SL's that debuted for sale in the United States in 1971.
Many a Mercedes-Benz, particularly older models, are difficult to pinpoint exactly what model year they are because unlike domestic manufacturers, Benz and Cie and Daimler Motoren Gessellschaft made little changes to their wares from year-to-year. Those little changes making older American cars so easy to "spot". For instance, a tail-finned 1957 Chevrolet could only be a '57 since it differs so greatly in appearance from a '56 not to mention a '58 Chevrolet. That's not the case with cars like the "Driver's License" SL what with M-B's all but imperceptible changes made to the line over it's protracted seventeen-year model year run. Seven. Teen. Years. Wow. And folks got on General Motors years ago for pushing out the third-generation Corvette for fourteen years.
Even the exact model of the SL in "Driver's License" is tough to nail-down since there are no closeups of the trunk lid where the model badges for all Benz' are. All we have of the trunk are a couple of these scenes where Ms. Rodrigo is (inexplicably) hanging out of it while the car is moving (!!) thus begging the question, "who the heck's driving"? Did the boy she loves lock her in the trunk and she picked the lock and got it open? Did she, in fact, dump him because she realized he was an abusive psycho-path? It can be just as hard if not harder to break-up with someone as it is to be broken up with. Either way it's never easy.
Seeing the car has the smaller, pre-safety era bumpers and not the battering rams that blighted most if not all automobiles sold new in the United States after 1974, we whittle the potential model years down to 1971-1973. We narrow the year further still since all SL's sold in the United States in 1971 and 1972 wore "350 SL" badges regardless of what engine they were equipped with. Back then, on many Mercedes-Benz makes and models, the numerical pre-fix before the model designation was in reference to the car's engine. In the case of the SL in "Driver's License", "450" is for a 4.5-liter, V-8 engine. Thus, drum roll...the Mercedes-Benz 450 SL in "Driver's License" is from model year 1973.
This vintage of SL or "Sports\Super-Leicht (light), are as synonymous with 1970's wealth and extravagance as the Chevrolet Corvette of the time period was. While they're both two-passenger automobiles with sporting pretension, the big difference is that the driving dynamics of the SL was far superior than that of the "plastic-fantastic" and was a bell-weather of automotive engineering for decades to come. Well, at twice the price it should have been. About the only thing these SL's have in common with GM's rolling phallic symbol is their penchant to blow through a gallon of gas.
If Ms. Rodrigo was to drive off with this car what she'd experience wouldn't be that much different from any new vehicle today; that's really saying something too. Their modern-ness a big part as to why they've "stuck" around like they have. That and the fact they're simply gorgeous.
What makes a song like "Driver's License" stick around like it has? Good question. It sure stands out on whatever platform you may hear it on constantly with it squashed between the overly produced techno-synth whatever from the likes of Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Doja Cat. Ms. Rodrigo's soaring vocal performance on lyrics that are, at times, uncomfortably if not painfully honest has a lot to do with it too.
The pain she sings about so convincingly makes us want to give her a parental hug and a grilled cheese sandwich of assurance that everything's going to be alright. Even though those of us who've experienced profound loss of any kind know that they really won't ever be.
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