Color It Toyotasaurus Wreck: Car Art Headed for Junk Heap

Another dinosaur bites the dust.

“Toyotasaurus Tyrannicus,” the Toyota station wagon/art installation towed from the Laguna Canyon site of “The Tell” 600-foot-long photomural, will go to the junk heap, said artist Mark Chamberlain.

“It’s just returning to earth,” said Chamberlain, who co-organized “The Tell” project and half-buried his former car nearby as part of its anti-development message.

“Toyotasaurus” was exhumed and towed by the City of Laguna Beach earlier this month and impounded at Larry Hunt Auto Body Center where it has been accumulating impound fees for about three weeks. Tuesday morning, Chamberlain received notification that a lien of $275 (an amount growing at $12 a day) had been placed on the car.

Chamberlain, who acknowledges that he was never given permission to bury a car at the mural site, claims that he was never told that the auto was going to be towed and charges that “a form of censorship” therefore occurred. City officials assert that the artist was definitely told that the vehicle was going to be removed because it had been installed without permission.

Nevertheless, the artist says the 1977 vehicle is ready to go to scrap and is worth neither his own money nor time to salvage. The auto body center has been told to dispose of the car and intends to do so on Nov. 4, he says.

City officials say the city will pay all impound charges incurred.

“It was on city property, and we were the ones that hauled it out,” explained Laguna Beach City Councilwoman Martha Collison. “We didn’t want to make it an issue. It wasn’t the purpose to stick him (with the bill).”

Chamberlain added that the whereabouts of Irving, a manikin that sat at the car’s steering wheel and last seen before the auto was towed, are still unknown.