Most movie and TV car stars are flashy.
Exhibit A–the Aston-Martin in the original James Bond movies or the Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole in the original Magnum P.I.
Those cars were right for characters like Bond or Magnum, but what about guys who were not as flashy or sophisticated?
Jerry Sutherland
Take the 1964 Cadillac DeVille convertible Nick Nolte drove in ‘48 Hours’. Nolte played a miled-out San Francisco cop in ‘48 Hours’ who used the beat-up Caddy as a police vehicle.
He teamed up with Eddie Murphy (playing a released convict) to solve a case. The Caddy was put through hell and ended up going through the window of a Cadillac dealership after a wild chase.
This car was a perfect fit for a rough-and-tumble big city detective with a drinking problem who liked to break the rules. In fact, it was a race between Nolte and the Caddy for the crummiest-looking star of ’48 Hours’.
Nolte’s co-star Eddie Murphy picked up on the beater star car trend in ‘Beverly Hills Cop’.
Murphy played another break-the-rules cop as Detroit detective Axel Foley, and he drove what he called, “a crappy blue 1970 Nova”.
This was a nasty, stripped down, dented and dirty car that didn’t fit in with the Beverly Hills lifestyle—neither did Foley. The Nova was the ultimate co-star for a guy who worried more about convictions than image.
The third blue-collar co-star car is the 1972 Ford F-250 in the movie ‘The Mule’.
Clint Eastwood starred in this movie, and he played Earl Stone, a 90-year-old veteran who drove the truck as part of his horticulture business.
He graduated to drug running and his handlers thought he should buy a new truck for reliability and to be less conspicuous. The new truck ran better, but the old Ford had Clint Eastwood written all over it.
The TV show ‘Seinfeld’ featured another beater car star in the form of a 1973 Impala four-door sedan.
The Seinfeld character Cosmo Kramer owned the car—the old Impala fit like a glove because Kramer was an eccentric man of no fixed income and no direction.
A new Vette wouldn’t have worked for Kramer. but the dusty old Impala was perfect casting.
The last working-class car star was found on the TV show ‘Kolchak’.
Kolchak was played by Darren McGavin (a newspaper crime reporter), and he drove a 1966 Mustang convertible. The yellow ‘stang wasn’t a beater in the truest sense of the word, but it was definitely a used car in 1972 when ‘Kolchak’ debuted.
Kolchak moved around to a few cities like Seattle, Vegas and Chicago in his pursuit of supernatural killers. He had a police radio in the Mustang, so he rolled into active crime scenes in the pony car. The Mustang ‘vert always seemed a little delicate for the role, but Kolchak forged his own direction in life.
These beater car and truck stars were examples of casting excellence because they were part of the plot—and in some cases—they stole the show.
Jerry Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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