Every hardcore car guy in the world looks at the old iron in the background of old movies–they’re like a guy playing a waiter to the main characters.
In many cases, the cars are far more interesting than the movies, so here are some perfect Hollywood extra car star candidates for five decades from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Jerry Sutherland
The early 1940s era movie would have had a car star extra like a 1941 Buick Special.
A bad guy or a banker (or both) would drive a ’41 Buick because this Buick was at the higher end of the scale so a Chevy wouldn’t cut it. Chevys were for bookkeepers—not higher-end thugs in a Humphrey Bogart detective movie.
A late-40s detective movie car would be a 1948 Chrysler Windsor Club Coupe.
This car would be perfect for again—a mobster or a banker in a movie starring James Stewart as a guy dragged into a crime story.
A 1953 GMC pickup would be a great addition to an early 50s movie set in a small town.
This truck would have that fresh-off-the-farm look with a little dust to keep it real. Gregory Peck would make a great farmer back in the early 50s—the GMC would give him credibility, but the only thing car guys would pick up on is that it’s a five-window cab.
A late 50s movie would feature a 1957 Plymouth Savoy four-door sedan.
Late 50s sci-fi movies featured cars like this as taxi cabs and police cars because they reflected the real-world experience for these workhorses. Especially when fleeing a giant mutant salamander.
A 60s movie would have a 1965 IHC pickup onboard as a star extra car.
You’d have a quirky guy like Paul Newman behind the wheel—again–in a small-town setting. Car guys would only care whether there’s a V-8 or six-cylinder under the hood of the corn-binder pickup.
A 1967 Plymouth Belvedere I four-door sedan would be the perfect star of a late 60s movie.
You’d get a guy like Walter Matthau to play a burned-out detective driving a car like that because a stripper ‘67 Belvey sedan would be a typical low-budget car for a movie police force. It probably wouldn’t survive the inevitable plot-directed crash.
The 1970s were full of car stars like a 1971 Chevrolet Impala two-door hardtop.
This is the kind of car a mid-level hoodlum would drive in an early 70s Gene Hackman movie. An Impala hardtop has the flair–but not the cost of a Buick, so when it bites it in a fiery trip over an overpass, it doesn’t kill the budget.
The late 70s might feature a 1973 Coronet wagon to star as cannon fodder in a Burt Reynolds comedy.
It’s just old enough to mesh with the era, but too old to worry about it when it gets mulched by a semi.
An 80s movie would use a car like a 1987 Ford Crown Victoria, and it would star in a family movie.
You’d have a guy like Abe Vigoda as an elderly grandfather behind the wheel of the ’87 Vicky. He has a few fender-benders in the big sedan and the crisis comes when he is forced to quit driving. The family comes together, but there’s no Walt Disney happy ending for the Crown Vic as it gets hauled away in the closing credits.
The last star car is a 1989 Ford Crown Victoria Country Squire LX wagon.
Who other than Chevy Chase would drive a car like this? It would be a comedy but there’s nothing funny about how the Ford wagon exits in a blazing crash.
That’s how it goes for extras (human or automotive) in Hollywood.
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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