The Untouchables

R

rfitzpatrick

Well-known member
Used to stay up late Sunday nite for Eliot Ness's Untouchables, just to view the old cars -- wonder what models were commonly used-
 
Whenever an "Untouchables" script calls for a car to explode or burst into flames, guess what kind of car it is! Yup - a Model A. I own a couple dozen two-episode video tapes that I bought 20 years ago via TV advertising, so I'm fairly familiar with the props. The cops and crooks all drive big cars of the day, but for some reason ($$$$), it's always Model A's that bite the dust. And after their destruction while they're smoldering in their own embers, THEY become the "untouchables".:)
Marshall
 
After the cars and trucks were wrecked on The Untouchables they were dumped on the back lot, known as The 40 Acres, of Desilu Studios. In a gully next to a flood control channel on Jefferson Blvd in Culver City, CA. I must admit to scaling that chain link fence many, many times scavenging Model A and AA parts from the wrecks. The wrecks remained there for many years until a fire station was built on their site.
 
It's hard to believe they had no respect for these old cars in the 1960's when this show was filmed. But then again they were using old sedans mostly and not anything which even at that time would have been considered "rare". None the less it still was an incredible waste of historic property.....
 
Just a couple years ago there was a very nice original rust free 1962 Chevy at the local MACCO paint shop. It was getting painted and then was going to be smashed for a movie. Yes, it's sure a waste just for entertainment. In the 70's I quit going to the demo derby because they were smashing nice original mid 50's cars.
 
Even someday in the future when we're seeing present day cars trashed I'll think to myself 'eehhh' who cares they were plastic throw away cars anyway:)

Unless of course they were Mustangs now that's a different story.
 
Years ago I had a so-so driving/looking '30 town sedan. I was in the "Model-A's Of Greater Orlando" club and was approached by one of the officers in the club. If I would like to sell the car so it could be used (i.e. destroyed) in a gangster movie being made locally with Sylvester Stallone. I politely said no.:p


Bob-A:D


PS: In the Untouchables they were using Lincoln's & Cadillac's. Because
the gangsters and even big city cops back-in-the-day used them too. Gangsters did not drive Model-A's. Model-AA's maybe for hauling large quantities of booze. In the later 30's Bonny & Clyde, Dillinger, etc. liked the V-8 Ford for their speed. They were also not gangsters, but marauding outlaws.
 
I've seen Essex, Chrysler, Cadillac, Buick and Lincoln cars on the show, along with others. Ness and the boys seem to use an Essex a lot.
There's one episode in particular, don't recall which one, but one of the 'old sedan's' rolled over and burst into flames! Only problem is, when it starts to roll over, it suddenly becomes a '50's sedan with dual headlights!!
It looked like an outtake from the movie Thunder Road, with Robert Mitchum!
That gangster went through a time warp somewhere!!
 
I was phone by movie makers if I had a 70 Dodge Charger for wrecking .They were going to strip it and then push it over a cliff in the Dukes of hazard show I said no not mine .
 
If you want to find out what kind of cars were used in any movie or TV series,
go to www.IMCDb.org which is the Internet Movie Car Data Base, you put the movie or series you are looking for, and it shows the makes and models of cars used, and identifies them.

Also, there is www.imdb.com where you can search movies and TV shows for plots, actors involved, trivia, goofs, etc. This is also very interesting if you're looking for info or trivia on old shows.

These can be addicting sites!!

Stew
 
No matter how highly we regard our cars, at some stage they were all just another old car when most of their likes were scrapped. Ours are the lucky few to have survived that dangerous (for the car) period and then only by chance. I figure it is only once most of the model has been destroyed do the survivors start becoming valuable/interesting. If they had all survived, there would be so many they wouldn't be rare or interesting at all.It is only from our vantage point decades later that we recoil in horror at what was done while we go on doing the same thing to worn out cars now.:confused:
I would never allow one of my cars to meet that fate but others obviously were persuaded by a fist full of $.
 
Nowadays a lot of the crashes and etc are computer generated. Watched something on that one time, they scan an old cars and can place it wherever they want. They will use any modern car in a scene, say its a 50's movie, then click on the car moving down the street and go into the database and pick out the car they want, say a 55 chev, and walla, the car driving down the street changes into the 55 chev. Do the same with pedestrians, buildings etc. Amazing.
 
"There's one episode in particular, don't recall which one, but one of the 'old sedan's' rolled over and burst into flames! Only problem is, when it starts to roll over, it suddenly becomes a '50's sedan with dual headlights!!"
Yup -
Ha, ha, ha! I recall that scene! With soooooooooo many films made in the 1930's where cars went over cliffs, blew up, caught on fire or were T-boned in an accident, you'd think the Desilu folks could have found a more believable movie clip to use in that "Untouchables" scene, especially in glorious black & white film. Even audiences back in the late 50's/early '60's watching this episode must have caught that glaring error, too.
Marshall
 
leo said:
It's hard to believe they had no respect for these old cars in the 1960's when this show was filmed. But then again they were using old sedans mostly and not anything which even at that time would have been considered "rare". None the less it still was an incredible waste of historic property.....
Click to expand...

It continues today.
 
Yes, it's a shame those cars were destroyed. But look at it this way. The Untouchables ran 1959 - 63. The restoration hobby was still in it's infancy, there were plenty of Model A around and they would have been at most 35 years old then. That's like a 1983 car now. That qualifies for 25-year-old antique status and I suppose there's somebody out there restoring one. But most would consider a 1983 as just an old (as opposed to antique) car, and therefore not particularly desirable or valuable. There were 118 Untouchables episodes. I don't know how many cars were destroyed but at an average of four per episode, that's less than 500. That's only .01% of Model A production and not all the cars wrecked were Model A.

I once lamented to an old car buddy about cars being destroyed on TV and in movies. He said, "Yeah, but every one that gets wrecked just makes ours more valuable." :D
 
CHuDWah said:
Yes, it's a shame those cars were destroyed. But look at it this way. The Untouchables ran 1959 - 63. The restoration hobby was still in it's infancy, there were plenty of Model A around and they would have been at most 35 years old then. That's like a 1983 car now. That qualifies for 25-year-old antique status and I suppose there's somebody out there restoring one. But most would consider a 1983 as just an old (as opposed to antique) car, and therefore not particularly desirable or valuable. There were 118 Untouchables episodes. I don't know how many cars were destroyed but at an average of four per episode, that's less than 500. That's only .01% of Model A production and not all the cars wrecked were Model A.

I once lamented to an old car buddy about cars being destroyed on TV and in movies. He said, "Yeah, but every one that gets wrecked just makes ours more valuable." :D
Click to expand...

I think they went through something like 350 Chargers filming "The Dukes of hazzard". You can buy 3 or 4 pristine model A sedans for the price of one pristine '68 Charger today.
 
Licensed to kill said:
I think they went through something like 350 Chargers filming "The Dukes of hazzard". You can buy 3 or 4 pristine model A sedans for the price of one pristine '68 Charger today.
Click to expand...


The "General Lee" was a '69 Charger. Reports vary as to the number of cars used in the movie - 350 may be a bit on the high side. But that's still only about 0.4% of the 89,200 production. Reports also vary as to whether '68 and/or '70 Chargers were modified to look like '69. If so, and the respective productions of 96,100 and 49,800 are included, the percentage drops to about 0.15% of the 3-year 235,100 total production. I suspect there are factors other than just rarity that make Chargers more valuable than Model A.
 
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