Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Cars Are The Stars: Automobile Brands in Hollywood

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Almost every movie and television show needs cars, and auto companies are happy to supply them – because it helps sell a lot of cars. We’ll look back at James Bond and Starsky & Hutch, and explore auto partnerships with movie franchises like Transformers and Marvel. We’ll also tell a crazy story of how the most sought-after car from a Steve McQueen movie was finally found – and the cosmic coincidence that led to its discovery. Cars are the stars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. You're so king in it. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good man with all teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly.

Back in the early 1980s, the auto industry was ailing. Japanese imports were gobbling up market share. Lee Iacocca was at the helm of the Chrysler Corporation, and he was promoting the products of a newly invigorated company. Iacocca became the spokesman in his own Chrysler commercials because he wanted the public to know that his cars were as good as or better than his Japanese rivals. If a manufacturer doesn't have enough confidence in the quality of what he makes, he doesn't have the right to ask you to buy it. And it doesn't make any difference what he makes, washing machines, toasters, or roller skates. Me,

I'm in the car business. And I've been saying for a long time that Chrysler makes cars that are as good, if not better, than anything coming out of America, Europe, or Japan. Iacocca ended every commercial with this bold taunt. If you can find a better car, buy it. It was a brash campaign, but Iacocca was a brash CEO. He knew the battle against well-made Japanese imports wasn't going to be easy. That's when an enterprising man named Leon Kaplan had an idea, and he pitched it to Iacocca. He wanted a Chrysler vehicle to travel from Japan to the USA under its own power.

It would be a huge publicity stunt, and Kaplan promised it would demonstrate that an American-built automobile was better than anything coming out of Japan. And that suited Iacocca right down to the ground. Now, just one problem remained. How does a car cross the ocean under its own power? Well, Kaplan had a solution. How does a car cross the ocean under its own power? Well, Kaplan had a solution.

He wanted to place a Chrysler on a custom-built 54-foot tri-hull sailing vessel, which would provide stability on the sea. The Chrysler's drivetrain would provide momentum via rollers under the wheels, which would power a hydraulic propeller, and the car's steering wheel would control the ship's rudder. Iacocca wanted to promote the company's flagship product, the Chrysler LeBaron convertible, and he wanted the words, New Chrysler Corporation, to be emblazoned on the sides of the vessel.

The plan was to launch from Japan and arrive at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco two weeks later to be greeted by Lee Iacocca and President Ronald Reagan. Then, the car would drive off triumphantly, top down, to Chrysler's headquarters in Detroit. The television coverage would be sensational. Kaplan began preparing for the trip. He consulted maritime experts about the best route and time of

year to make the journey. A California-based shipbuilder was lined up to build the sailing vessel. It would have a working repair pit under the LeBaron, along with spare parts and tools. A support ship would tag along, providing sleeping quarters, showers, and meals for the crew, along with hundreds of gallons of unleaded gasoline for the car. Mattel even signed on to create a toy version of the car-ship combo. Everything was in place, except two things. Namely, a signed contract from Chrysler and a million-dollar check from Iacocca to pull it all off. That check would normally be pocket change for a car corporation,

but for one big roadblock. The U.S. government had guaranteed $1.5 billion in bank loans to help Chrysler fight off bankruptcy a few years earlier. The agreement stipulated that Chrysler had to cut all extraneous expenses. And a publicity stunt that involved a vessel containing a convertible LeBaron crossing the Pacific from Japan to America, costing $1 million, was at the top of the list of extraneous expenses. With that, Kaplan's all-American Trans-Pacific Automotive Spectacular sunk like a stone. And Lee Iacocca would have to find another way to sell his cars.

Automotive companies are very good at finding ways to sell their cars, and one of the most profitable ways is to look to Hollywood. Most Hollywood movies and television shows need cars, and car companies are happy to provide them. In return for the vehicles, car brands reach massive global audiences who love and lust after the cars they see on the screens. And if car manufacturers are lucky, their cars become stars. You're under the influence. When I was a young whippersnapper growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was an avid TV watcher. I had a lot of favorite shows, including The Invaders,

The FBI, Canon, and The Streets of San Francisco. All of these shows had three things in common. First of all, they all contained this opening credit. Almost every Quinn Martin production had the same announcer. His name was Hank Sims. The Streets of San Francisco, a Quinn Martin production. Hank would also announce the title of every episode. Tonight's episode, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys.

And Hank would do an epilogue at the end of each show. Side note, I worked with Hank once. He was also the longtime announcer at the Academy Awards, and I was doing a movie-based ad campaign and wanted the familiar voice of the Oscars announcer, so we hired Hank. The third thing all these Quinn Martin productions had in common was something I always remembered. Every car in every one of those shows was a Ford. The main characters drove a Ford, the supporting characters drove Fords. And at the

end of every episode, in the credits, it would say, Cars furnished by the Ford Motor Company. Eventually, Ford would move that credit to the start of the episodes. The Ford Motor Company presents the FBI. Quinn Martin produced 16 different TV series and had as many as four running in prime time at once. That kind of exposure would be a very profitable investment for Ford, and it wouldn't be the last. Back in the day, audiences weren't as fragmented as they are now. There were only a handful of television

channels, and if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to your local cinema. So primetime TV shows and motion pictures offered exposure to huge audiences. That meant car brands could become iconic if placed in the right film or television show. The James Bond franchise made Aston Martin famous to this day, and Bond's been driving Astons, with a few detours here and there, since 1964. That's 60 years of fame for that car brand, thanks to 60 years of Bond films.

Interestingly, author Ian Fleming, who created James Bond, had Bond driving a Bentley for the first three novels, Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, and Moonraker. It wasn't until the sixth Bond book, Goldfinger, that Fleming dropped 007 into an Aston Martin. Recently, that very Aston Martin sold for $6 million. In 1967, The Graduate hit theaters. In the film, Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, is given a beautiful red Alfa Romeo spider duetto as a college graduation gift.

The car is in a lot of classic scenes in the film, including the one where Ben drives Mrs. Robinson home from a party at his parents' house. She is the wife of Ben's father's business partner. And in this early scene, Mrs. Robinson tries to seduce Ben. That moment sets the entire movie in motion. The Graduate is one of my favorite films. While Mrs. Robinson seduced Ben Braddock, the Alfa Romeo seduced me.

Many years later, I bought an Alfa. The model I had wasn't the Spider Duetto. However, it was the Spider Graduate model, named after the movie that made it famous. The Love Bug debuted in theaters in 1968. While the Volkswagen Beetle was already beloved, the love bug gave it enduring movie star appeal. When the movie was in pre-production, the car that would star had not yet been chosen. So the director had a dozen different car brands parked outside the studio.

The lineup included many domestic models, some imports like Toyotas and Volvos, and at the end of the line was a 1963 pearl white VW Beetle. When the crew walked by to inspect the cars, they would kick the tires and grab the steering wheels. But when they got to the Beetle, they smiled and began to pet it.

That's all the director needed to see. The VW Beetle got the job. An action series called Starsky and Hutch hit the small screen in 1975. Ken Hutch Hutchinson and Dave Starsky were plainclothes, streetwise detectives who chased dope dealers, muggers, and other assorted criminals. Starsky and Hutch drove a very distinctive car. It was a souped-up Ford Torino, painted bright red with a crisp white stripe down both sides. That paint job made the car famous.

The show was an Aaron Spelling production, and Spelling had wanted a Camaro for the series, but for some reason couldn't secure one. So they settled for a Ford Torino as part of the Ford Studio TV car loan program. Little did they know their second-choice red Torino would become famous, so famous that Ford would factory-build

1,200 Grand Torino Starsky & Hutch Special Edition cars for the 1976 model year. Side note, Paul Michael Glazer, who played Starsky, hated the car. He thought it was ludicrous that two undercover cops would drive around in a sensational fire engine red sports car. For the entire run of the series, Glazer said he always tried to wreck the car during the chase scenes. He hated it that much. But that red and white Ford Torino

may just be the most remembered aspect of that TV show and is still instantly recognizable today. There have been a lot of iconic car brands in Hollywood productions, but the one that got

the most screen time will absolutely surprise you. If I were to ask you which car model had the most appearances in TV shows and movies over the years, which would you pick? The Mustang? The Camaro? Black Chevrolet Suburbans? The answer is going to surprise you. The car with the most Hollywood appearances is

the Ford Crown Victoria. Yep, it's true. The unassuming Crown Vic shows up in 50% more TV shows and movies than any other car in Hollywood history. There's a reason for that. Almost all police cars were Crown Vics, and many taxi cab fleets were Crown Vics. Think of all the movies you've seen with cop cars and cabs.

Chances are most of them were Crown Victorias. The Ford Motor Company held a near monopoly on the market for police vehicles in North America. The official name for the model made specifically for law enforcement is the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. Known as the car you couldn't kill, it was a workhorse that required low maintenance. Police cars don't get a shift off, and the Crown Victoria could take years of 24-hour driving. The taxi version had an extended wheelbase, giving the car six additional inches of legroom. While Ford recently stopped producing Crown Vics, thousands are still in service.

One company that supplies cars to film and television productions here in Canada is called MK Picture Cars. The company has a 400-car inventory, and 112 of them are Crown Vics because it's profitable. Interesting tidbit. For its entire production life, all Ford Crown Victorias were produced by Ford Canada. Chrysler has partnered its Dodge brand with the Fast and Furious movie franchise. The car company took a big interest in the Furious movies because the cars were front and center in the storylines, not just background pieces. The movie franchise gives Dodge a huge audience, as the box office take-to-date is over $7 billion worldwide. Dodge creates commercials

to coincide with the launch of the movies, as it in theaters April 3rd. Dodge is still a partner with the latest entry in the franchise, Fast 10. Only this time, there is an electric Dodge Challenger in the film. The Transformers film franchise has had a big effect on General Motors sales. Beginning in 2007, the franchise has raked in a box office tally of over $5 billion. Transformers is the 13th highest-grossing film series in Hollywood history as of this writing. To give you a sense of how movies affect car sales, Chevrolet Camaro sales were in decline, and GM stopped production of the Camaro in 2003. But in 2006, GM began redesigning the Camaro, and the director of Transformers, Michael Bay, wanted GM to let him use the new Camaro in the film,

but that car wasn't available yet. So Bay used a vintage Camaro instead. That yellow Camaro, called Bumblebee in the film, became a fan favorite. As a result,

over 10% of new Camaros sold in North America were yellow, more than double the usual rate. Becoming involved in the movies was a smart strategic decision by GM. The movies appealed to people 18 to 34, and GM wanted to reach more car buyers in that age bracket. The 2014 Chevrolet Camaro. Performance that will transform your everyday. GM sold about 60,000 Camaros prior to Transformers and consistently sold over 80,000 after the movies were released,

outperforming rival Mustang through to 2014. The Marvel Universe has joined forces with the Audi Universe. It all began with Iron Man in 2008 when Tony Stark drove up in a brand new Audi R8. In Iron Man 2, he drove an Audi R8 Spyder. And in Iron Man 3, Stark rolled up in an Audi R8 e-tron. It was a good match. The movie was about a technically advanced hero, and the newest R8 was the most technically advanced car in the Audi lineup. The partnership resulted in a 30% increased brand awareness for Audi,

and sales have increased every single year since Audi and Marvel shook hands in 2008. The collaboration also produced cross-promotional posters, comic books, commercials, and even short films,

like the very funny Stan Lee Cameo School short film directed by Kevin Smith. As Marvel fans know, Stan Lee made small cameo appearances in over 20 Marvel movies. He played tiny roles like a bartender, a security guard, and even man drinking from bottle. In this short film, Stan Lee pulls up in his Audi, walks into his cameo school, then teaches actors how to deliver tiny, innocuous cameo appearances. I didn't get to be the world's greatest cameo actor overnight. It took years of hard work.

Again, the entire film was produced by Audi. The presence of a car brand in a hit movie can be very valuable to a car company. But the actual cars that star in the movies can also become incredibly valuable. Like this great story. Steve McQueen drove a green Mustang in the classic 1968 movie Bullet. It features one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed. It is revered by car fanatics, and McQueen did a lot of the stunt driving himself. But the Mustang he drove in that movie vanished. It topped the list

of the most sought-after movie cars, but nobody knew where it was. Mustang aficionados speculated on its whereabouts for over four decades. As it turns out, a man named Bob Kiernan had purchased that Mustang in 1974. He had simply answered a classified ad in the back of Road and Track magazine that said, 1968 Bullitt Mustang driven by Steve McQueen in the movie Bullitt.

British racing green, four-speed, new tires, 19,000 miles, mint condition. Can be documented. Best offer. So Kiernan bought the Mustang for $3,500 to use as the family car in Madison, New Jersey. The following year, the family moved to Nashville. Kiernan got a company car, so his schoolteacher wife drove the Mustang as a daily driver for the next five years. Then the car developed a clutch issue and was parked in their barn in 1980. Kiernan and his son Sean worked on the Mustang as a weekend project over the years, but never finished the

job. Then, Bob Kiernan passed away in 2014, and the car just stayed in the barn, untouched, for four more years. Then, along came a coincidence that changed everything. Sean Kiernan was an automotive paint salesman and was driving back from a sales call with his new boss, who was from out of town. They were talking about cars when Sean mentioned he had inherited a car from his father. He said it was a 1968 Mustang GT 390 Fastback. His boss asked him what color it was.

Sean said green. That sounds like the famous Bullet Mustang, his boss said. What Kiernan didn't know was that his boss was an aspiring screenwriter on the side. He told Sean about a script he was shopping around Hollywood about two 18-year-old kids who find the bullet Mustang in a barn, plan to sell it for a fortune, but bad guys arrive,

steal the Mustang, then mayhem and a car chase ensue. After his boss finished telling him the screenplay idea, he asked Sean how close his Mustang was to the original Bullitt Mustang. Sean said, damn near exactly like it. As a matter of fact, he admitted, the car you're talking about, the one that's been lost forever,

is sitting in my barn. I've got it. His boss sat there, dumbfounded. It was a crazy, unbelievable coincidence. Sean's boss excitedly asked to see the car. And there it was, in pieces, in Sean's barn. But the VIN numbers matched up, and Sean even had a letter from Steve McQueen, dated 1977, asking his father if he would sell the Mustang back to him. Sean's boss could hardly breathe. He asked if he could use the car to secure funding for his movie. Sean said the car needed to be reassembled first.

It took five months to put the Mustang back together. As fate would have it, just as Sean tightened the last bolt on the Mustang, Ford made an announcement. It was about to unveil a new Bullitt Special Edition Mustang as it was the 50th anniversary of the Bullitt movie. That's when Sean decided to contact the company. Ford was more than interested and wanted to include the original long-lost McQueen Bullitt Mustang in its 2018 Detroit Auto Show launch of the new Bullitt Mustang production model.

Ford asked Sean how much insurance he had on the Mustang, and Sean said, none. It had just been sitting in his family's barn for years as an unfinished project. The car was actually worth close to $4 million. To keep the unveiling of the McQueen Mustang a surprise until the auto show, the car was spirited to a secret location deep inside Ford's product development complex. Not long after, the day finally arrived. The new green Mustang Bullitt tribute car was launched at the Detroit Auto Show, unveiled by Molly McQueen, Steve's granddaughter.

Then, she pulled back the cover on a second Mustang, the original green Steve McQueen bullet car. The assembled automotive press, car fanatics, and Ford executives all went crazy. The auto world's most sought-after mystery car had finally resurfaced. And all it took was sheer luck, fortuitous timing, and a cosmic coincidence of epic proportions.

Cars and Hollywood both emerged in the early 1900s and grew up in tandem. They've made a great team ever since. Placing car brands in movies and television shows makes for great storylines, and it sells a lot of cars for manufacturers. That Ford Studio car loan plan, going back to the Quinn Martin productions, has paid off.

Ford is the runaway leader in Hollywood, with more than 30,000 appearances in movies and TV shows, more than tripling the appearances of the second-place brand, Chevrolet. Sometimes,

a lot of money changes hands in return for automotive product placement. Other times, the loan of the vehicles is the payment. The studio gets use of the cars. The car company gets global on-screen exposure. And when the movie is part of a franchise like Marvel or the Bond series, car manufacturers get to show off their latest model

in each successive sequel, turning like into lust. It's one of the best ways to drive sales when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Airstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine.

Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This podcast is powered by ACAST. And if you'd like to read next week's fun fact, just go to apostrophepodcasts.ca and follow the prompts. See you next week. Hi, I'm Reid Phillips from Paducah, Kentucky. The Chevrolet Suburban is the first vehicle to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It made its debut in 1952.