One legacy of The Andy Griffith Show has got to be all of the early-60s Ford sedans that have survived as replicas of the police cars Andy and Barney drove. This one is particularly well known in central Indiana. It is parked every day on US 36 across from the courthouse in Danville, a small town 10 miles west of Indianapolis.
It fronts the Mayberry Cafe, an Andy Griffith Show-themed restaurant. The homestyle food is good and the décor is country cute. Big TVs all over the restaurant endlessly loop episodes of the show.
I’m no scholar of the show, but this replica looks really good to me. Check out this still from the show, which I sourced from imcdb.com. The replica car even got the front license plate right.
This stark, Spartan interior was jarring to see. I’m old enough to have ridden in any number of basic sedans with plain vinyl seats and rubber floor mats. I don’t miss it.
I do miss styling touches like the jet-pod tail lights on these early-60s Fords, though. Let me be clear: this is no dig at modern styling. I think the Ford Fusion is lovely and I wouldn’t mind having one in my driveway. But modern cars seem to apply styling directly onto to a form largely created and constrained by safety regulations and aerodynamics. Even if Ford were to go back to big, round tail lights, they’d curve and morph them to fit the car, rather than fit the car to them.
This car looks really good – far better than you’d expect for one that’s always here, even in the snowy months. And I gather that it’s regularly driven. That’s the way we like them.
Related reading: Automotive History: The Involvement of the 1963 Ford in American Society
Nice car and good story of something out of the ordinary, thanks for sharing. I agree, it does look quite good even though I am not a scholar of the show either. If I find myself in Danville, IN, I may have stop for a bite…
+1
Or, as Andy would say, “That was extra good, Aunt Bee!”
How is the food in the Mayberry Cafe? What is the specialty of the house?
I gather that their boneless fried chicken is their best dish. I eat a gluten-free diet, and frankly there wasn’t much on the menu that I could eat! I ended up with a chopped steak dinner, which was good.
I read an article recently that the tourist business to places like Mt. Airy and other Mayberry-themed locales is dropping steadily, as that demographic dies off. i’m sure there’s plenty of kids now who would say “Mayberry?”
We had lunch at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in Branson, MO in 2013. My kids weren’t into it and the place was dead. Eras pass.
My kids wouldn’t know “Mayberry” from “Frankenberry” and would probably like the latter much more than the former.
Two of my kids hold absolutely zero interest in cars other than as a way for mom and dad to take them places. There is, alas, hope for number one son.
That’s why he’s number one. hehehe
Besides Mayberry, the Custom/Galaxie was also used during the earlier episodes of The Fugitive” as a police or sheriff car http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_166799-Ford-Custom-1964.html Later episodes from the final season in color showed also some Plymouth Belvedere/Dodge Coronet.
I have been to the Mayberry Cafe in Danville. Very nice place to visit.
I used to love watching that show on reruns; even today I’ll occasionally catch an episode. As a young car lover, the Galaxies were always my favorite part, along with the other cars (mainly Fords) that wandered in and out of the screen.
Crud, I know this place (and car) is there, but I never remember it when Mrs. JPC and I are thinking of somewhere fun to try.
This may have been the second car they had there, I seem to remember a 62 that they had a number of years ago.
If we are starting to collect the set, I have some shots of a 60 that was parked in Delaware County.
Thankfully they obtained one with the right trim level.
If we are working on a complete set, somewhere I have pictures of the ’62 Galaxie I had. I sold it to a guy in Minnesota; he later sent me pictures of its conversion to a Mayberry car.
Few things irk me more than taking a higher-trim car and turning it into a police cruiser clone. At a car show last year, I saw a police car. Upon closer inspection, it was a 66 Fury III (not Fury I or even Fury II) with cloth seats. This was a perfectly nice little old lady sedan before it got its black and white paint job and gumball light.
Same here.
I’ve seen Royal Monaco Brougham 4 door hardtops, with velour seats, chrome trim, and headlight covers, turned into ‘Bluesmobiles’. Worse is a common late model Crown Vic PI decored as such.
Can’t say I’ve every seen someone convert a civilian Crown Victoria to be a police car replica. Actual police cars are far to common and usually much cheaper too. Now I have seen a number of Police cars that are now daily drivers that someone has installed the interior bits from a civilian car instead of the molded plastic perp back seat and front buckets with sand paper cloth upholstery.
I’ll occasionally see a Grand Marquis used as an unmarked car, with semi-hidden blue lights.
Yup. In the reference above to the Dick Clark restaurant in Branson, MO, there was outside a Monaco hardtop in Blues dress with a fake B pillar taped in place.
I see this a lot in movies when they are trying to portray an earlier time period. As much as I understand what a stickler for details George Lukas was for American Grafitti they still used a ’61 Galaxie for the police car rather than the base model.
I can’t recall the movies, but I have seen 2 and 4 door hardtops as police cars.
A ’59 Galaxie 4-door hardtop (Town Victoria) is used as the NYPD patrol car in “West Side Story”.
This car looks like it was an original police crusier for what I see. The white steering wheel and spartan trimmed interior is correct. I owned an OHIO State police 1958 Ford Tudor Sedan Custom with a Intercecptor V8 and an overdrive. Ford always used special interiors and trim for police versions.
Didn’t some departments order trimmed-up Crown Vics for sneaking around, or even for higher-ranked members of the force? I have seen unmarked versions with civilian hubcaps and chrome. Didn’t fool me, or too many other people.
Even the fake taxicabs the NYPD likes to use fool hardly anyone. First, they have lights. Second, they’re too clean. I think those are used primarily to bust cabbies violating this regulation or that.
It was called the Street Appearance Package (SAP) it was for use as an unmarked police car, detective/administrative car. This was basically a P71 CVPI that was badged and painted like it was a civilian P73 Vic but had the beefed up suspension and rear diff gearing as a regular CVPI. While you could still order a vinyl rear seat (aka the puke seat) you could get it kitted out so it looked like the same car as Grandma Louise had.
Besides the VIN the way to see if it was a CVPI with the SAP or a regular Vic was that the Vic’s made for police duty had the trunk release on the dash under the radio while the regular Vics had the trunk open button on the door.
You know, I can spot a Crown Vic from 2 km away and always could, since they were never all that popular hereabouts due to our hilly conditions. My dear wife, however, wouldn’t notice a P-71 with a bull bar until it crashed into her. Even the newer Chargers are easy to spot, since there are like three civilian ones in all of British Columbia that aren’t rental cars.
No everybody is a car person. In fact, we are a rare, endangered and soon to be extinct species. My wife things more about how much rice is left in the sack than she does about any car on earth. Isn’t it amazing that not everybody doesn’t see the light of our passion? I have tried to sell it to my wife from the “industrial art” perspective, and even that flopped, so it’s never going to happen.
There is a big provincial RCMP HQ not far from where I live and I see the Chief Inspector driving a very nice Crown Vic, one of the last ones, all done up nicely with no cage, etc, a very nice car.
Too shiny… the cars used in the show were always more of a matt black, to avoid reflections of cameras, dollies,light bars, and other studio staff. Even the Bumpers were “dulled” using some sort of grease.
All the VWs used in filming The Love Bug had all the chrome matted and the interior of Herbie was painted grey for the same reason.
When I was art-directing a shoot with an old car, the photographer would invariably pull out the hairspray and use it on the chrome to deal with reflections.
When my ’67 Pontiac Grand Prix was used for a street scene in the movie Hoffa, they sprayed the front bumper with something to keep the reflection down.
Thank you for this explanation to something that puzzled me while watching Green Acres; “Why was the paint on Olivers’ 1969 Marquis Convertible murky and cloudy instead of shiny and new, wet looking.?”
I picked up a great book; Encyclopedia of American Police Cars. It seems Mayberry replicas are a sub-class of their own. I wonder if any genuine set cars still survive intact.
Sadly, they do not. At the end of each season, the car was whisked off to a local Ford dealer and sold as a regular used car.
That is a great book, by the way.
Never seen the show, but did see a 1964 version of the car.
Ugh… the decal over the chrome trim. I’m pretty sure they used the Custom trim level in 64 for the show. My wife tells me I’m a jerk for pointing such things out. Maybe I am…
The Galaxie was beloved by police and a 1963 Galaxie police car was a close up witness to the sad history being made in Dallas TX in November 1963. Shortly after Kennedy was shot and killed, Dallas police office J.D. Tippit was cruising around in a 1963 Galaxie patrol car and spotted a person that fit the description of the man that shot Kennedy. Officer Tippit was shot and killed beside his car. Records show that his car went back out on duty with another officer later that same day. A few years ago it was thought that a Dallas police Galaxie that was rusting away in a bone yard was Officer Tippits car. It was not BUT was used as his car in a movie. This car has now been restored and it comes out to pay tribute to Officer Tippit.
Here is a article on the car
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20091118-Replica-1963-Dallas-police-squad-car-683.ece
Here is what the original looked like in 1963
Tippit’s car was indeed put back into service later that day. Sometime later it was in a wreck and subsequently scrapped.
Andy, I forgot my bullet again.
Too bad it’s not Danville Ill. That would tie in two classic sitcoms, as the fictional Rob Petrie, as well as the real life Dick Van Dyke were from Danville, Ill.
I always liked that the car in front of the courthouse would tell you which season of he show you were watching.
We used to always stay in Danville, IL when my parents would take us to the Indy 500 back in the late ’80s and ’90s. It was only an hour or so to Speedway. We used to stay at the Redwood Inn, a Best Western, but it’s long gone now.
That front license plate is a fake. The dies are much more angular on actual 1963 North Carolina license plates, and they’re narrow enough so there can be two letters and four numbers on a plate.
And re trim lines, the Washington State Patrol 440-powered Plymouths used in 1969 and 1970 were Fury III’s with blue interiors and with air conditioning. I suspect other later WSP cars were non-bottom-line cars as well but don’t know for sure.
The 1963 Fords are my favorite from that generation. They simply, to my eye, represent everything I like styling-wise, that was in the Ford repertoire.