(first posted 9/5/2017) Ok, so I’m a little late here. Season 2 of Fargo aired during 2015, and I only just finished it this week. Set in 1979 in the titular North Dakota town – as well as Luverne, Minnesota and Sioux Falls, South Dakota – season 2 of this anthology series is a delight for car enthusiasts.
For those who haven’t watched the FX series, in terms of plot the show is unrelated to the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name. Thematically, however, the two are linked: each unique season of the show revolves around the North Dakota/Minnesota area and typically features a hare-brained plot that leads to various gruesome deaths. This is all interspersed with salt-of-the-earth, polite Minnesotans and their unique customs and accents. While seasons 1 and 3 were set in the present day, season 2 was a delightful period piece.
The season started with a tragic accident involving Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst), a local beautician in Luverne, Minnesota. While driving back home in her second-generation Chevrolet Corvair, she hits a man in the middle of the road and decides to drive off with the man still wedged in the windshield of her rear-engine Chevy.
That man was Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin), a member of the Gerhardt crime family out of Fargo, who was busy at the Waffle Hut killing three people before he was hit by Peggy. His car was this 1971-73 Ford Mustang; next to it is this W116 Mercedes S-Class belonging to his intended target, a judge.
During the show, you see quite a bit of the Corvair, inside and out, as it is integral to the plot.
For what was supposed to be a Beetle competitor, the Corvair was truly a stunning automobile.
Peggy’s husband Ed (Jesse Plemons), a butcher in Luverne, drives a Ford F-Series. Truck experts, I’ll leave it to you to pinpoint the year and trim.
He isn’t the only character who likes his trucks built Ford tough. Hanzee (Zahn McClarnon), an employee of the Gerhardt crime family, also has an F-Series.
The Gerhardt crime family is loyal to the Ford Motor Company with few exceptions. Rye’s brother, Dodd (Jeffrey Donovan), drives a stunning Lincoln Mark V.
The Mark V was truly one of the most beautiful American personal luxury coupes.
The Lincoln replaced a 1973 Imperial LeBaron Dodd drove earlier in the season.
The patriarch of the crime family, Otto (Michael Hogan), was driven around in this 1966 Chrysler New Yorker.
Dodd’s daughter, Simone (Rachel Keller), drives this 1976 Chevrolet Nova. This seems a logical casting choice for a young, care-free female character—a Granada would have been a bit too stuffy, a Maverick or Dart too old-fashioned.
As for the rest of the Gerhardt garage, there’s this Ford LTD II, driven by a henchman, that you can see in the above photo…
…and another Lincoln Mark V, plus an earlier Mark VI and yet another Ford F-Series, driven by middle child Bear (Angus Sampson).
The gang also have another Lincoln, a ’75-79 Continental sedan.
Here’s a shot of the menacing Gerhardts’ Lincolns looking menacing… as the Gerhardts are busy menacing people.
The Gerhardts enter into a turf war with the Kansas City outfit, themselves a long way from home but aggressively expanding to new areas. Their enforcer, Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), is chauffeured around in this 1969 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight. It’s a little older and less flashy than the Gerhardts’ Lincolns, that’s for sure, but it’s quite a looker down to the brocade upholstery inside.
The Kansas City gangsters seem to prefer GM, as you can tell from this photo. There’s a 1971 Cadillac de Ville and a GMC pickup in the foreground, with a 1971-73 Buick LeSabre or Centurion in the background. They do have one of their enemy’s cars, however—a 1975-79 Lincoln Continental.
So, we’ve seen what the bad guys drive. What do the good guys drive?
The series’ protagonist, State Trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson), has this 1975 Plymouth Gran Fury.
His squad car is actually a hardtop, which surely mustn’t have been a common choice by police departments in the day. However, let’s think about how many 1970s full-size Mopars are still out there, considering how many Mopar squad cars were destroyed in shows like The Dukes of Hazzard…
Back home, Solverson’s wife Betsy (Cristin Milioti) drives a Ford Granada.
Betsy’s father is the Rock County Sherriff, Hank Larsson (Ted Danson), whose squad car is a 1977 Chevrolet Caprice. Again, that’s probably not 100% accurate, as police departments would have preferred the cheaper Impala. However, it is period correct.
If we want to get really picky, this 1976 Plymouth Gran Fury belonging to Fargo Detective Ben Schmidt (Keir O’Donnell) might be a bit unrealistic. Not because it’s a Gran Fury, a popular choice among police departments, but because…
…it’s a Brougham.
There are two other car casting choices that also seem a bit off. Firstly, there’s this beautiful 1976 Cadillac Eldorado, driven by a man who runs a convenience store on the highway. While appropriate for the era, it seems an odd-choice for a mild-mannered, folksy shopkeeper in the Midwest. He does proudly keep a photo of it hanging in his store though, so maybe he just decided to treat himself.
Then there are the Mercury police cars driven by officers in Rock County. Were Mercurys ever common as police cars?
Unlike other period shows and films, the background cars are all era-appropriate. Nothing takes me out of a TV show or film quicker than seeing anachronistic cars, even if it’s in a fleeting background shot. Here’s a motel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with Det. Schmidt’s Gran Fury visible.
The motel adjoins a used car lot.
Here’s a passing motorist’s Ford LTD Country Squire…
…a 1974 Mercury Comet…
…and a beautiful Pontiac which the Internet Movie Car Database has recorded as a ’67 Parisienne from Canada.
A hapless typewriter salesman drives this AMC Gremlin…
…while some South Dakota state troopers drive this ’77 Caprice.
Finally, here’s a sight that may be familiar to those of you who were alive in the 1970s: a huge lineup at a gas station. What can you see in this photo?
It must be getting increasingly difficult to source 1970s cars for period films and TV shows, especially a fleet of cars that accurately represent a cross-section of what was on the road at the time. A production can get era-appropriate cars and still miss the mark in terms of realism. For example, the opening scenes of this year’s Atomic Blonde show 1989 London as consisting almost entirely of MGBs, like a British version of the highway scene in Live and Let Die. A production can also drop the ball with background vehicles they don’t expect you to pay attention to, like those seen through the windows of a car just a few minutes later in Atomic Blonde.
Season 2 of Fargo was extremely entertaining (up until a rather dismal finale). The show also seems to have depicted the 1979 Midwestern carscape relatively well. Then again, I didn’t grow up in the Midwest in the 1970s so perhaps my fellow Curbsiders can tell me: how accurate did they get it?
No mention of the MC-9 tour bus?
Looks like pretty spot-on car-casting! The one sour note for me is the cheap fake wire wheel covers on the Imperial–that’s the kind of thing I’d expect to see on a beat-up Celebrity in 1991, not on an Imperial that was only six years old. Then again, maybe they were common in the 70’s too–I wasn’t around to notice. It just seems to me that the renaissance of fake wire hubcaps happened in the 80’s, but the factory pieces looked a damn sight better than the cheap knock-offs.
As to the Mercury cruisers, there was recently a discussion in a car-centric Facebook group of which I am a member regarding the correct models for late 70’s cruisers. The main topic was whether or not a relatively high-trim Royal Monaco with hidden lamps could have actually seen police duty (the answer was yes, as there was no lower-trim counterpart for ’76-’77). But someone presented as evidence a chart from Road & Track detailing what equipment was used by all 50 State Police forces for ’77. One state, I forget which, had the Mercury Marquis listed as its secondary squad. So, it sounds plausible to me. Also of interest–only one state was using any format of the newly downsized GM B-body, and that one was the Pontiac version as you could still get it with the 400 V8. For as common as the 350 Impala would become in police livery, it still was passed over in favor of 440-powered Chryslers for the most part in ’77.
Yes! Those cheap aftermarket wire wheel covers stuck out like a sore thumb to me too. And no, they really weren’t common at all in the 70’s. As a matter of fact they probably weren’t commonly available until almost a decade later, after a seemingly endless period between 1979-ish and 1986-ish when just about anything that didn’t have pop up headlights and rear window louvers came from the factory with OEM examples. The cheap knockoffs were a product of the mid 80’s mostly.
I love the car casting overall though, and I have no problem overlooking the niggling finer points like broughams and hardtops used as police cars, etc. The background settings are spot-on for the period too. I would add though that in most of the Midwest in the late 70’s I’d imagine that anything older than 5 years or so would be sporting at least some rust, although I don’t know enough about North Dakota to know anything about salt use there. (Logically though it would seem fruitless to use a whole lot of salt in that kind of climate.)
It was actually Car&Driver, and here’s the link.
http://copcardotcom.fotki.com/miscellaneous_photo/vehicle_manufacture/car–driver-magazin/
Wow, I had no idea how common Pontiacs were as police cars!
Thanks for the link.
AFAIK, only for that brief period where Chevy only offered the small block in patrol cars and you could still get the Pontiac 400 in Colonnades and B bodies. It didn’t last more than a couple of years.
Driving A Rear Wheel Drive On Ice&Snow.No Thanks.
It can be done. All you is the right snow tires (on all four corners) and an easy right foot on the go pedal.
I grew up in the adjacent part of Iowa at around the same time, so here’s my thoughts:
1. Not nearly enough Oldsmobiles, and the absence of a Cutlass (the best-selling car in the US at that time) is highly problematic. It would be like setting a story in the present time without a single SUV or crossover.
2. Pintos, Monzas, and Chevettes were very, very common in the area at that time as well. Simone would have driven the cute little Chevette, not the dowdy Nova.
3. Where are the 1971-1976 GM B-bodies? I mean, there’s a Catalina in the motel shot, but the older, bigger B-bodies were no worse than the fifth most common vehicles on the road at that time. A series set in Siouxland should have had plenty of them, with plastic bug deflectors across the front of the hood.
4. The shopkeeper’s Eldo is indeed out of character. A 98 Regency coupe wouldn’t be.
5. There were weird police cars around the area at the time. The Iowa State Patrol was using ’77 LeMans sedans, for instance. So I can’t rule out the Merc; it all depends on the dealer and the bid.
6. Somebody should have had a Rabbit or an Omni or a Horizon. The Upper Midwest was very quick to adopt front-wheel drive for obvious reasons.
Yes, needs more Cutlasses and 88s. And Dusters, there were lots of Dusters in the midwest in the 70s. Ford LTDs also seem to be underrepresented.
But I agree with William, it has to be hard to scare up what was common in the 70s. Of the older cars that were still common, You would still see the occasional late 50s sled running around and 60s stuff was still quite common. Look at any streetscape shot in the 70s and it is amazing how many old cars were still out and running.
International Scouts, Travelalls, and pickups would have been common back then in the upper Midwest. Finding one to use in film would be tough today.
No not hard at all, as I mentioned elsewhere I know people from the international forum who have rented or sold their IH’s for use in movies, videos and print ads.
What a hoot. Well done, William — your post represents quite an effort at screen-grabbing. Thanks for the show !
I wince in amazement at the car-nage [sorry] we see in movies and TV shows. I still recall the horror of seeing a pre-war Continental being demolished before our eyes with hot lead, in “The Godfather.” That lovely Corvair in your second photo can’t possibly have been treated to a broken windshield, can it ? Or am I hopelessly naive . . .
I know that multiples of a single model are sometimes used in movies — weren’t there four identical ’58 Furies employed in the making of “Christine” ? The “Tucker” movie producers rounded up at least eight cars for the occasion, and had a dummy body made of fiberglass, on a rolling chassis of some other make, for a wreck scene.
“the horror of seeing a pre-war Continental being demolished before our eyes with hot lead, in “The Godfather.” ”
I saw that car in the late 70s at the Auburn auction, or at least what was purported to be the car. It was a really rough car that had explosive charges put into holes that were drilled for the purpose and then the whole thing was shot with a black paint job that looked terrible unless you were 100 feet away. Which is about the distance of the camera when the charges were detonated.
There were over 20 real Tuckers and 4 replicas on LTD (71-73 chassis) and a 51 TuckerBaker for the crash scene. If I could figure out how to get to my files I have full photos during filming. In Christine I heard the number of ’57-’58 Plymouths used was 27-28. I was making a deal to buy a ’57 Belvedere 2dr ht the production company offered more for. Also, a ’64 tan Imperial I once owned, the fellow I sold it to sold it for use in “Green Hornet”. It was a beautiful, low mileage car they destroyed in the filming.
Will, Missouri used Mercury cruisers for years. A similar Marquis is on display at the highway patrol museum here in Jefferson City.
The ’77 Caprice is wrong as it would have been the cheaper Impala.
The four door hardtop Plymouth is also wrong. It at this point they likely went with what could be found.
The F Series pickups appear to be ’74 to ’79 for the most part. The second was a 3/4 ton.
Wasn’t the lower-trimmed Monterey who was used as highway patrol cars instead of the Marquis? Like this 1968 model http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1968-mercury-monterey-no-mr-mcgarrett-doesnt-work-here/ or this 1970 model.
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2013/06/12/hemmings-find-of-the-day-1970-mercury-monterey/
The Monterey was gone after 74. Mercury called all of its big cars Marquis beginning in 75, and adding “Brougham” or “Grand” as you went up the ladder.
What timing, I watched the first episode last night! My childhood memory of the 70’s has a higher proportion of GM cars in general and more smaller American cars like Valiants/Darts/Dusters/Mavericks, etc. I grew up in TN so I’m not sure what it was like in the Midwest. Imports were not uncommon at all in TN, so those are missing as well. Even today when traveling in the Midwest I notice a much higher percentage of American brands than the Southeast. My understanding at the time was Fords were favored by more rural folks, but I was just a car crazy kid in a loyal GM family.
One cross country trip in the mid 80’s, in my 77 New Yorker Brougham, we pulled into a restaurant in the midwest for lunch, there were 30-35 cars there in the parking lot. Every one of them was the New Yorker downsize rear wheel drive Fifth Avenue. I suddenly realized who was buying all those Fifth Avenues. It was a surreal experience.
They film that very close to me so I know exactly where some of those locations are including that top scene. Every once and a while a car comes for sale with history of being on the show.
Not enough Colonnade and other intermediates. Also absent are any Vegas or more conspicuous by their absence the Pinto and Mustang II. The Cutlass was at the top of the sales charts and living in the midwest at the time they certainly were very common on the streets as were the Pintos and Vegas that were also good sellers in the years after the first energy crisis.
A very nice review. I have not seen the show and will have to watch for it.
My gripe in car casting is as some have pointed out. Police cars were never 4 door hardtops. And crime bosses (and anyone under 70 who could afford otherwise) never drove around in 10 year old cars, which would have been rusted to swiss cheese in that climate back then.
That said you tended to see more Mopars represented as they aged because their buying demographic skewed older so they were often cared for more, and also because their basic guts were pretty stout.
Successful people drove late model stuff, under 5 years old. Working stiffs and kids drove the 8-12 year old stuff. Only the elderly and tightwads and oddballs drove stuff that was older.
Look at the Missouri Dodge fleets of cop cars in ’58-59 (and probably more years), they had 2 and 4 door sedans, and hardtops. Why, I don’t know, but photos exist of the cars. I was given a ticket in the south in around 1974 by a ’74 Plymouth Gran Fury 4 door hardtop in full markings. It WAS a small town and they may have just used that model. Some police depts use strange things. On the east coast on a family trip in 1965, I think in Connecticut but not sure, there was a ’65 black Imperial Crown 4 dr ht in full markings, and wide whitewalls.
Just like the military, the police have to deal with the reality of “remember, all of your equipment was manufactured by the lowest bidder”.
Forgot about the convertible cop cars Ohio had, had photos of a ’49 and 57 Ford Fairlane 500 (the 57) convertible. The caption said Ohio ordered a few convertible squad units each year, not stating for what purpose.
Nicely written William.
That series seems to be an interesting one.
Yes while it was true that the police car should have been a 77 Impala instead of the more expensive caprice, It is not outside the realm of possibility. back in the 1970’s most entities that bought fleet cars, bought them from a dealership’s fleet department as the advent of drop shipping had not yet been fully embraced. Lets say a police department placed an order with the local chevy dealer for 5 new 1977 Impalas by a set date. The dealer only has 4 Impalas and no other dealership around has another Impala, the dealership not wanting to lose a sale might substitute a entry level Caprice for that Impala. The two cars in sedan guise look somewhat alike. This might happen close to the end of the model year when dealerships are trying to rid themselves of stock for the next years models.
Of course some police departments also could have ordered the Caprice instead of the Impala. Perhaps the fleet sales department offered a good deal on Caprices. Or perhaps a police department needed to replace a police car due to an accident and there was a 2 month wait for a Impala but only a 2 week wait for a Caprice, a police dept that needs a car asap, might opt to buy a Caprice rather then wait 2 months for the Impala. I would give the Fargo Caprice a pass as it could have well been an actual police car.
Augusta, Maine Police Dept. ran a fleet of Volvo’s back in the 80’s. Strange but true. They went back to real police cars after the reality set in that the Volvo’s weren’t fast enough to catch anybody with.
In addition, Aspen, Colorado used Saabs for many years-
Saab Police Cars in Aspen
Latterly, Crown Vics weren’t fast enough to catch anyone either.
They were rated at 130 mph. Fast enough I suspect for anyone dumb enough (in some POS) to try to outrun.
I wonder how acceleration figures compare to fairly mundane cars. I mean, it’s not always possible to achieve 130mph on a public road – it’s not a drag race – and handling can play a part too.
I saw one of those police chase shows years ago where the driver of a battered Rabbit (who clearly had no sense of fair play) evaded a P71-mounted cop by doing devious things like driving around corners. The chase only ended because the Rabbit drove into someone’s back yard and collided with an immovable object. Possibly a hutch.
I just recently caught a rerun of Mythbusters recently where the myth they tested was about a guy seated in the back of a police car between two overweight officers, which supposedly protected him in a crash (It doesn’t — don’t try it at home). The cars they used for the test were Volvo 240 station wagons, which they stated were the specific model mentioned in the myth (not by name, mind you, as they always refrain from mentioning specific brands, but that’s obviously what they were). I was thinking that that myth surely must have come from Europe, because surely no American police department would use Volvos. I guess I was wrong.
La Conner, Washington used Renault Le Cars for police work.
Were the Le Cars used as “real” patrol cars, or were they just for meter maid work and that sort of thing?
They were used as real patrol cars. La Conner, Washington is a really small town, in Skagit County, approximately 65 miles north of Seattle. ( I grew up in Burlington, a somewhat larger town in Skagit County). La Conner is somewhat reminiscent of a New England small-town fishing village. Quaint, in other words (actually a neat little town). The Le Cars replaced an early 70’s Chevy Bel Air wagon that was used as the town cop car. La Conner used them up until the early 80’s, going back to more ‘normal’ police vehicles (hand-me-downs from the Mount Vernon, WA-biggest town in Skagit County)
Geniale! “Le Car” pour “les flics!”
Hampden, Maine PD also ran Volvos in the 80’s
To me, the most believable one is the vinyl-topped Gran Fury Brougham, since the big GMs were hot sellers to retail customers and the big Mopars not so much.
Warning! Spoiler alert if you still haven’t watched it…
When Ed is purposely trying to crash Peggy’s Corvair into a tree in order to cover up the damage from when she hit Rye, but hits a patch of ice, spins around, and smashes up the back of the car instead… I always wondered if that was meant as a subtle joke about the Corvair’s infamous handling issues. I know the car they used was a second generation model that had that problem fixed, but the writers might not have known that, or they might have simply written that Peggy drove a Corvair without specifying the year, and that one was the only one they could find.
Also, seasons 1 and 3 weren’t exactly set in the present day. Season 1 was set in 1996 if I remember correctly, and 3 was set in 2010 or 11 (again, going from memory) and made numerous references to the then quite recent recession. Season 3 also prominently featured a Hummer H3, which I’m sure was intentional.
oh my that mustang convertible on and in that snow
hurts me to my heart
Another one I’m questioning – gas lines in North Dakota during the Arab Oil Embargo.
I’ve questioned family and they never experienced lines for gasoline in the Midwest. There were certainly lines out east, but nothing inland from what I’ve been told and have read here.
Thus I’m skeptical on the reality of a gas line in North Dakota.
Will, I’m really not trying to poke holes in a show you enjoy. They’ve done a good job casting cars for this as the Torino in the lead picture really sticks out and is quite true to actuality.
I don’t know what was going on in ND/MN during the Arab Oil Embargo, but I can tell you that we had lines and rationing here in the Milwaukee-Chicago region. Bad time to be driving a 13 MPG Ambassador.
Only problem I have with the cars is most of the older ones are WAY too nice to have spent their lives in the Upper Midwest.
I grew up in Minnesota. We had gas shortages and lines in the Minneapolis / Saint Paul area and their surrounding suburbs. They didn’t last all that long after the initial panic from what I recall, however; maybe a month?
No water off my back, Jason! I wasn’t in charge of props on the show, after all.
That job would be fun yet frustrating for a car enthusiast.
As we get further and further into the era of market fragmentation the gulf between “what people wanted when they were new” and “what people preserve and make available to car casters from that era” will only get wider. Thus you get phenomena like Stranger Things’ version of 1984 Indiana that was somehow completely devoid of the Chrysler K-Car, or Fargo’s Vegalessness…
Speaking of Stranger Things, and The Goldbergs, Mike’s mom and Beverly Goldberg both drive identical-except-for-color box Panther Mercury Colony Parks which I don’t remember ever being common when new. And then CBS previewed its’ 1989-set Big Bang Theory spinoff “Young Sheldon” and we see his mom driving…a Colony Park!
Just think, somewhere out there is a bright, observant kid with a take on what he sees that others find funny who will write of his childhood. And publish it, and on a long enough timeline it’ll be filmed and his respectable professional mother will be driving someone’s ratted-out, stickerbombed trail rig because that’s the only mid-2010s RAV4 the car casters could find…
Great article and research William. The Gran Fury was a popular choice of the Ontario Provincial Police in the mid to late 70s. Always with proper cop car hub caps, and the fender mounted ‘STOP’ light.
They never had any body side trim.
The comment about Atomic Blonde made me think. It must be easier for producers to find 1970s cars (and possibly 60s and 50s) than 1980s and 90s cars, as they had become so disposable.
Huge numbers of ordinary cars are exported or were crushed during the scrappage scheme, so presumably in a few years shows set in the 90s will be full of Sierra Cosworths and Audi Quattros.
The Americans did a particularly nice job for an early 1980s setting.
This show and the other Fargo series were shot in and around Calgary, Alberta.
I enjoyed this one a lot, esp. that I now live in the uppper Midwest. Having lived through the era as a young adult, the overall look of the photos is darned “period,” rather than having all those anachronisms screaming at me. Yeah, the actual population/breakdown of cars isn’t quite right (no Vegas or Pintos, etc.), but I won’t quibble with that. (Oh, and there ought to be some seriously rusty cars in sight, too.)
For Photo #32 (“What can you see…?”) is that a too-contemporary MN license plate on the Pontiac at our left?
*****************************
Related issue: I spent lots of researcher-time with online archives of older photographs (generally newspaper type stuff rather than “arty” things), and it hurts me when there’s a cityscape that is only identified as “ca. 1930-1960.” If there are enough cars there, we know it’s possible to narrow it down to a pretty small window, really.
Nit picking aside, thank you William for the overview. I’ve overlooked Fargo in my occasional quest for binge-worthy series. I’ll put it on my list now, even though only one of the three seasons is a period piece. I’m in the market for a potential hurricane shut-in binge later this week, provided the power holds out, as we were lucky enough to have happen last year during Matthew.
My endless streaming commentary and criticism of fashion, interior design and cars during any period-set movie or show makes my partner insane to the point that I’m often relegated to another room or unceremoniously ordered to shut up, so I’ll be sure to catch Season 2 alone.
Oh, so that doesn’t only happen in my house? Good to know.
Thank you William for the selection, I enjoyed the second series precisely because of the sets and cars – the third seems sterile in comparison.
And Ed’s basement…woe. Glad I’ve still got some way to go with the hoarding, not much, but some.
Stay safe, MTN.
Season 1 left me cold and I didn’t follow through with it. Season 3 didn’t excite me enough to warrant my watching it yet. Season 2, honestly, was excellent… until the final 2 episodes which I truly hated. Critics seemed to like how they wrapped things up but I didn’t. And I try to avoid critics anyway nowadays… How are they more qualified to give an opinion on a show or movie than anybody else?
Watch it, and let me know what you think!
Incidentally, I should point out I enjoyed the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading even though so many people hated it. But the ending of season 2 of Fargo just unsatisfyingly wrapped things up, instead of the almost hilariously sudden conclusion to Burn After Reading.
Anything small, boxy and FWD from the ’80s tends to be treated as disposable and unwanted until it’s almost too late for preservation so those disappear entirely.
For the more traditional Detroit iron, muscle creep is a thing; it was built as a comfy cruiser, a nice sensible Brougham in a muted color made for smooth wafting. But *now* it’s painted a high-impact color, has huge wheels and a cam so lumpy that you can’t have your actors doing main dialogue within a block of it…
I loved this series and give it a B-Plus on the cars. That gas station scene was interesting to me as it had 2 Canadian Pontiacs (65 Parisienne Custom Sport & 68 Grand Parisienne ) and the clapped-out wagon was a ’68 Meteor.
The hardtop Gran Fury as a cop car was a bit of a fail, but as pointed out, availability
was likely an issue. In ’79, Minnesota was using the R-Body St. Regis, (try finding any R-Body now!) so I guess the GF was sort of a stand-in for it, both having unframed door glass. There was one scene with a raid on the Geerhardt compound with 3 unmarked cars, one of which was an ’81 Newport ,so they found one at least.
I also find it questionable that mob figures would be driving 10 to 13 year old cars
(Kansas City-’69 Olds, Geerhardt patriarch, ’66 Chrysler ) but whatever. And Dodd’s Imperial would have looked a lot better with proper wheelcovers and a straight antenna.
I’m sure each region had its prolific models back then. If I think back to my own neighborhood on Long Island in 79, the thing that comes to mind is that there were still a sizable amount of mid to late 60’s cars still in use, few imports, and of the newer cars, without question, the 73-77 GM colonnades were the most popular. Just within a two block radius were the following : 73, 76 and 77 Monte Carlos, two 73 Chevelles, both coupes, a 74 Malibu ClassicLandau, 74and 75 Cutlass Supreme coupes, 73 LeMans Sport Coupe, 73 Buick Regal Coupe, 76 Buick Special Coupe, 75 Century Estate wagon, 75 Century sedan, and a 77 Grand Prix. Ford mid size cars only had two representatives, a 73 Gran Torino wagon and a base model 74 Torino sedan. Big 70’s GM cars were only represented by my Dad’s 74 Impala, a neighbor three doors down had a 75 Caprice, and across the street resided a 72 Electra 225 Coupe. Imports consisted of two Volvo 240 DL’s a Volvo 164 and a Datsun 240Z. There was one Vega, my friend’s mother owned a red 74 Kammback. I also remember one Chrysler, a 73 Newport sedan that was already looking pretty tired, with numerous dents, blackwall tires and four missing wheel covers. It resided at the house that had the Volvo 164, which also was in pretty rough shape for its age at the time. Here were also three 1970 Chevelles in the neighborhood, two Malibu coupes, and a Malibu Sport Sedan owned by my friends Dad, same family with the red Vega. 60’s cars included my Dad’s 68 Impala, my 68 Impala and 68 NovaSS, my 65 Impala SS convertible. My neighbors with the 74 Torino also had a 66 Custom 500 2 door sedan. There was a 66 Impala, 66 Bonneville, 68 Firebird, 68 Camaro, 69 Chevelle Malibu, 64 Buick Skylark and a 69 GTO. My neighbors to the right had a 71 Dodge Tradesman van, 71 Chevelle Greenbrier wagon and a 70 Impala. The neighborhood had one corvette, a burgundy 70 owned by an older woman who rarely took it out of the garage. it’s amazing how there was not a single Toyota, or pickup truck in the neighborhood. In the 80’s, many of the colonnade cars were traded in for G bodies, which probably isn’t so unusual. Sure neat that this got me thinking about all those cars in my neighborhood back in the day!
Not a single Japanese car. Bliss.
Ehh, if it weren’t for the Japanese, the Big 3 wouldn’t have picked up their game and started building better-quality cars as well as small, fuel-efficient cars. Even then, there was some kicking and screaming before we got to the highly competitive Focuses and Cruzes of today.
That being said, there are more American cars from the 1970s that I’d have in my dream classic car garage than Japanese ones (if we exclude exciting JDM models). That doesn’t make them paragons of quality or efficiency or dynamic ability, though.
One, actually. A ’78-79 Celica coupe in the photo with the Gremlin. It’s presence betrayes the accuracy of the plot being set in 1979, as it has a set of wheels that did not debut until 1982 on that year’s Supra ?
You apparently missed the Toyota Celica across the street from the Gremlin.
WRONG!, there was a Celica coupe in the background of the Gremlin X. 🙂
OOPS! Paul beat me to mentioning it!!
Re the comment about the cars being in unrealistically good condition: I guess the remedy would have been some fake rust ? There aren’t too many collectors who could provide realistically aged rolling stock for the movies — from any era, probably ?
When I saw the rear shot of the white New Yorker, I immediately what it was. My Dad bought one new. It was white with medium blue padded vinyl rear pillars & blue interior. There was two things that car didn’t do……..didn’t pass many gas stations (440 CID) & I didn’t want to stay in park. Dealer never did fix it. Funny story…my Dad makes a stop at the Post Office, puts in park & jumps out really quick (he was always in a hurry). He’s about to go in when hears something yelling. He turns to see the New Yorker rolling backwards out into the street !!!!! Fortunately it didn’t hit anybody or anything. Man was he pissed. I drive it a few times. It was a boat but it was pretty fast.
I don’t know how many people remember, but in the late 70s Ford was sued to Timbuktu because of automatic transmission cars falling out of park into reverse, in some cases killing people when the open driver’s door knocked them down and then the car would run them over. I remember an instance where a lady was killed at an intersection with numerous people looking on as the car slowly did circles in reverse while she was being dragged underneath.
There was no real “fix” for this issue, which covered Ford cars going back over a decade. Ford paid millions in a class action suit and mailed every Ford owner with a car currently registered a sticker to put on the dashboard instructing the driver to make sure the car is in Park before exiting the vehicle. We received one for a ’69 Fairlane we briefly owned.
Ford wasn’t the only manufacturer with this issue; I knew of a friend’s elderly neighbor who was killed when she parked her ’66 Electra and it fell out of park. A jogger found her with her head crushed after he noticed the unoccupied, running car backed into the gate post.
This is why ALL cars now require that you depress the brake pedal in order to shift out of park.
“This is why ALL cars now require that you depress the brake pedal in order to shift out of park.”
I don’t recall the brake/gearshift interlock in cars before the early 90s. The recall on those Fords was in the late 70s. I had understood that the interlock device was a response to the “sudden accelleration” problem that got a lot of attention in the mid 80s. Audis were most noted for it but after all of the publicity there were many reports on many kinds of cars. Because most engineers believed that having the wrong pedal pushed in shifting caused the problem, the interlock was a foolproof way to be sure that the driver was stepping on the brake.
The Ford recall involved a soft cast detent in the shifter mechanism that would wear down, making it easy for the car to pop out of Park. My 67 Galaxie 500 never jumped out of Park on its own, but it certainly took very, very little effort to move that lever to Reverse. I agree that the brake pedal interlock would have been a better fix than the little sticker on the dash.
A very nice lady in the theater group I performed with for years had a cherry condition 71 or 72 LTD 4dr ht. The town she lives in is Paradise Ca, which has more steep hills than San Francisco (here aren’t any level roads there). She stopped at a flower shop to just run in and pick up some flowers. The shop was at the top of one of the steeper hills. You guessed it. The Ford popped into reverse. When she saw it, the car was doing about 45, turning slightly. The rear of the Ford hit the front of the only Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (new) in town, THEN the Ford spun around, catching the drivers side of a new Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 sedan raking it full length. It was then going up the next hill, halfway, it started back down, taking out a ’70 Fleetwood 60 special broadside, and ending the rampage. The LTD still was driveable, in a Dirty Harry sort of way. The upshot of the event, She and her husband got a settlement large enough to take a European vacation for a few months, and bring back two Mercedes 450 SEL’s of their own, which they still have. Ford replaced the damaged cars.
Great TV series, I need to buy season 3. I’m assuming most of the cars used in the series were sourced from owners and dealers in the Calgary area where season 2 of Fargo was again filmed. So its not surprising some of the police vehicles were not period or model correct.
It would be a challenging job to source particular models for a show or movie depending on the locale. Especially Japanese cars of a particular era. They’ve all rusted into the ground!
Frankman Motors in South Dakota is advertising a 1971 Mercury Monterey police car that they say is one of 564 Mercury police cars produced between 1967-1974.
I’ve never seen the series but saw the movie of the same name when I was a teenager. All I remember about the movie was the wood chipper and tons of Oldsmobiles
The small town I grew up in, Angola, NY, used ’71, or maybe they ’72, Delta 88s. They only had 3 or 4 cars total. The village manager owned the local Olds dealer, Catalano Chevy-Olds. Must’ve been a better profit margin than selling Chevys.
Growing up in southern Illinois farm country, the most popular cars seemed to me to be, as time went on, ’64 Chevys, ’65 Belvederes, ’65 & ’66 Chevys, lots of Oldsmobiles, and then (as I entered high school) 2nd-gen Camaros and new 2nd-gen Monte Carlos. Plus the odd Ford Elite & ’77 or so Thunderbird. And Chevettes (good luck finding one of those that runs). The ‘counterculture’ had VW vans and old Mercedes, the latter of which were all assumed to be diesel (mine wasn’t).
Not a single AMC in sight, with their superlative WeatherEye heaters for cold midwest winters? That rather is glaring by their absence.
Has anybody else noticed, on Lou’s cruiser, letters are missing on the front of the hood. The paint looks new and holes are very noticeable in close up shots. It looks to me like the car was dispatched before the owner had time to insert the letters.
Fargo s02e03 at 39:15m
I know this thread is old, but maybe someone will be notified of a new post. You guys seem to know every car in this episode except the one that has me and my gear head stumped. In the much discussed gas station scene a car with no insignia pulls up behind Officer Solverson.
We thought it might be a VW (no), Russian, Indian? Help?
That’s got to be some kind of VW Type 3. The bumper is wrong in terms of anything that I know of, but otherwise, it looks like a VW without the emblem.
Obviously rear-engined.
Joe Dorgan Collector and restorations of old police lights and sirens outfitted the Sherrif and State police cars with the visibar lightbars and the RV 25 lightbars with the clear strips through the lenses .Fun project for me .Its cool to look back at some of the movies that I was able to help out with vintage old school lights and sirens
Very good faux North Dakota license plates (who would’ve custom stamped them?), with the only inaccuracy being the 3-alpha, 3-numeric (ABC-123) instead of all-numeric (123-456) for standard issue plates.
Luverne had its own carmaker from 1903 to 1913. Like other small makers they gave up on cars. Unlike most, they found a better niche in specialized fire equipment. A descendant of the company is still in business as Spartan Emergency Rescue Vehicles.
Looking at the 2nd to last picture of the gas line, the caption asks “What do you see?”. I see a 1968 Pontiac Grand Prix. I also see the reason why Chevrolet offered Optional hidden headlights on the 1968 and 69 Caprice and Impala. It was to help absorb the cost of tooling up for hidden headlights on the 1967 and 68 Pontiac Grand Prix. They were all B bodies so most parts were shared.