We’ve mostly all seen Maxwell Smart driving his Sunbeam Tiger on his job at CONTROL. Due to various mishaps, he went through at least three of them. But unbeknownst to us all, Maxwell had access to plenty more, thanks to his side gig as owner of Smart Motors, a proud Sunbeam dealer (and Studebaker, quite appropriately). Here’s a few Alpines being delivered, along with a single Imp.
And here’s Max in one of his Tigers:
The Smart Motor Company was/is a Madison, Wisconsin institution. The business has sold many brands of cars for well over 100 years – including Rootes and Studebaker.
This location must be the one on University Drive that was taken by the city under eminent domain for redevelopment in the ’60s. Smart moved to Odana Road where it now is a large Toyota dealer.
Orren David (O.D.) Smart began selling cars in 1908 – starting with an Indiana-built car called the Apperton Jack Rabbit. Over several decades, his firm not only survived, but thrived, selling mostly little-known brands.
Many years later, O.D.’s son said of his dad’s dealership that “My father never had a popular car in his entire life.” (Though the dealership, under his son’s leadership, did eventually pick up Toyota and Volvo.).
Missed it by that much….
Max: “Would you believe…?” (Repeated line). Villian: “I find that rather difficult to believe.”
They didn’t have a Smart Car franchise? Disappointing!
Excellent! 🙂
And you (Paul) recently commented that you were hopeless in terms of popular culture. I think not.
Now, someone has to find a photo of “Smart Volkswagen” to cover when Max gave up the Tigers and got the Karmann Ghia.
The change of car was because VW sponsored the third and fourth season of the show. For the fifth and final season (which also moved from NBC to CBS), Buick was a sponsor, so the car was again replaced with an Opel GT.
Or the Opel GT!
One of the most legible and attractive dashboards of that era.
The instruments are common to all Rootes cars of the era I was seeing that speedo in traffic on my way home today.
Quite the desirable change, in attractiveness, clarity and information from the gaudy digital “Pac Man” dashboards of newer cars.
I’d love to own the one Liz Taylor drove in the movie “Butterfield 8” (before the ending, of course).
You can have Liz’s Alpine.
I’ll take Larry Harvey’s Adenauer instead…
#IIRC the Sunbeam had no trouble showing it’s attractive tail lights to the ponderous Adenauer?
That was the first thing I thought of.That car and Liz were stunners.
I always thought that Maxwell Smart’s car was an Alpine, not a Tiger. So I did a little research … and apparently it was supposed to be a Tiger, but they actually used an Alpine for the show because there was more room under the hood for gadgets. And the 2008 movie version also used an Alpine because they couldn’t find a Tiger. At least that’s what I read on the Internet this morning, so it must be true. When the original show was big, assuming the car was an Alpine, I thought it oddly mundane for a TV spy to drive, compared to Bond’s Aston or (a bit later) Emma Peel’s Lotus. Ditto for The Saint’s Volvo 1800.
Once you cram a Ford V8 into a Hillman engine bay theres little room for anything else
Perhaps time has fuzzed my memory as I haven’t seen one in years; but I don’t recall the Ford 260/289 V8 engine being all that tight of a fit under the Sunbeam’s hood?
A quote from Wikipedia, after Shelby after he built the first Tiger prototype:
Shelby found that the Ford V8 would only just fit into the Alpine engine bay: “I think that if the figure of speech about the shoehorn ever applied to anything, it surely did to the tight squeak in getting that 260 Ford mill into the Sunbeam engine compartment. There was a place for everything and a space for everything, but positively not an inch to spare.”[10][14]
So I am assuming that a V8 Vega transplant had more under the hood room?
Yes.
The colorization process on that B&W photo sure does a number on those Alpines. They look like rusted out hulks.
Strangely, the TV opening looks to be colorized too – note the b&w car in the background, and after Smart enters the building nearly everything is in black and white. Odd, given the show first ran in late 1965 on NBC, which was broadcasting all new shows in color starting in 1964.
Also, were those analog-dial floor indicators above elevators still used at this time, or were they just there because it made it obvious it was an elevator, kind of like how Checker cabs were still used in TV shows and films set in NYC well into the 21st century even though they were long gone from the streets by then? I’ve only seen one of these my entire life (I can remember back to about 1970), and that was was non-functional, for some reason left in place when the elevator machinery was updated with a usual digital indicator.
The pilot episode of Get Smart was originally filmed in black and white and the executives at NBC picked Get Smart as long as it’s filmed in color.
http://wouldyoubelieve.com/doors.html
Interesting – I knew the pilot was in black & white, but also assumed the opening was reshot for the color NBC series, especially since Max Smart drove a Ferrari 250 GT in the pilot, not a Sunbeam. But only the early outdoor scenes were changed with the cars (meaning four versions, including the pilot); once Smart steps indoors, the footage is the same for all four. So it probably was shot in b&w and a few items tinted to provide color.
If you look again, the analog-dial floor indicator isn’t installed over an elevator. When the doors slide open, Max is seen at the bottom of a staircase before he exits the elevator like doors. This is dry deadpan humor that many people don’t get or appreciate, but it was very much inline with the humor in this show. To answer your question, the analog floor indicators were often seen in older cities in buildings that hadn’t been updated.
My brothers first car!!
And his second (for parts)!!
His first engine swap- in our
driveway.
Good memories!
So apparently these were shipped dry? Not seeing any oil drips under them.
I didn’t know Imps made it to the USA. I wonder if they were branded Imp or Stilleto here?
Dealership signs from this era look strange to me, since several of them had signs (not just posters and such, big three-dimensional illuminated signs) for the models of car, not just the make. Like the “Lark” sign here – I’d expect to see a “Studebaker” sign on the building but not “Lark”, even if that was their best-selling car when it was made. I’ve seen Renault dealers from that era with “Dauphine” signs, no reference to Renault, and similar signs for other cars. Sometimes this was because the car was originally sold as a separate brand (Valiant, Comet), but usually not.
I wonder if each Sunbeam came with a portable Cone-of-Silence in the trunk…….
I DEMAND the Cone of Silence!
@dman: Not exactly. The car in the opening credits of the TV show is a Tiger. The car in some episodes that had the underhood gadgets was an Alpine with Tiger trim. The 2008 movie car was an Alpine with Tiger trim.
All the TV eps except the pilot (with a Ferrari as Smart’s car) were filmed in color. The show originally was to star Tom Poston, not Adams. But NBC had Adams under contract so Grant Tinker got the producers to take Adams instead of Poston as a condition for picking up the show.
And as they say, the rest was history (for Tom Poston at least).
I’d never read that about Poston. Well, he did just fine with his pal Bob. Probably much better as a handyman in VT than he would have done in “the greeting card business”.
Was Maxwell’s shoe phone the original Smart phone?
Is the truck a Studebaker? I liked the Sunbeam that looked like a midget Barracuda that was sold in the U.S. for like 12 minutes….
No Sunbeams, but I think that’s a Cortina at 0:30 and a sandal phone. 🙂
I really admire the guy who unloads the truck, this must really feel like a slow roller coaster ride where you can’t see the track
James Bond drove a Sunbeam Alpine Series II in Dr No
Does anyone know what the black car is on the lower deck?