Or perhaps it is 1984, based on the location and timing of this spotting of two 1988-91 Ford Crown Victorias on a trailer in Arlington, Virginia. These identically colored Crown Vics without vinyl tops appeared on a trailer in a well-hidden outdoor parking lot near Washington National Airport and the main bridge across the Potomac River into downtown Washington, one week before the widely reported appearance of movie stars Gal Gadot and Chris Pine in Washington for the filming of scenes for the next movie in the Wonder Woman franchise, Wonder Woman 1984. These 1988-91 Crown Victorias are of course too new to be right in a scene set in 1984, but they are close enough by the usual standards of movie cars.
As if the appearance of two cars suited to serve as unmarked police or FBI cars or just period background cars in a movie set in the 1980s, so close to the actual filming of street scenes for such a film, were not obvious enough, the tow vehicle being marked “Lightnin Production Rentals” should make it clear. These CCs and others are coming to a movie screen near you, possibly to chase Wonder Woman, and I am sure that we will all be happy to see them.
As a DC-area resident, I would like to express my gratitude for your referring to Washington National Airport as “Washington National Airport”.
There is a tradition for renaming things here in the USA. Boulder Dam was renamed Hoover in 1947.
Seconded on the useage of the proper name for that airport. It’s still referred to as IAD by the FAA
IAD is Dulles. “National” is DCA.
Me three regarding National Airport (that’s enough to identify it, at least locally). The third DC area airport was called Friendship Airport before they changed it to the painfully generic Baltimore Washington International Airport in the late ’70s. I thought Friendship was a nice name for an airport and they should have kept that name.
Lifetime Baltimore Area Resident chiming in here: Changing “Friendship” to BWI kinda made sense because if you were a resident of anywhere else, you’d scratch your head and ask, “Where is that?”.
Now it’s called “Thurgood Marshall”. Not to take anything away from this man’s accomplishments, but really?!?!? – Like “Friendship”, if the airport was actually called that by anyone, you’d be scratching your head again.
At least the airport identifier is still KBWI (BWI for you non-pilot types).
It’s like the renaming of stadiums. Confusing unless you are a) from the area, or b) a rabid fan that just knows. Just about everyone I know calls M&T Bank Stadium “Ravens Stadium”, although some just call it “The Bank”.
Ok… rant over. ;o)
The outdoor amphitheater in Mansfield, Mass south of Boston. The other day I saw a T-shirt referring to it – “We Still Call It Great Woods”.
Well, yeah, you kind of have to since the official name’s changed an average of once every five years since they first sold naming rights.
I’ve always admired Orioles owner Peter Angelos for keeping the name of the baseball stadium Oriole Park, even though he could have made millions by selling the naming rights to some corporate sponsor. Some of these sports stadiums change names every couple years.
I agree. I respect Mr. Marshall for what he did but you name courthouses after judges and not airports.
I called it BWI before it was named after him and I still call it BWI.
A few years ago, a DC cabbie told me “Republicans call it ‘Reagan,’ Democrats call it ‘National’.”
That always gets a chuckle from friends on both sides of the aisle.
In Chicago, we use the ‘new’ names Midway and O’Hare, versus Chicago Municipal and Orchard Place.
But, Midway has a newer IAD code MDW, while O’Hare still uses the older ORD.
I don’t live near there, is it anywhere near Idlewild? 🙂
Does anyone call it Idlewild? I remember my Dad using very old names for streets (here in Montevideo, Uruguay, there is an ill-advised custom of honoring dead politicians by naming streets after them…so you have to keep track of names), and now, some 40 years later, I do the same.
“Does anyone call it Idlewild?”
No, I was just kidding. There is sometimes resistance to old things being given new names to memorialize popular politicians. I am not from New York so could not say if there was any local pushback to renaming Idlewild for John Kennedy, but the folks in Florida certainly did – which resulted in Cape Kennedy reverting to its original name of Cape Canaveral after ten years. I don’t really care and will call them whatever the government wants me to call them.
The piece of land called Cape Kennedy reverted to original name, Canaveral, in 1973. The city of same name didn’t care for the 400 year old name being changed.
The NASA Space Center located there is still called Kennedy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Canaveral
Very much agreed. “National Airport” worked just fine for a name and still does.
These late, low-trim CVs were the most attractive of anything built on that platform, IMHO. I used to see these used as unmarked police vehicles, often driven by detectives and wished the 85 I was driving had been devoid of all the gingerbread that festooned that car.
However, the clean trim level really showed up the clunky greenhouse area.
Were there any exterior trim differences in civilian CVs? AFAIK, the up spec model only changed the interior; the exterior chrome and the wheel choices were the same.
There was a different roof treatment on the high spec model for both Ford and Mercury (I forget what it was called) that made the C pillar more vertical and surely involved a section welded onto the back of the roof and hidden by the vinyl roof.
I remember that roof on Mercs, but I can’t find any examples on CVs. A sampling of CVs brochures only show an interior upgrade, either as an option package or a notional LX model.
Jim Grey found this one some time back. The smaller rear window is the tell. I remember seeing it in brochures and advertising in the mid 80s.
Robert, I’m glad you got to see some of these cars up close. I hadn’t heard of this filming project until I noticed this picture on a local news blog last week… Wow, I wish I had been able to walk up and down that street!
Is that Georgetown? Any idea if they’re still there?
I see trolley tracks in the roads; they were mostly removed by the ’80s (the streetcars themselves last ran in 1962); the vacant underground stations and tunnels are popular digs amongst urban explorers.
That’s a post-facelift K car with a CHMSL so it’s ’86 or later. The Crown Vic on the other side is a pre-facelift model and thus older than the two on the truck. I noticed they picked two of the boxiest cars made in the decade; it may be enough for the film crew for the boxy cars to code as “1980s” to general audiences. If there’s an ’86 Taurus in Lightnin’ Productions Rentals’ inventory, you can be sure they wouldn’t make it visible here despite being period-correct.
I believe it is Georgetown (the original caption said P St. but didn’t identify where), however I doubt they’re still around. The photo was taken last Thursday.
Yes, there are streets in Georgetown that still have the tracks….
I predict one shot from that film will either have Gal Godot on top of the Washington Monument, posing as the magnificent Goddess she is, or a screen villain will destroy it.
Just once I’d like to see a villain go after the Jefferson Memorial for a change, or try to take over the Agriculture Department. Mix things up a little.
Very cool! I really liked the first Wonder Woman and I hope the sequel is as good as the first movie. With the exception of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, DC comic movies generally stink, but Patty Jenkins bucked the trend.
I wonder if it’s possible to contact the companies that supply vehicles for period movies. They would seem to be a veritable treasure trove of CC candidates.
Conversely, I could easily see CC being a great resource in finding specific, esoteric vehicles, as well.
These 1988-91 Crown Victorias are of course too new to be right in a scene set in 1984, but they are close enough by the usual standards of movie cars.
I know the gen pop wouldn’t care about such things, but I will gladly trash a movie for this detail. 150 million dollar production budget and they couldn’t find two actual 84s(or at the very least 87s)?? Why even do a period piece then?
Judging by the trim it looks like both had vinyl tops at some point, they have the tell tale divider trim under the C pillar
Yeah, looks like they pulled the vinyl roofs for a more ‘official’ appearance. I wonder if they actually found a couple of cars that were the same color or they had to respray one of them.
In effect, someone just did the minimum to a couple of old Crown Vics to get them to look like what they needed.
I am with you – a wrong car in a period movie jolts me out of the scene they are trying to set and the story they are trying to tell.
I think sometimes they may be going more for a certain vibe and design-types may think that a correct car might look out of place.
I have the same issue with movies and television shows that fail to use period-correct music. If anything, they miss the mark even more often there. The Johnny Depp movie on Dillinger a few years ago did a mostly nice job, but insisted in playing Billie Holliday records from around 1936 in scenes that took place in 1933-34. I guess real 1933-34 music would not have set the mood they were trying for, but it was a buzzkill for me.
That’s like how they used Ragtime music for The Sting which was set in 1936 while ragtime peaked 18 years earlier. Yet, somehow it worked and they got an academy award for Best Music.
It’s conceivable that there would have been enough people around in 1936 who’d love the ‘old style’ music, much as I love sixties to nineties music and can’t stand rap. Okay, that’s a stretch, but I’m trying to justify the use of ragtime – I love it!
One of the worst was when Tarantino inserted David Bowie’s Putting Out the Fire (Gasoline) originally from Cat People into his WW2 movie Inglorious Bastards. What made it even worse was, normally, Tarantino does an absolutely brilliant job of using appropriate music in his movies.
I mean, to this day, who can listen to Steeler’s Wheel Stuck in the Middle With You and not think about slicing someone’s ear off with a straight razor?
I’m a little more forgiving about cars in movies, if the filmmakers at least try to get close. If the model vs plot year is off by a couple, but the movie has the right generation of a car, that’s okay, personally. Just so long as the car’s age isn’t a plot point: “Good thing our 2005 Accord had those 5 MPH bumpers, Batman, or we could’ve been seriously injured!”
To some degree I am forgiving with the same caveat as you, and truthfully I wouldn’t actually be that bothered by these depending on their prominence in the film. It gets my guard up though, regardless, if I can’t trust the filmmakers to get something as simple as a background vehicle right, I start looking for shortcuts other aspects of the production, and in my experience car selection does tend to be the perfect barometer for overall movie or show quality.
One of the most egregious in recent memory was the American Crime Story for OJ on FX, where in one of the scenes there’s a flashback to I think 1982, where Johnny Cochran is pulled over and harassed by the LAPD, and right dead center of the screen through the window of his Mercedes was a Gen II Prius as they were slowing towards the side of the road. That would have been bad even in a 1994 scene.
How stringent are the big film studios about not having cars that were made a few years after the movie was set? I know that in another legendary DC-set movie, “All the President’s Men” (from 1976 about the 1972 Watergate break-in and ensuing detective work) they evidently decided to just shoot on location and not put up roadblocks to keep ’74 to ’76 models from the camera’s view. Thus, you see Ford Granadas and big GM sedans with rectangular headlamps in what’s supposed to be 1973.
“Animal House” (1978) was supposed to be set in 1962, but a 1964 Lincoln was used for the featured scenes.
Wow I’ve seen Animal House many times, how did I miss that? Was probably laughing too hard to notice…..
That Plymouth is sure in bad shape for an at most 5 year old car
Fictional Faber College was located in Pennsylvania, which uses plenty of salt during the winter months, and those Forward Look Plymouths were notorious for early rust-out.
Plus given how they trashed the Continental in the black night club parking lot, I would have expected a similar treatment for that Plymouth at some point as well
Reminds me of the first season or two of Better Call Saul (I haven’t seen the later ones), set in 2002, with the ‘98 Suzuki – a four-year-old car just doesn’t look like that!
Once the Lincoln was turned into “The Deathmobile”, you really couldn’t tell anyway. ;o)
They needed the extra three inches of legroom for filming.
I think that the production guys only get close enough. I was watching a show on ABC, “Instinct” where a suspect was supposed to be driving a ’69 Boss Mustang. The actual car used was a ’70. It would have been easy to change that reference in the script but I guess no one there knew or cared.
From the little I know of movie production, I think it’s called ‘continuity’ and it really depends on how much money and time they have. Movie productions run on tight schedules and budgets, so they do the best they can within those constraints.
I’m sure it also depends on how integral the vehicles are to the script. The OCD B&B types here on CC are going to notice such things, but the vast majority of movie audiences are not, and aren’t going to care nearly as much as other aspects (like a decent script, acting, and dialogue). Other things like sunlight and where a shadow should be at a given time of day actually have more impact than a car that’s a few years off..
Really, if a movie production places more emphasis on getting the vehicles exactly right, well, maybe they’re paying a little too much attention to that kind of stuff than they really need to.
Much less noticeable to the general public, but probably easily spotted by anyone here, is this anachronism on the Wheeler family’s Colony Park in Stranger Things season 1, ostensibly set in 1983:
The FX show “The Americans” got cars right. Set in 1981, in the first episode the spy family had a ’77 Delta 88, that wasn’t in mint condition. Just right.
Most middle class families didn’t have import cars yet, and not a lot of brand new ones, being a recession.
I give The Americans a lot of credit for finding as many period correct cars as they did, but I have noticed some vehicles that were too new for the time period. The most glaring example was in a scene where one of the parents was meeting their daughter at her high school, and there was a row of 1990s era International 3800 school buses in the background. Really, they couldn’t find a few Loadstars or something? Maybe they chose to shoot that scene on location at a real school and weren’t allowed to move the buses or something.
Any period piece set in the past 35 years or so never bothers to get school buses right (most of the time, it’s ’90s Internationals or Blue Birds), because nobody really notices or cares. From a technical standpoint, a school bus has always been a yellow tin box sitting on a truck chassis. It’s only when you go back to the ’70s or earlier (Forrest Gump, for example) that they’ll make any attempt to use an older model.
Two cars closely resembling each other for a movie shoot generally indicates they’ll be used in a chase scene. Movie car chase productions usually require the use of two cars, sometimes more, in case one gets damaged. In Burt Reynolds’ “White Lightning”, three ‘71 Custom 500 sedans were used; as were three black Trans Ams in “Smokey and the Bandit”. We won’t even surmise how many late 60s Chargers were used in “Dukes of Hazard”; I heard they totaled a least one car, if not more, every show doing jump scenes.
Three hundred forty-odd is the number of Chargers destroyed. I read that recently in some Chrysler themed grocery store magazine.
Multiply that by about 3.5 for the number of police cars destroyed.
Sorry to say but when I see something like this, there’s a good chance one of them is getting wrecked, if not both. I know that these Crown Vic’s are still relatively plentiful, but I always cringe when I see Hollywood trash an older car that I like.
Frankster: I remember WHITE LIGHTNING very well and in some scenes Burt’s car has a manual transmission while others it’s got an automatic tranny.
Also, I’d swear I’ve read on here that Jack Lord used only one 1974 Mercury Marquis Brougham on HAWAII-FIVE-O and every evening after shooting the set mechanic(s) would set to work fixing anything up that got trashed during the day’s shooting. And sometimes said mechanics would be up ’til the wee hours of the morning.
You can spot lots of ‘Period Car Screw-Ups’ in movies if you look hard enough, but I try and be forgiving of these kind of continuity errors. It’s hard making a movie. In GAS (1981) the black Cadillacs driven by the main characters for the car chase at the end switch between ’75s and ’74s. Not that big a deal . . . but I notice those things.
If filming for WONDER WOMAN 1984 were being done in Atlanta and the production crew wanted an older car as a background vehicle I’d gladly offer up my turquoise Falcon. It would brighten up any scene. 🙂
One of the most famous examples of using multiple identical cars just to show one were the five white 1970 Challengers used in the cult-classic Vanishing Point. The story goes that someone at Chrysler was offering up the five Challenger R/Ts for use in a movie, and they were able to find a director and studio to do it on that basis, alone. The five cars, while they all looked identical, had different drivetrains. They were all R/Ts and most were 383/auto cars, but one of them was a 340, another a 440, and at least one had a four-speed.
Evidently, Chrysler made a stipulation that they wanted the cars back and in running condition, which would explain the (in)famous final scene when a stand-in, white 1968 Camaro was blown up.
What’s worse is when two similar but different cars are supposed to be seen as the same car. For example, in Raising Arizona, the early-1970s full-size Chevy alternates between a hardtop and a pillared sedan; in the Rutger Hauer movie Blind Fury, the car chasing his van in downtown Reno begins as a 1972 Mark IV but after it flies into the air, it lands on its roof as a ’73 (or later), as is obvious from the front bumper.
I know this is Curbside Classic and not Tarmac Classic, but a similar thing has always bugged me on TV Shows and to a lesser extent Movies.
Someone will be flying somewhere. They show the plane taking off. It’s a 737. Then they show the plane in flight. Somehow it got a lot larger and sprouted 2 more engines and became a 747. Then the protagonists would get to their destination. The plane landing changed configurations all together (intentionally misworded “Airplane!” reference there ;o) and be came a 727 for landing. Different airline liveries too!
How can anyone not notice this? They went from 2 engines to 4 engines to 3 engines. Even someone who knows NOTHING about planes could spot that.
Ok… second rant over. ;o)
A related one that often annoys me, albeit one that probably only would be noticed by airplane buffs:
A character is supposed to be arriving in Mid-Sized City, USA. They show some stock footage of a 747 landing. In reality there’s no way that city would be served with anything larger than a 737, or at most a 757. Not to mention 747s were hardly ever used for domestic flights, except sometimes for repositioning them from one major hub to another major hub.
Retro-Stang Rick-
There’s an early “Columbo” episode with an extreme example of your pet peeve.
The establishing shot showed a typical commercial jet of the day (I don’t recall the specific model), but the next shot clearly used stock footage out of the studio files- It showed landing gear retracting into the fuselage, but the plane was a B-52, which uses a unique rotating motion to stow the gear (as shown here).
“Just one more question, sir: why did you take the inter-continental bomber on your last trip?”
As someone who knows nothing about planes, I wouldn’t even be looking. I’d be more concerned about the ground vehicles!
and I am sure that we will all be happy to see them.
Don’t count on it. I haven’t watched a big-bucks Hollywood movie in quite a few years. Especially the action/superhero kind.
Perhaps “them” is a reference to Wonder Woman and all that is associated with her?
But, like you, I haven’t watched a Hollywood big-buck movie in years. My last theatre visit was like ten years ago when I saw “Curious George”. 🙂
+1
Seen around town. Securing freedom, liberty, and the American Way…
Every once in awhile, they’ll shoot some movie or whatnot here in Jacksonville. I. Can’t. Stand. Them. They tie up traffic, cause detours, and generally make things unpleasant for the natives. Actually had cars towed out of people’s driveways that didn’t fit an era. As for economic impact, most of the payroll goes to out of towners. LA can have them.
Little known fact: Jacksonville, Florida was once the epicenter of movie productions, way back about a hundred years ago. City powers-that-be got tired of the shenanigans film producers were pulling around town and ran them off. They left, and went to…Hollywood, California.
Much like what Matt and JP were saying, I am bothered by incorrect car choices, but I don’t mind too much if they tend to be off by a model year or two. After all, considering my background as a firearm’s enthusiast, I know by now that Hollywood will always get stuff wrong when it comes to a lot of subjects. Anybody who has a good foundation of knowledge in anything will tell you that 99.99% of the time, Movies and TV shows get it wrong when it comes to a particular area, laughably so I might add. So, I am used to it, my only gripe is when something is so blatantly anachronistic, that it shows the apathy of the filmmakers front and center. Sometimes, it’s for pragmatic reasons, like having to use the First Gen Crown Victoria’s in Terminator 2 even though that movie takes place in 1995 because the second gens weren’t available at the time of production, which I can let slide. But, when its clear that what’s being presented is obviously not meant to be there, especially if its obvious product placement, than that just rustles my jimmies bad, especially if its a modern day production where there’s no excuse to not have the funds needed to acquire the correct stuff for a setting. I can only stretch my suspension of disbelief for so long before I have to call foul at the shenanigans going on.
It drives me just a wee bit bonkers when office equipment isn’t truly period-correct. “Mad Men” was notorious for having IBM Selectrics in the first seasons, when the time frame was too early for them. Another movie in my memory showed not just a Selectric, but a 1970s Selectric II in a movie set in 1958. It’s jarring.
Same sort of thing with TV sets. A color TV in 1954 would have been exceedingly rare, and it would have had a small, round screen. It was in late 1954 that RCA introduced the 21-inch round picture tube. That was it until the end of 1964, when rectangular color tubes were introduced.
The cumulative time anomalies in film production can add up to quite a distraction for some of us!
It’s nice to be among kindred spirits here (esp. for the non-auto anchronisms). When I watched “Pleasantville” 20 years ago (with the 1950s flashbacks), I almost yelled at the screen “they didn’t have those laminated shingles back then!”
How can we all use our powers for the good of society?
Also, five-bladed ceiling fans, which weren’t introduced until 1981 and weren’t common until the late ‘80s. (i.e. the Vietnam ping-pong scenes in Forrest Gump)
I of course forgive them for not knowing that, but I can’t help but notice it.
Never knew that! And yeah, just checked it, the old ceiling fan in my 1950s house is a 4-blader.
I didn’t know it either. In fact I’d always assumed the old ceiling fan in my 1973 house was original to the house, just because it’s old and and the style just looks like something from the 1970s. But it’s got five blades, so I guess it must be 1980s at the earliest.
I’m a bit surprised by the Mad Men one, as I’d read that they went to greath lengths to get the most minute details correct. Like sourcing period correct fluorescent lights for the office set. Or so I’ve read; I would have never noticed.
I think it is cool that this film is being shot in the area.
I am a big car fan but just like 99.9% of the movie goers for this film, I really will not care much that a 1988 Vic is being used instead of a 1984 Vic.
I also understand that there are really not that many 1980’s cars around on the roads in the DC/MD/VA area anymore. The only ones i see lots of still are 1980’s Ford F Series trucks. In my state of MD, there is a stringent initial safety inspection before you first register the car and a every two year emissions inspection. VA has a safety inspection annually and a emissions test. A lot of those cars cost a lot of money to pass inspection/emission repairs and are junked. Rock salt seems to have killed a lot more of them. Maryland is the king of rock salt states.
Plus a lot of the 1980’s cars got no love in the 1980’s and later decades so they have vanished. Cars common to any 1980’s street such as Chevettes, Cavaliers, Escorts, Omini/Horizon etc are no longer there to be used for movies. In the 1980’s the Caravan was everywhere but now is gone. I have not seen a 84-91 Caravan/ Voyager in 3 years but i have seen 5 different first generation Astro Van’s in the last month and all were passenger vans(and not cargo vans)
I was still seeing regularly driven 1970’s cars until the late 1990’s but there seems to have been a great die off of 1980’s cars by the early 2000’s
I’m a LOT more likely to see a truck from the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s on the road around where I live (in rural GA) than a car from any of those 3 decades.
Another movie with vehicle and aircraft mistakes is “Goodfellas” The scene that’s captioned “Idelwilde 1963” has Ray Liota standing behind a 65 Impala, And a 747 seven years before there first commercial flight.