Curbside Time Warp: Severance’s Strange Universe of Cars

This post concerns Apple TV+’s science fiction/thriller/cult documentary/lord-knows-what show, Severance. As of this writing, the episodic show is about half way through its second season. There are four more episodes to go (this season) to experience this fascinating, disorienting, ….thing.

There are no spoilers offered in this post unless you’ve not watched the show at all and therefore do not know or want to know anything about even the barest plot details. If you’re that person, and desire to enter the show’s universe with an entirely blank slate, then you could go watch a few episodes before clicking on the “Read the Rest” link below. Start with season one.

For everyone else, note that I will show some photos and discuss some of the automotive-related weirdness about the show, but I don’t think those are spoilers. It’s possible that some of the following discussion may only serve to intrigue the non-viewer and thus inspire you to watch something you’ve not seen yet.  Something that has an interesting angle on cars and material culture.

Let’s take a look.

Severance is an intentionally disorienting show. Profound confusion and separation from reality is a plot theme, and there are many subtle and not so subtle ways that the show drives that point across. For example, you’ll notice from the pictures accompanying this post that much of the action in the show takes place at night and in winter. This is the case even though the plot thus far seems to transpire over more than three or four months or a single calendar season. Wherever the show takes place geographically – and it’s not at all clear where that is, other than seemingly somewhere in the northern United States – it seems to have been winter for a long time. Where in the U.S. would that be? Severance leaves the viewer guessing.

Likewise, Severance’s plot involves a rhythmic, repetitive, day in and day out set of occurrences, but the viewer has no actual idea of how long those occurrences have been going on. One cannot confidently place the world of Severance in a commonly understood sense of time, place or history. Just as Severance does not specify where it takes place, or why it always seems to be winter, it also doesn’t pin down when it takes place.

Herein lies the issue of the cars.

On one hand, characters use contemporary devices such as iPhones (it is an Apple show, after all). On the other hand, all of the cars shown in the show are at least 25 years old and are daily drivers. What year is this? For anyone with even a partially formed knowledge of the last 50 years of American automotive history, Severance’s car landscape is odd indeed.

Why? We’ll get to thoughts about that eventually, but first let’s look at the cars.

1968 Lincoln Continental

In an early season two episode, viewers are offered a glimpse of a car being used as VIP transport by the corporation at the center of the series’ plot.  That car is our lede photo and is shown in greater detail, below.

Skilled CC car spotters are able to identify this as a 1968 (or maybe 1969, but I’m pretty sure it’s a 68) Lincoln Continental. The lighting of the shot is odd (owing largely to the need to light a night scene), nevertheless the color of this Lincoln does not necessarily appear to be stock. The closest I can find on 1968 color charts is “Mediterranean”.

Unlike many of the cars in Severance, this Lincoln seems to have been left largely intact with regard to badging. It’s missing the key-cover logo on the trunk lid, and that’s perhaps because the show’s producers didn’t want to show the Lincoln star. It’s hard to tell, but the hubcaps may also be non-standard (and therefore missing the Lincoln logo). The “Continental” script remains on the rear fenders.

So far, this car has only appeared in one scene and there are no shots of the front/grille. Elsewhere in this scene, someone is shown making a call on an iPhone, while standing outside of a 57 year old company car.

1995 Volvo 960

One of the show’s main characters is frequently seen driving to and from work and various other activities. Perhaps suited to the permanent winter and nearly constant darkness, the car this individual drives is familiar to us as one that comes from the land of the ice and snow, a 1995 Volvo 960.

Like the 1968 Lincoln, this Volvo also has been mostly de-badged, although this is a bit more obvious on the Volvo than the Lincoln.

We see that the car’s rear carries none of the normal Volvo badges. When seen from the front (as it has appeared several times in different episodes), the 960’s grille carries the standard diagonal cross bar, but where you’d expect to find the Volvo “iron mark” instead sits just a blank chrome rectangle.

So it certainly looks like a Volvo, but are we supposed to think that it’s really a Volvo?

There are other Volvos cars that clearly are Volvos but maybe are not technically supposed to be Volvos in Severance. This brown 240 – a 1986 I believe, peering out of the eternal gloom of the show – makes several appearances around town. It too has no Volvo logo on the grille. But I’ll bet that under the hood, it does have the biodegradable wiring harness.

The Parking Lot

 

A careful examination of the parking lot outside of the Lumon corporation building where much of the show’s action takes place reveals several other brick-generation Volvos. This is where you can fully realize that there’s nothing in this parking lot that is newer than about 1995, and most is from the mid-1970s to 1980s. You really have to watch the show to get a good handle on the parking lot as screen shots can’t capture it in the same detail you would have watching the show on your computer or TV.

 

I believe there’s 1977 Malibu Wagon very close to the middle of that shot above.  This is totally in keeping with the Severance universe.

1984 Volkswagon Rabbit L

Additional scanning of the Lumon parking lot shows several 1970s and 1980s VWs, although these could also be similar boxy economy cars such as Omnirizons, Fiestas, Tercels, etc.. One car that is very clearly a Rabbit is the 1984 Rabbit L (could be a GL) that makes numerous appearances in the show.

This “Cashmere White” Rabbit is yet another de-badged vehicle in the Serverance universe, although surely many of us have either owned such a vehicle or recall their popularity back in the day and therefore have no problem identifying it.

In a somewhat lengthy driving scene, someone in the production was clearly channeling the 1984 GTI ads, even as the car in Severance is clearly not a GTI.

The lack of badges leaves open the possibility that it could perhaps be a diesel. Although having owned a car that was nearly identical to this one in its outward appearance, I will note that the lack of the ever-present cloud of smoke in driving shots and apparent lack of a brown fuel spill running down the right fender argue against its being a diesel L.

1976 Chevrolet Nova

Residing chronologically – in reality – somewhere between the 1968 Lincoln and the 1995 Volvo is the car owned by another one of the main characters, this lovely green 1976 Nova.

Thus far, this car has only appeared once in the show at the end of season one. As I recall in real life, these cars didn’t carry obvious external Chevrolet badging, so perhaps this is one of the least de-badged cars in the show. It seems to have the “Nova” script on the front fender, but that’s hard to tell in the quick shots and ever-present Severance darkness.

And by the way, what do you see there in the background of the Nova shot? Anything from our present century? I think not.

The scene with the Nova provides viewers with one of the best shots of the license plates carried by the cars in Severance. Just in case anyone was harboring the idea that the show is intended to take place in Minnesota, Pennsylvania or New York (the actual production was/is partially filmed in various locations in the upper Hudson valley and the Catskills), we have plates that carry the Latin motto “Remedium Hominibus”.

This translates to “Remedy for Humans” or perhaps “A Cure for Mankind” or maybe even “Cure for Humans”. Deciphering which of these translations is correct – and the linguistic nuances within the show’s plot involved in each – is undoubtedly going to be one key to understanding what this show is actually about. That’s something that I find fascinating, exciting, and depressing all at once. Fascinating and exciting that a plot clue could be in Latin (the only “foreign” language that I ever actually studied/learned), but depressing in that understanding its meaning may turn on linguistic/grammatical nuance in a currently de-evolved culture that would seemingly rather depend on pictographs than the careful arrangement of actual words to convey meaning.

😉

Bonus Time Warp Strangeness

 

The observant Severance viewer will find other material culture references in the show that are just as weirdly time warped as the cars. A case in point is the object above. If you’re at least my age, you will likely recognize this as a “steam vaporizer”.  This particular model is a Hankscraft 202-B. It may have inspired any number of knock-offs in the 1960s, but the Hankscraft was the standard. My family had one, although we had the more flawed and dangerous 202-A model. 202-A gave rise to an epic product liability suit which inspired the slightly less dangerous succeeding model. Minnesota-based case law aside, common sense alone indicates that glass jars of nearly boiling water that can be easily overturned are not something that should be left within reach of young children in the middle of the night. Which is why steam vaporizers are unusual sights today.

But as a child of the 1960s, Danger was our middle name; at least as far as common household items were concerned. My mom was a strong believer in the power of the vaporizer, and that thing was broken out of its home in the upstairs linen closet frequently to address “colds” whether actual or anticipated. Preventive vaporization was definitely my mom’s bag, baby.

 

I was fine with my mom’s obsession, since vaporization always came with Vicks Vapo Steam.  Vicks – next to new plastic shower curtains right out of the package or rubber cement — was/is just about my favorite scent in the world. Just like that tot on the bottle, I could be found nuzzling up to the Hankscraft whenever it was fired up.

But why does Severance provide airtime to a 50 year old vaporizer? It figures as a prominent background object in several scenes where action occurs that definitely advances the show’s plot as it relates to “remedia”. This is clearly a mysterious clue to something, although you are unlikely to pluck it out of the many clues offered unless you’re attuned to seeing things such as vaporizers and know what they are.

Likewise, if you know a thing or two about old cameras, Severance has you covered. Early in season one, there’s a scene where the main characters are posed for a group photo, and the camera used is this de-badged Leica M6. This camera (produced between 1984 to 1998) fits the same aesthetic as the cars featured in the show and raises similar questions. Why would modern-day office workers use a 40 year old rangefinder film camera in the time of smart phones and digital cameras?  Further, the M6 is one of those products – not unlike many Volvos and VWs and devices such as the Hankscraft vaporizer — where it’s hard to pin down where in the product’s long production run this particular camera/car/vaporizer was produced.

In this way, the time warped world of Severance is even more slippery than might otherwise be apparent and is somewhat lost on the many folks in the various online forums I have seen that discuss Severance and its aesthetic. The cars, in particular, are often referred to in online discussions (there are a lot of online discussions about Severance) as simply “old” or “old…like from the 1980s”. True; but kind of old or even older? Severance leaves us guessing as whether that old camera is 27 years old, or 41 years old (and let’s face it, most Leicas have looked the same since the late 1950s just like most Volvos looked essentially the same for 30 years). For students of material culture, be that cameras, cars, or vaporizers, we know that there’s a difference between a 1990s car and one from the late 1960s regardless of the fact that many online denizens can’t be bothered to differentiate between one decade or another when something is not new. Perhaps on top of everything else, Severance is offering special clues and delights to people for whom the end of the 20th century is not just a big smear of “old”.

Or maybe not.

One more example of the squishy universe of “old” in Severance is shown in the photo above. Here we have the owner of the 1995 960 leaving his home driveway; and what is his next door neighbor driving? I spy a 1986 Cutlass Supreme Brougham. The world of Severance is not only a world where everyone daily drives a car that’s at least 30 years old, but its one where 30 year old daily drivers happily exist with 39 year old daily drivers.

Except for certain essential story details (which I am not going to divulge but as yet at least have nothing directly to do with the cars or vaporizers used in the show), the material world of Severance is a world that I could very much get with. Particularly in terms of its automotive environment. And this raises one last Severance detail that I’ve not seen mentioned in any of the otherwise in-depth discussion of the show’s universe…Unless it’s a truck or a van, every car in Severance is a 4-door. Watch it and see. When you stop and think about it, it’s the weirdest thing. Given the (real) 21st century’s preference in the collectors’ market for 2-doors, the extra doors are something right there.

But extra doors to what?

I guess we’ll just have to watch and find out.

Except as otherwise noted, all of the blurry images accompanying this article were taken by the author (using an iPhone!) and are intended solely as (low-fi) fair use illustrations in a discussion of Apple TV’s copyrighted acclaimed programming.