Top 5 cars from US TV shows

After last week’s top 5 cars from British TV shows, we’re heading across the Atlantic to America to see what cars were as famous as their human co-stars.

We’re picking cars only so honourable mentions go to The Fonz’s 1949 Triumph Trophy TR5 from Happy Days (FYI: actor  Henry Winkler was actually terrified of motorbikes), plus Ponch and Jon’s Kawasaki motorcycles from the series CHiPs.

Plus we pity the fool who forgets The A-Team’s 1983 GMC Vandura, and on the subject of vans, there is the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo.

In no particular order, and decided by Popular Mechanics, here are the top five.  

1965 Sunbeam Tiger, Get Smart

Bumbling Agent 86 Maxwell Smart drove a red Sunbeam Tiger. Photos: Supplied

Co-created by Mel Brooks (of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles fame) Get Smart centred on Agent 86 Maxwell Smart and his female partner Agent 99. In the black-and-white pilot, Smart drove a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT PF Spider Cabriolet, but his usual ride was a red Sunbeam Tiger.

Even the Tiger had a stand-in for most of the episodes, a re-badged four-cylinder Sunbeam Alpine with Tiger written in script on the side. The Tiger did have enough room to house the James Bond–esque machine gun though. For the third and fourth seasons of the show, 86 swapped out his Tiger for a blue VW Karmann Ghia.

1986 Ferrari Testarossas, Miami Vice

After using replica Ferrari’s, Tubs and Crockett got the real thing.

The first significant car in the series, the look-alike Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spyder, was a prop that Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) needed to infiltrate the high-roller world of drugs, prostitution, and other sordid happenings in Miami. The black car was basically a Chevy Corvette under the hood, with a souped-up, small-block Chevy V-8 and sleek, Ferrari-designed fiberglass body panels to stand up to the stunts and camera mounts over the two years it was used.

The Ferrari people weren’t too happy with all the attention the replicas were getting and decided to supply the production with two 1986 new Ferrari Testarossas, which the showrunners had their eyes on before Ferrari stepped in. They were presented as black originally, but didn’t show up very well in nighttime scenes and were later painted white.

1969 Dodge Charger, General Lee, The Dukes of Hazzard

Up to 325 ‘General Lee’ Chargers were created – and destroyed – for the series.

If you saw this Charger driving down the street, you’d know the Duke boys were behind the wheel. It’s reported that somewhere between 255 and 325 cars were created and destroyed during the series. Replacing the police sedans was easy, but replacing the Charger was much more difficult because Dodge stopped making the model between 1978 and ’82.

The “Dixie” horn on the car wasn’t originally part of the car’s design; producers heard the horn on location in Atlanta and chased the driver down and convinced him to sell it, only to later realise it was a novelty item available for purchase in any auto parts store. The physical horn was only used on the first five episodes—after filming moved to the Warner Bros. lot, the horn was edited in during post-production.

On November 11, 1978, the General Lee was launched by a stuntman off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. That jump made TV history at 16 feet (4.8m) high and 82 feet (24m) long. An adorable fact: Over half of the fan mail for the show during filming was addressed to General Lee, a star in its own right.

1975 Ford Gran Torino, The Striped Tomato, Starsky & Hutch

The bright red Torino was so popular, Ford created a special edition for the public.

The producers needed a car that was going to stand out in a crowd, and what way to stand out better than to sport bright red? Like many Hollywood prop cars, the Striped Tomato was chosen through Ford’s studio-TV car-loan programme. Two red box-stock V-8-powered two-door Torinos were decked out with a white stripe and further modified for stunt purposes; mag wheels, oversize tyres, and air shocks were added. As the show gained popularity, Ford decided to cash in and ordered a limited production of a similar car, costing US$4461 for the standard fare and US$5351 with all optional equipment.

Ferrari 308 GTS, Magnum, P.I.

The Ferrari was as famous as Thomas Magnum’s mustache.

Tom Selleck’s Thomas Magnum had the famous mustache, cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirts … and a fancy ride. Forget that he was a badass private investigator living in Hawaii and staying in a beachfront estate at the behest of the owner, but he also got to drive a slick red Ferrari. Three different model years of the GTS were driven on the show, 1978, 1980, and 1984. It’s believed that there were about five cars of each year used, totaling 15. Provided by Ferrari North America, their fate was either for action shots or close-ups. A 1984 GTS from the show was sold by Bonhams in early 2017 for US$181,500, certified to have been driven by Selleck himself.

KITT, Knight Rider

The red light above the bumper was inspired by Cylon scanners from Battlestar Galactica.

Standing for Knight Industries Two Thousand, KITT ranks high on every best movie/TV car list ever made. Voiced by Mr. Feeny (of Boy Meets World fame), the physical car was a modified black 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. The original KITT’s main cybernetic processor was first installed in a mainframe computer in Washington, D.C., but its designer Wilton Knight envisioned better use for the vehicle: crime-fighting. KITT was ahead of the times in the 1980s, thinking, learning, communicating, and interacting with humans, all while riding around with David Hasselhoff at the helm. Created by Glen A. Larson, the car’s features are myriad. One little fun piece of trivia is that the red light above the front bumper was directly inspired by the Cylon scanners on Battlestar Galactica, a show also created by Larson. During the show’s initial run in the ’80s, Trans Ams owners could buy special aftermarket kits and add a “scanner eye” to their own car.