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We notice car errors in movies


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I was watching a new movie on Netflix titled "Girl Haunts Boy" It's a teenage romantic comedy. A boy and his mother move into an old house haunted by a girl ghost. The ghost explains to the boy she died in 1928 when she was hit in the street by a Duesenberg. She repeats it was a Duesenberg several times. The car used in the flashback scene is actually a  1930 Buick sedan. Aside from this error, I thought the movie turned out to be pretty good. 

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I perceived the director of the movie made the mistake and not the character. I guess the director could not find a 1928 Duesenberg A and thought nobody would notice the substitution. 

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Melanie, my wife, loves the "Fast and Furious" movies. Aside from the obvious ridiculousness, as a car guy I'm offended that they never get the details right. It started early in the first movie where the main character, Dom, says [pointing to a picture]: That's my dad. He was coming up in the pro-stock circuit. Last race of the season, he was coming into the final turn when a driver named Kenny Linder tapped his bumper and put him into the wall at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. I watched my father burn to death.

 

Um, guys? A Pro Stock race is a drag race. Unless the other guy rammed him turning onto the return road, there weren't any turns involved.


And with that I was out for good.

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I have the original Batman serials on dvd someplace. I get a kick when there is a car chase and they are in a mid to late 30's sedan, the car will go over the cliff in spectacular fashion and its clearly a 1920's sedan. I suppose they did not want to blow up a modern car at the time. I have seen this on a number of occasions with old movies. I think it was in the TV show from the '70's "The Hulk" there is an episode which uses footage from the movie "Duel".

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49 minutes ago, 8E45E said:

What's funny is the animated Disney movie, "Cars", aimed at children was close to 100% accurate, from what I read on various Forums and magazines.

 

Craig

Well they did have historians on staff to help them, that's what makes the difference. Not writers just Googling lingo to throw in.

 

The guy that voiced the Sheriff in Cars got the part since he was a Route 66 historian/expert most of his life and they hired him to help with the film in that regard, and also happened to like the sound of his voice. 😅 I met him nearly 15 years ago only a tenths of a mile off Route 66 thru Joplin, MO and bought his book. (Side note, Joplin is also one of the cities in the Route 66 song.)

Edited by human-potato_hybrid (see edit history)
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The same thing happened in the 1940 serial "The Green Hornet". A 1930's car in the chase scene but it was a 1920's car that went over the cliff. Maybe it was the same footage as used in the "Batman" serial mentioned above. The same thing happened in the 1959 movie "Edge of Eternity" where it was a different car that went over the cliff. 

 

In the 1949 Batman serial, Batman drove a 1949 Mercury convertible. The Green Hornet drove a customized 1937 Lincoln Zephyr. 

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My wife refuses to watch movies with me because I notice stuff like that and Vapor trails on the sky in movies about the 1920' &1930's.

What really makes me mad is documentaries where they allow those kind of clips with errors.   Consequently, we no longer see many movies.   

I bet a lot of guys here, have that problem too.

Edited by Paul Dobbin (see edit history)
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2 hours ago, Tom Boehm said:

The same thing happened in the 1940 serial "The Green Hornet". A 1930's car in the chase scene but it was a 1920's car that went over the cliff. Maybe it was the same footage as used in the "Batman" serial mentioned above. The same thing happened in the 1959 movie "Edge of Eternity" where it was a different car that went over the cliff. 

 

In the 1949 Batman serial, Batman drove a 1949 Mercury convertible. The Green Hornet drove a customized 1937 Lincoln Zephyr. 

Happens all the time. Especially in the cheaper or B movies. One I recall featured a then new white 1948 Lincoln Continental convertible but when it went over a cliff, crashed and burned it was a 1941 Ford with a continental spare.

 

Another amusing thing I have seen more than once, is when the characters get in a 1942 taxicab then you see them tooling down the street in a 1936 taxi before arriving at their destination in the 1942 job. Obviously they saved money by using some stock footage and hoping no one would notice.

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If you watch the Steve McQueen movie "Bullet", count how many times the hubcaps fall off the black Challenger that was chasing McQueen's Mustang thru the streets of San Francisco, I think it's like four or five times that you can count. Just before the Challenger hits the gas pumps you can see two of the hubcaps miraculously re-appear and fall off just as it hits the pumps. Also, in the movie Pearl Harbor there are several 50 star U.S. Flags. I love to see how many mistakes I can find in movies.

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James Bond - Goldfinger - scenes around Ft. Knox.    The convoy of military vehicles turns the corner, and it's a different set of vehicles, when the convoy is finished, back to original vehicles - I can see the Producer saying "who's gonna notice?"    [Well, just all veterans and most people interested in older cars - lol]

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16 minutes ago, 46 woodie said:

If you watch the Steve McQueen movie "Bullet", count how many times the hubcaps fall off the black Challenger that was chasing McQueen's Mustang thru the streets of San Francisco, I think it's like four or five times that you can count. Just before the Challenger hits the gas pumps you can see two of the hubcaps miraculously re-appear and fall off just as it hits the pumps. Also, in the movie Pearl Harbor there are several 50 star U.S. Flags. I love to see how many mistakes I can find in movies.

I love that chase scene (like who doesnt?) I have only seen it a dozen or so times, but there are a couple of cars that keep re-appearing throughout the chase. I dont know what they are without watching it again.

 

I got the Knight Rider on DVD, just because its fun to watch. In just about every episode at least once or twice there is a yellow VW rabbit parked on the street somewhere. I wondered if it belonged to someone on the production crew?

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If you watch American Graffitti enough times, you will notice a gold '67 or '68 Chevy Caprice with a dented left quarter panel parked at the curb in one of the cruising scenes. The car is of course, five or six years too new for the period of the movie.

Edited by Rivguy (see edit history)
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3 hours ago, 46 woodie said:

 black Challenger 

It was a 1968 Charger with a 440....

 

Here's some interesting info on the chase scene from Wikipedia....

 

The chase scene starts at 1:05:00 into the film. The total time of the scene is 10 minutes 53 seconds. It begins under Highway 101 in the city's Mission District as Bullitt spots the hitmen's car. It ends outside the city, at the Brisbane exit of the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway on San Bruno Mountain. Shooting occurred over a period of weeks. The chase sequence combined several locations, located miles apart and edited together. Mapping the movie route shows that it is not continuous and is impossible to follow in real time.

Two 1968 325-horsepower 390 FE V8 Ford Mustang GT Fastbacks with four-speed manual transmissions were purchased by Warner Bros. for the film. The Mustangs' engines, brakes and suspensions were heavily modified for the chase by veteran car racer and technician Max Balchowsky. Ford Motor Company originally lent two Galaxie sedans for the chase scenes, but the producers found the cars too heavy for the jumps over the hills of San Francisco. They also felt a Ford-Ford battle would not be believable on screen. The cars were replaced with two 1968 375-horsepower 440 Magnum V8 Dodge Chargers. The engines in both Dodge Charger models were left largely unmodified, but the suspensions were mildly upgraded to cope with the demands of the stunt work.The director called for maximum speeds of about 75–80 miles per hour (121–129 km/h), but the cars (including the chase cars) at times reached speeds of over 110 miles per hour (180 km/h).

Drivers' point-of-view shots were used to give the audience a participants' feel of the chase. Filming took three weeks, resulting in 9 minutes 42 seconds of pursuit. Multiple takes were spliced into a single end product, resulting in discontinuity: Heavy damage on the passenger side of Bullitt's car can be seen much earlier than the incident producing it, and the Charger appears to lose five wheel covers, with different covers missing in different shots. Shooting simultaneously from multiple angles and creating a montage from the footage took place to give the illusion of different streets also resulted in the speeding cars passing the same vehicles at multiple times, including, as widely noted, that of a green Volkswagen Beetle.

In one scene, the Charger crashes into the camera; the damaged front fender noticeable in later scenes. Local authorities did not allow the car chase to be filmed on the Golden Gate Bridge, but did permit it in Midtown locations, including Bernal Heights, the Mission District and on the outskirts of neighboring Brisbane. McQueen, a world-class racecar driver at the time, drove in the close-up scenes, while stunt coordinator Carey Loftin, stuntman and motorcycle racer Bud Ekins, and McQueen's usual stunt driver, Loren Janes, drove for the high-speed parts of the chase and performed other dangerous stunts. Ekins, who doubled for McQueen in The Great Escape sequence in which McQueen's character jumps over a barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle and performs a lowsider crash stunt in front of a skidding truck during the Bullitt chase. The Mustang's interior rearview mirror goes up and down depending on who is driving: When the mirror is up, McQueen is visible behind the wheel; when it is down, a stunt man is driving.

The black Dodge Charger was driven by veteran stunt driver Bill Hickman, who played one of the hitmen and helped with the chase scene choreography. The other hitman was played by Paul Genge, who played a character who had driven a Dodge off the road to his death in an episode of Perry Mason ("The Case of the Sausalito Sunrise") two years earlier. In a magazine article many years later, one of the drivers involved in the chase sequence remarked that the Charger, with a larger engine (big-block 440 cu. in. versus the 390 cu. in.) and greater horsepower (375 versus 325), was so much faster than the Mustang that the drivers had to keep backing off the accelerator to prevent the Charger from pulling away from the Mustang.

The editing of the car chase likely won Frank P. Keller the editing Oscar for 1968, and has been included in lists of the "Best Editing Sequences of All-Time." In the volume The Sixties: 1960-1969 (2003), of his book series History of the American Cinema, Cinema Arts professor Paul Monaco wrote:

The most compelling street footage of 1968, however, appeared in an entirely contrived sequence, with nary a hint of documentary feel about it – the car chase through the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, created from footage shot over nearly five weeks.

Billy Fraker, the cinematographer for the film, attributed the success of the chase sequence primarily to the work of the editor, Frank P. Keller. At the time, Keller was credited with cutting the piece in such a superb manner that he made the city of San Francisco a "character" in the film. The editing of the scene was not without difficulties. Ralph Rosenblum wrote in 1979, "Those who care about such things may know that during the filming of the climactic chase scene in Bullitt, an out-of-control car filled with dummies tripped a wire which prematurely sent a costly set up in flames, and that editor Frank Keller salvaged the near-catastrophe with a clever and unusual juxtaposition of images that made the explosion appear to go off on time." The chase scene has also been cited by critics as groundbreaking in its realism and originality.

 

 

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Edited by Dodge55Royal (see edit history)
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18 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:

Melanie, my wife, loves the "Fast and Furious" movies. Aside from the obvious ridiculousness, as a car guy I'm offended that they never get the details right. It started early in the first movie where the main character, Dom, says [pointing to a picture]: That's my dad. He was coming up in the pro-stock circuit. Last race of the season, he was coming into the final turn when a driver named Kenny Linder tapped his bumper and put him into the wall at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. I watched my father burn to death.

 

Um, guys? A Pro Stock race is a drag race. Unless the other guy rammed him turning onto the return road, there weren't any turns involved.


And with that I was out for good.

  I saw the original Fast and Furious movie and I think it annoyed my Wife that I laughed out loud so much. When she asked me "what's so funny?" I just replied how absurd it all was and I couldn't help it!

   In Smoky and the Bandit there is one highway scene where they keep passing the very same cars over and over. In the scene where the truck driver takes off the Sheriff's driver's door, there is a quick scene just prior that shows the door closed, not open. I love scenes where where in a chase sequence and the car keeps running into things that bash in the fenders and you see other damage but then the car seems to heal itself later.

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A couple of other scenes from Smokey and the Bandit shows the car with honeycomb wheels in lieu of the snowflakes. The honeycomb wheels were on 76 trans ams which the movie cars were. They had 77 front ends put on them. (I suppose that they were making the 77 front ends before they started production on the cars? That little detail has never been explained)

 

In the movie Dazed and Confused which is supposed to be 1976? I think, there is a period correct trans am with later model (3rd gen- 1986 or so) Iroc camaro wheels.

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1 hour ago, pkhammer said:

  I saw the original Fast and Furious movie and I think it annoyed my Wife that I laughed out loud so much. When she asked me "what's so funny?" I just replied how absurd it all was and I couldn't help it!

   In Smoky and the Bandit there is one highway scene where they keep passing the very same cars over and over. In the scene where the truck driver takes off the Sheriff's driver's door, there is a quick scene just prior that shows the door closed, not open. I love scenes where where in a chase sequence and the car keeps running into things that bash in the fenders and you see other damage but then the car seems to heal itself later.

I too laughed so hard it was ridiculous at Fast and Furious!! 
People trying to be gangster about cars that look like happy meal toys! Hahaha 

It was like watching people race washing machines with terrible paint spills that surround a paint mixer! 

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@pkhammer

When fast and delirious came out, I knew guys around town with street cars putting down low 6 and high 5 second 1/8 mile times. Now amazingly, they’ve went from criminals stealing vcr’s to James Bond level super agents? WTH?
 

What a joke that entire franchise is 

Edited by BobinVirginia (see edit history)
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I still remember the lines from the third Indiana Jones Movie:

"Rolls-Royce Phantom II. 4.3 liter, 30 horsepower, six cylinder engine with Stromberg downdraft carburetor. Can go zero to 100 km/h in 12.5 seconds....and I even like the color."

Of course it isn't a Phantom II and the PII specs stated are wrong. From IMCDb.

rr1.1.jpg

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1 hour ago, Jim Bollman said:

I need to watch Hogans Hero's again and note the episode that uses a 48-50 Ford Bonus Build truck as a German truck.  Maybe that's where Ford got the design. 🙂

I'm sure your year is right on the truck but Ford had a plant in Germany and it manufactured trucks for the German Army. It's more likely the Germans got the basic design from Ford. After being absorbed into the German war economy the factory even kept the name and was  the "Ford-Werks". Adolf Hitler was a big admirer of HF. He is the only American mentioned in Mein Kamph.

Edited by JV Puleo (see edit history)
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6 hours ago, Rivguy said:

If you watch American Graffitti enough times, you will notice a gold '67 or '68 Chevy Caprice with a dented left quarter panel parked at the curb in one of the cruising scenes. The car is of course, five or six years too new for the period of the movie.

How about a 1971 Toyota Corolla in American Graffiti...AGCorolla.jpg.06d2c6b76b33686d9959e85b24c8da4d.jpg

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6 hours ago, Rivguy said:

If you watch American Graffitti enough times, you will notice a gold '67 or '68 Chevy Caprice with a dented left quarter panel parked at the curb in one of the cruising scenes. The car is of course, five or six years too new for the period of the movie.

AGCaprice.jpg.0127ac5d8d1690e18f11b7f710779cc4.jpg

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In 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', there were a series of scenes with the main characters in a taxicab.  The cab went from '49 Dodge to '50 Plymouth several times.

 

'Goodfellas' has a scene where the year is narrated as 1963 even though the rear of a '65 Impala is shown.

 

In 'Back to the Future', at the 'Enchantment Under the Sea' dance, there is a '51 Plymouth parked in the background that appears then disappears several times.

 

 

 

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Watchers beware! Movies are famous for errors like this. An example, I was just watching "Lonesome Dove" and noticed that all the "cows" they were herding were actually bulls and in an ending scene, the main characters were saying their goodbyes and one was referring to their horse as a "she" when , clearly, it was a male!  Like watching a line of American army trucks or Sherman tanks in German markings in old war pics! But hey, it's only a movie!

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My favorite movie that is full of mistakes is Henry Ford, Man and Machine released in 1987 starring Cliff Robertson. The best one is where they reenact the scene where Henry gets mugged on the streets of Detroit. Just after he leaves his secretary's house he walks to his car (a Model T, of course) and walks to the left side of his car to enter. THERE IS NO DOOR ON THE LEFT SIDE. Not only does he try to enter the wrong side of the car, but he fiddles with a set of keys to unlock the door that does not exist.

 

Frank

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I remember lots of mistakes in the documentary series "The cars that made America". When Henry and Edsel Ford are introducing the all-new 1928 Model A Ford, the car sitting there is a '31. When one of the GM execs (Ed Cole) is trying to convince the head of GM (Alfred Sloan) that power is what the younger generation wants, he convinces him to go for a ride in his modified Chevy, which is a '55 or '56 Mercury! LOL

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Especially with lower budget movies, I like the idea of a director making due with what is available even it's not exactly correct.  American Graffiti is a great example of guerrilla film making, shot on a (relatively) low budget in a short period of time and a limited number of locations.  More time and money would have made it more slick, and it would have lost the raw authenticity.

 

But whenever there's a gun fight I always count the rounds fired.  In The World is Not Enough, James Bond got ahold of a Colt 1911 that fired 13 rounds and still had at least one left, I'd like to have one of those.  And for some reason, the bad guys always have guns that are horribly inaccurate.

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13 hours ago, Harold said:

In 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', there were a series of scenes with the main characters in a taxicab.  The cab went from '49 Dodge to '50 Plymouth several times.

 

'Goodfellas' has a scene where the year is narrated as 1963 even though the rear of a '65 Impala is shown.

 

In 'Back to the Future', at the 'Enchantment Under the Sea' dance, there is a '51 Plymouth parked in the background that appears then disappears several times.

 

 

 

Regarding "Goodfellas", not only does is there a 1965 Impala under the 1963 caption, but the same scene shows a 747 landing at NY International Airport.  747s entered passenger service in 1970.

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18 hours ago, BobinVirginia said:

I too laughed so hard it was ridiculous at Fast and Furious!! 
People trying to be gangster about cars that look like happy meal toys! Hahaha 

It was like watching people race washing machines with terrible paint spills that surround a paint mixer! 

My favorite joke was when the guy said he was scared to drive the Charger because it was too fast. That is pretty good, a car so fast a hot rodder won't drive it. What next, food so tasty a Frenchman won't eat it? Boots so gaudy a Texan won't wear them? Vodka so strong a Russian won't drink it? Ha ha ha ha ha

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On 10/27/2024 at 9:31 PM, Matt Harwood said:

Um, guys? A Pro Stock race is a drag race. Unless the other guy rammed him turning onto the return road, there weren't any turns involved.

Reminds me of Bruce Springsteen's song, Racing in the Streets:  "I got a '69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a four on the floor...."

 

I've brought this up before. He made some great music at certain points in his life, but it was hard for me to take him seriously as a genuine working class gearhead after that.

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This could break the record for the longest thread on the forums if we tried to list all the automotive errors in movies!  Almost every movie I've seen that's set in an earlier era has at least several errors, and many films have ridiculous ones, as people have mentioned.  A shorter thread might be to try to name the movies that got it right.  Among the few that seem to have been almost perfect are the Godfather and Godfather II, I think largely because Coppola is a car guy himself.  One kind of recurring error that bugs me is having all the cars look brand new and shiny.  The film people assemble a bunch of nicely-restored collector cars parked along a street and don't think to dirty them up to make the scene look authentic.  Another recurring error is having a limited number of cars that you continually see in scene after scene.   In the Cate Blanchette film "Carol," I noticed that even when the main characters traveled from New York City to Chicago, they somehow encountered the exact same group of cars parked on the street in the new location.  What an amazing coincidence!

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