Dwight makes money flipping cars in another episode and seems pretty mechanically apt in general. I think he knows something about cars. It’s also pretty well established that he has a lot of money period - he’s the perpetual top performer in the company in a commissioned sales role, he owns a working farm with no labor costs, and he has successful sidelines such as the car sale and his real estate investments later. He also lives on a homestead that he inherited and doesn’t pay utility bills. The essence of Dwight’s character is the intriguing contradiction between how naive and antisocial he is about certain things and how good he is at what is fundamentally a job of emotional intelligence, sales.
He easily makes well over six figures a year after taxes from all his income sources combined and has essentially no expenses. Dwight doesn’t drive a Firebird to “impress nerds.” Dwight drives a Firebird because he has enough money to do whatever he wants and he wants to drive a Firebird. Simple as that, and that’s the whole point - Dwight shouldn’t be so successful and content with his life because he’s a weird asshole, yet he is the most successful and content person at Dunder-Mifflin, and that’s what makes people like Jim who value “impressing” the right people and being morally and emotionally normal so frustrated with him.
Not TV or film, but this reminds me of how Dick Tracey in the comic strip was driving brand new Caddies for a while. Eventually it got fired into a story line where Tracey was getting accused of corruption.
The direct-to-video B&W film-school project “I Was A Zombie For The FBI” was made in the early 1980s, and all the clothing and hairstyles, and furniture decor, was from that time, but all the cars were from the 1950s.
Bite your tongue! In the original, the heist was pulled by a gang of oh-so-British thieves in Turin, Italy. Their getaway route was carefully planned to take advantage of the Mini’s small size and sportiness, going places where a larger or slower car could not follow. The Mini was perfect for the movie, and the movie was perfect for the Mini.
Which reminds me of another bit of brilliant car casting, the Series 1 Land Rover 88 (“The Antichrist”) driven by Andrew Steyn in The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Little story about that car, which I’m going to tell from memory so I may get a small detail or two wrong-- after the first run of Columbo ended they sold the car to a private owner. After they revived Columbo in, I think, the early 90s, they had to seek out who the car was sold to and buy it back. Fortunately, the private owner still owned the car and had not made any changes to it-- it was still the same pile of junk it always had been.
OK, I skimmed through the entire thread, and unless I missed it I’m surprised no one has mentioned the show singlehandedly responsible for making the '69 Dodge Charger a collector’s rarity. According to Ben ‘Cooter’ Jones in this Wikipedia article, the makers of The Dukes of Hazzard went through 325(!) '68 and '69 Chargers through the series run.
Blasphemy! The Monkeemobie is the best, at least to the 8 year old boy I used to be when I first saw it. The Partridge bus is…a school bus with a “corporate idea of a hip paint job”.
And they should be pilloried for it! And not just metaphorically - in actual stocks on Woodward Ave.
Not to mention how many other 69 Chargers were ruined by their owners making GL replicas. (And some 68s, too! It’s pretty bad making a replica and starting with the wrong year car!)
