That’s one of my (minor) movie/TV pet peeves: characters who are supposed to be amateurs create or build something, but the elaborate finished product is clearly the work of a production designer with a Hollywood-sized budget and staff. I like the bus design—Miller’s remark is spot-on—but a real life Partridge Family wouldn’t have done that.
Bond’s cover was a representative of Universal Exports. This obliged him to dress well, travel extensively, stay in the best hotels, dine in expensive restaurants, mingle with the glitterati in casinos, and so forth in order to maintain the facade.
The car isn’t flashy. On the contrary, it’s an elegant example of understated wealth.
A rundown Land Rover was perfect for “The Antichrist”.
The one and only Darrin (Dick York) drove this Chevy Impala, exactly the kind of car an advertising executive in 1967 would have. Sweet! 
About that, that lead to what I believe is one of the best lampshades I have seen in a TV show.
A very young girl contracted Magnum for a case, and she is picked up by Magnum at the airport. With no word from Magnum, the girl gets her luggage into the Ferrari.
Magnum : Hey, how’d you know this was my car?
Cindy Lewellyn : What else would a man like you drive?
[“That’s right!” (Or: “Finally! Someone did “get it”!)”]
The new Cobra Kai show does a pretty good job. Johnny has an old Pontiac Firebird, something that was hot in the 80s (get the symbolism, huh, get it?). Daniel, successful now, and living his best days, has a nice modern Audi.
The new-age yoga instructor drives a first generation Nissan Leaf, which shows they put some thought into the car for somebody being environmentally conscious, but also poor. Only problem was the idiot foley artist who put in engine reving sounds when it drove away.
Successful car casting:
77 Sunset Strip (1958-64) - The Kookie T, perfect match of hot rod with hipster.
Cinderfella (1960) – Golden Sahara as the golden coach awaiting the transformed hero. This car has a rather remarkable history.
https://kustomrama.com/wiki/The_Golden_Sahara
A Clockwork Orange (1971) - “The Durango '95 purred away a real horror show - a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts.”
Less successful car casting:
Psych-Out (1968) – Voxmobile (scenes deleted)
Especially when you think about it: the mom would’ve been art-directing it… No, we’re not going to paint garish pot plants on it! Now, you put that spray can down this instant… and hand me that ruler.
Mentioning Audi reminded me, it’s kind of a signature of John Hughes’ movies for the family to have a domestic wood-paneled station wagon and European sedan. Ferris Bueller’s dad drove an Audi, if I remember correctly, while his mom had a wood paneled station wagon. Even in Vacation, where the comically excessively wood paneled Family Truckster is basically a character unto itself, there’s a fleeting shot of I think a Volvo sedan in the Griswold’s garage. Supposedly this was a fairly common arrangement for upper-middle class families in Chicago in the 1980s, so I guess that would count as good casting. Although I think John Hughes just liked wood paneled wagons, too. As for the Truckster, that whole car was a joke in and of itself, so that pretty much is good casting in the context of a comedy film.
Another good Magnum one. Rick’s Mercedes. Since I alway thought Rick was actually kind of a jerk, with “short man sysndrome”, but thought he was god’s gift to women, that particular Mercedes really was the car a wannabe playa would have in the 80s. A “douchebag car”. Like a 300ZX. So it was perfectly car-cast.
For a bad one, I’m just going to put in the entire MCU. Everything just screams product placement, because it was.
Tony has all those cars, but he always drives an Audi R10. Also, the rest of the cars in the movie are Audis. Until the next movie when all of the cars are from GM. Nothing wrong with Fury’s Suburban (Denali, Escalade, whatever) and Nat’s Corvette, but then all the bad guys drive Chevrolets.
The worst is Captain America’s Harley Davidson Street 750. Really, Cap is on Harley’s beginner bike?
I didn’t watch much CSI: Miami, but from what I recall they had the crime scene investigators driving Hummer H2s. I can’t imagine any police department is going to spend their budget on flashy, expensive SUVs. At best they’d have base model Explorers with the police package. More likely they’d have some sort of generic fleet-grade cargo van. I’m pretty sure the Hummers were product placement.
That reminds me, in The Americans, when Phillip switches to his “lobbyist” persona (I forget the fake name he used) to get close to the CIA director’s teenage daughter, he drives a 280ZX. Which totally seems like the kind of car a grown man who hangs out with teenage girls would drive.
There needs to be Warren Oats and the Yellow 1970 GTO Judge from Two Lane Blacktop in this thread.
Warren should have got an Oscar nomination, at least, for that.
Another Jalopnik article, an old one that starts out with my car! Well, me and Cady (Lindsay Lohan)…
Cady’s parents, who have just returned from a 12-year research trip as zoologists in Africa, settle down in Evanston, Illinois. Cady mentions that the move was because her mother’s tenure with Northwestern University ran out, which meant that her parents (or, her mother, at least) were academics.
While many peg the Toyota Prius as the early start of the hybrid car movement, the Honda Insight actually beat it to U.S. shores by about seven months, making it the first hybrid car in North America. Worldly, progressive people like Mr. and Mrs. Heron would definitely choose this to be the family vehicle.
Yes, it’s an article on the car casting of Mean Girls…
The guy who played Starsky actually HATED the Torino. He thought it was ugly; it was underpowered and handled very poorly (if you watch old episodes of the show you can see the absurd amount of body roll and poor cornering.) The actor, Paul Michael Glaser, absolutely loathed the car, and he deliberately drove it roughly in an attempt to deliberately damage it. To this day, he still hates that car. It may have been iconic of the show, but it is really NOT a car guy’s kind of car, it is the kind of thing a clueless show writer would have picked to try to look cool.
Either that, or yet another case of product placement. IIRC Ford sponsored a lot of those shows in the 1970s. Which is why all the girls on Charlie’s Angels drove Mustangs. I’m not completely sure about Starsky and Hutch, but it seems like I heard somewhere that the Torino was product placement.
Two of the best:
Perry Mason (the 1950s series) in one of his Cadillacs. The show was in black & white, so we never knew what color any of these cars were.
And his detective buddy Paul Drake in either his Thunderbird (he had several over the years)–
or his Corvette–
Stingray, whose main character, Ray, drove a Stingray:
When I was a teenager and that show was on, I thought it was literally the coolest car ever.
It’s been mentioned, but we need a photo:
It’s the perfect car for Sam and Dean. Black paint for camouflage at night, lots of space in the trunk for weapons and bodies, four doors for easily hauling around fellow hunters, a big block V8. The limitations of the car, such as it handles like a truck and floats like a boat don’t realy matter because they don’t chase ghosts in the car. But it’s great for stretching out and floating down the highway travelling back and forth across the country. And the Cragar mag wheels are totally Dean.
The car, called ‘baby’ is an iconic part of the show, is referenced constantly and even had an episode shot from its perspective.
Bonus points for me: My first car was a '67 four door Impala just like this one, only with ugly yellow and black paint. Back in the 80’s no one thought these were cool, and I sold it for $200 to a guy who wanted to use it for demolition derby. Now they are worth thousands of dollars.
Mustang bodies shrank to fit reworked Pinto frames, rather.
Speaking of Pintos – of all the cars on “CHiPs” that burst into flames, no Pinto ever did. Ironically, one Pinto ended up at the bottom of a pool.