Destroying Our Heritage?

[waldenman]

Hi all,



I hope this isn't too "off topic".



I was watching an episode of the TV series "Foyles War" which had a scene where a German bomber dropped it's bombs on the the local village. During the scene a beautiful old 1940's Austin car was destroyed.

You saw it burning so this wasn't "trick" photography.

Similarly, in Midsomer Murders an old Alvis was totally burnt out on screen.



It set me thinking........do they REALLY destroy old vehicles during filming for the TV or cinema?



Sacrilege if they do, surely?



I hope I'm wrong.



Cheers,



John

[Freddy]

They could be just fibre glass shells but I know what you mean, I feel like weeping everytime I see The Italian Job: a Ferrari; Aston Martin; E type Jags, not to mention the Minis. Also the enviromentalist in me says I hope they picked up all the pieces afterwards.

[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/toot.gif[/img]



Freddy

[samkydd]

(Freddy @ Oct 9 2005, 07:21 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>

They could be just fibre glass shells but I know what you mean, I feel like weeping everytime I see The Italian Job: a Ferrari; Aston Martin; E type Jags, not to mention the Minis. Also the enviromentalist in me says I hope they picked up all the pieces afterwards.

[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/toot.gif[/img]



Freddy

[/b]

There was an American film in the 80s where several Porsche 911s were destroyed, but these were fibre glass replicas.



If any classic cars are destroyed on modern day UK series or films I would imagine that they are possibly old scrappers that cannot be restored because they're just too far gone, and so they are "painted up" for the part. A very good version of the same car is used in moving shots and the one being destroyed is the non running scrapper. I doubt if anything of any use or value is left on the car, and even the windows and windscreen are probably replaced with plastic.



People do hire their classic cars out for filming, and some run specialist companies who own a load of various period vehicles, some in mint restored condition others not even MoT'd if they're used on sets! One such company was featured in a classic car mag a few years ago and he had everything form an old Fordson flat bed truck in an unrestored state, a VW splitty camper van, and numerous common or garden 50s and 60s cars from A35's to Ford Zodiacs.



I've seen apparent car crashes on tellly involving classic cars where you hear the crunch and you see the bonnet slightly raised with steam coming out of the "damaged" radiator, but if you look closely there is no actual damage to the vehicle.



You can always tell a low budget TV series when someone is shown driving an older car like an old Ford Orion or Vauxhall Cavalier, you just know that it is going to be involved in a pile-up and blow up or something, usually in Casualty when any outside filming is so obviously going to involve an accident.



In The Sweeney many baddie's 1960s Jaguars were wrecked, but if you cast your mind back to the 1970s old Jags were very cheap second hand (as 1980s amd 90s ones are now)! When I was 17 our local coffee-bar owner offered me his jet black 1964 Mk 10 Jag for £160 and I turned it down because of the high fuel consumption! Even Morse's Jag with non-original vinyl roof was picked up for a mere £1500 at an auction at the height of the 80s classic car boom (and eventually sold for £65,000 after someone won it in a Morse competion when the series ended).



Apart from cars lost in The Italian Job I still wince at the Sunbeam sports car, I think it was the rare Tiger model, that was unceremoniously pushed into the water in Get Carter, and Ian Hendry's Jag door. The Vanden Plas Princess saloon which was vandalised during the first robbery in the film Robbery. The VP cars, although not as expensive or "sought after" today as some classic cars, were literally the poor man's Rolls Royce of their time and were powered by a 4 litre Rolls Royce engine and I love them (unlike the last incarnation of the Princess, the horrible wedge shaped thing often seen in Russet Brown with a ripped tan vinyl roof with a caravan attached, stuck on the hard shoulder on Bank Holiday weekends, with an anxious family looking on as steam billows out)!



I used to be an avid classic car and kit car enthusiast but to be honest it's lost its appeal for me in recent years. You can't beat driving around in the airconditioned luxury of a modern car, and I no longer enjoy spending weekends in a freezing cold garage skinning my knuckles working on cars up to my elbows in oil and grease just for the glory of driving to a summer show and discussing the finer points of lead additives with geography teacher type old farts in WW1 flying helmets with a strap-on picnic basket!

[DB7]

The majority will be replica's. No classic car owner is going to allow his pride and joy to be torched and even those beyond repair are desperately sought after for their spare parts. I think some like the Ferrari in Ferris Buellers Day Off are kit cars tho I could be wrong.



On leaving school my first job was with a Lotus dealership and I got landed the plumb job of restoring an Austin 7 for a mate of the boss; much of it was rotten as a pear and parts like the running boards simply had to be made from new. Often wonder where it is now as I spent months working on the darn thing.

[jacobean]

'Villain' springs to mind where a Ford Zodiac, Jaguar S Type and Triumph 2000 were used to ram a Vanden Plas during a wages snatch. Again these cars were 2 a penny then. Modern equivalents such as Ford Scorpios and XJ40's are unwanted now, but maybe in 10 years time they will become collectable although I doubt it as modern cars have too many complex electronics that go wrong with age and have less longevity than their older, less complex predecessors.



Cars that you see getting blown up are usually well past their best anyway and not worth repairing and are sourced from dealers specialising in tired part exchanges. Jeremy Clarkson spent a couple of grand on a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow recently and drove it into a swimming pool for a Top Gear feature. The reality was that the car would have cost tens of thousands to get through the next MOT so that is all it was good for. It was probably used for spares afterwards though.



If anyone remembers the crapulous BBC soap, 'Eldorado', an amusing scene was when bad boy Marcus Tandy's new Alpine Renault exploded due to a car bomb. In a split second you could see that the blue £25k Renault was supplanted by a blue £200 Triumph TR-7 in a botched special effect.



Incidentally, the Jags used in the Italian Job were repaired and regularly turn up on the various Italian Job meets. Luckily the Lamborghini was just a bodyshell with wheels and the Aston DB4 was a Lancia Flaminia made to look like an Aston.

[samkydd]

(DB7 @ Oct 10 2005, 11:58 AM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>

I think some like the Ferrari in Ferris Buellers Day Off are kit cars tho I could be wrong.



[/b]

The kit car industry did do some very good replicas of famous models over the years and my brother built several; a Lamborghini Countach with a Rover (Buick) 3.5 litre engine, AC Cobras, E Type. Other kits that I know of are the Frogeye Sprite, D Type, Lotus Super Seven, a space age looking Nova which looked like something from a Gerry Anderson puppet series, based on a Beetle, Porsche Speedster and 911, Mini Moke, Morgan 3 wheeler with a Moto Guzzi V twin engine, a Bugatti based on an old Jaguar XJ6 running gear and 4.2 lump and many more.



Most kit cars tend to be based on the sports car or roadster style of car, you didn't tend to get any saloon car replicas because the general idea was to recycle something like an Escort or Cortina, recondition the parts and transfer everything over to a kit sports car chassis for sunny Sundays out. You wanted to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear rather than go to all that effort just to make another sow's ear! Although there were a few hot rod kits based on saloons such as US Model T's and sit up and beg Ford Populars, and there are a few companies who specialise in custom building these.



Dutton did do a kit on something called a Sierra which was like a 2WD off road utility(a few years before Ford's Cortina replacement the Sierra came out), and Spartan also did a small jeep type type thing called a Trekka based on a Fiesta running gear plus a twin axled motorhome called a Starcraft based on a Cortina. There is also a 1920s looking replica of an American lauderlette which is called a Beaufort and is popular as a wedding car.



In the wooden TV series Chancer the cars used were examples of the wonderful 1930s looking kit car roadster the JBA Falcon, and my neighbour had one in red. This was alluminium with fibre glass wings and powered by a 2 litre Cortina engine.

[smudge]

I can still feel the physical sensation when I think of one day at Pinewood when a storage shed was opened and there before us were the complete Astons from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, along with a couple of effects bodyshells, and the ACROSTAR jet ; just sitting there - thick with dust. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/no.gif[/img]



They were wating to be 'sanitised' and sold on to a second hand AM dealer....Allegedly. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huh.gif[/img]



Sitting rotting on the lot were a couple of other 007 props, along with some BATMAN bits. Such is the glamour of movie-making...



SMUDGE



[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/devil.gif[/img]

[jacobean]

It's funny that the cars were not sold off by a parsmonious production manager to recoup the costs. Must have been worth 20k apiece then if they were in generally good used condition.

[Jim]

(waldenman @ Oct 9 2005, 07:09 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>

Hi all,



I hope this isn't too "off topic".



I was watching an episode of the TV series "Foyles War" which had a scene where a German bomber dropped it's bombs on the the local village. During the scene a beautiful old 1940's Austin car was destroyed.

You saw it burning so this wasn't "trick" photography.

Similarly, in Midsomer Murders an old Alvis was totally burnt out on screen.



It set me thinking........do they REALLY destroy old vehicles during filming for the TV or cinema?



Sacrilege if they do, surely?



I hope I'm wrong.



Cheers,



John

[/b]

I think you are right there John. I watched a couple of episodes of 'Heartbeat' - I know sad or what, but the scenery is great! And in most of them, they finished wrecking a classic old Brit Car. I suppose I could write to the makers and ask them if they intend to wipe out our heritage?



Takes back to the 'Monte Carlo or Bust' I think, when a really lovely old Merc with a bonnet (hood) the size of a football pitch was pranged - BUT in the next scene it was OK again!!!

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