12 Cool TV Cars and Trucks You Forgot About

Motor Trend

a day ago

There are plenty of TV cars and trucks that have become pop culture staples, with superstars like K.I.T.T. and the A-Team van joining Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari 308 and the Testarossa from Miami Vice in the small-screen hall of fame. And yet so many other seemingly deserving television vehicles haven't enjoyed the same level of notoriety, for reasons ranging from the relative obscurity of their original programming to their somewhat smaller roles in larger productions.
Here are our pics for 12 of the coolest TV cars and trucks you forgot about. Coyote X - "Hardcastle and McCormick"
There's been no better use of a kit car on the small screen than the Coyote X that served as the centerpiece of the mostly forgotten 1980s TV show Hardcastle and McCormick . Over the course of three seasons, this series tracked the exploits of a Los Angeles County judge named Hardcastle who leverages his friendship with hard-driving ex-con McCormick to dole out off-the-books justice. Predictably, this almost always involves a chase or two.
McCormick's trusty steed was the Coyote, which, in the mythology of the show, was an advanced sports car that had been designed by his best friend. In reality, the Coyote was a bit of a mutt, borrowing its body bits from a fiberglass model of the McLaren M6GT (itself the road-going version of the automaker's Group 7 Can-Am car), set down on a Volkswagen Beetle frame. The latter was then the go-to choice for anyone seeking a modular rear-wheel-drive platform, and in the case of the Coyote X, motivation was provided by a borrowed four-cylinder Porsche 914 engine.
Although the show has largely faded into the mists of time, it was possible to purchase a very similar kit car during roughly the same period called the Manta, which combined several styling cues seen on both the original McLaren and the Coyote X. After the first season, the show's producers moved to a DeLorean-based version of the Coyote, largely at the behest of their star, who complained about how difficult it was to clamber in and out of the original. 1982 GMC K2500 Sierra Grande - "The Fall Guy"
Forget about Ryan Gosling's recent turn in the movie of the same name and transport yourself back in time to the TV show that inspired it. Starting in 1981, every week audiences were treated to a Hollywood stuntman turned bounty hunter who chose the world's most ostentatious chariot to stalk his prey—a full-size square-body GMC.
This was no ordinary K2500 Sierra Grande. In addition to the de facto lift kit outfitted to nearly every pickup of the era, main character Colton Seavers installed a feature that no modern standards and practices department would allow on a vehicle driven by the ostensible hero of a series: a holding cell. It turns out that dudes in vans offering free candy weren't the only rolling prisons pedestrians had to fear in the '80s, with Seavers' truck concealing an alarmingly claustrophobic and almost certainly illegal confinement coffin.
To distract you from just how creepy that entire concept is, showrunners made sure the GMC was airborne for as many minutes of screen time as possible per episode. To help facilitate all those sweet jumps, the Sierra was significantly modified to a mid-engine design, which made for more appropriate weight distribution when taking to the skies.
Car companies had a lot more leeway in the 1990s when it came to promoting their product lines. How else to explain the phenomenon that was Viper , a show that was conceived of, produced, and bankrolled by Chrysler specifically to promote its supercar, while also stuffing nearly every background scene with Dodge, Plymouth, and Eagle products?
It would have been cool enough to simply make a Viper the star of the show, but Chrysler went way beyond that simple premise with the 'Defender,' a bulletproof, crime-fighting machine that transforms into a bog-standard Viper when not hunting down its prey on the streets of Metro City. With Terminator 2 having just decimated the box office, it only makes sense that Chrysler would go all in on VFX morphing technology to give its show additional edge.
Absolutely everything about Viper was ridiculous—and extremely cool. It's often been said that the only way to stop crime is to give a man a V-10-powered roadster, even if that man has had all of his memories erased and replaced with the personality of a fictional police officer (a wildly unnecessary layer of complication that would be welcome in our current period of boring procedurals). Viper is also notable for being one of the few shows to have its star car undergo a generational update during the course of the series, with the RT/10 eventually replaced by a Viper GTS, uh, hovercraft in its last season.
Moving on from one of the coolest sports cars to have ever graced American roads to no doubt the lamest, we come to the Charlie's Angels entry on our list of TV cars and trucks you forgot about. In this case, the memory hole is entirely understandable, as the Ford Mustang Cobra II is a model we all wish could be expunged from the collective consciousness.
It's hard to count how many ways the Pinto-platform Mustang II was a disappointment. Consider its chunky styling, its econocar roots, and of course its anemic, smog-choked drivetrain which could barely muster 122 horsepower in 1976, even in top-snake Cobra II trim.
And yet it was made a star for a brief shining moment, thanks to its proximity to the '70s zeitgeist. Charlie's Angels was a huge hit, and with Farrah Fawcett behind the wheel for an appreciable number of episodes, the Mustang Cobra II overcame its inherent flaws to bask in reflected glamour. 1979 Dodge Macho Power Wagon - "Simon & Simon"
Big pickups were a television staple in the 1980s, and if you weren't catching up on re-runs of The Fall Guy , chances were you were tuning into Simon & Simon to get your full-size fix. The show, which relied on the will-they-won't-they-fist-fight chemistry between a pair of private detective brothers, leaned hard on the class divide between the college-educated Simon and the former soldier Simon. They had first names too, but honestly, who has time?
In any case, the more rough-and-tumble of the two loved to smash things to bits from behind the wheel of a 1979 Dodge Macho Power Wagon, and audiences were there for it. With a big roll bar and eye-catching paint, the Power Wagon should have become an American icon, but as soon as Simon & Simon was canceled, the hefty Dodge disappeared from the media landscape, and the sales charts, with Chrysler's pickup unable to ride the same wave of sales success that lifted General Motors and Ford options throughout the decade. 1965 Sunbeam Tiger - "Get Smart"
Get Smart was much better known for the comedic repartee between stars Don Adams (Maxwell Smart), Barbara Feldon (Agent 99) and Edward Platt (Chief), than it was any vehicular shenanigans. This is surprising given just how prominently a 1965 Sunbeam Tiger was displayed during the first two seasons of the show, with main character Maxwell arriving at Control headquarters from behind the wheel of a bright red example in the opening sequence.
The Tiger replaced a Ferrari 250 cabriolet that had been used during the same titles in the pilot, and it was itself doubled on screen by a four-cylinder Sunbeam Alpine for almost every close-up that was used during filming. Why? The special effects crew couldn't figure out how to stuff both a prop machine gun and a 260-cubic-inch V-8 into the same engine bay.
Although the public might have forgotten this particular car, the show's star never did. It was included as part of the compensation package for Adams, and it pulled duty in his household for many years until not one, but two of his daughters seriously damaged it one after the other by way of off-road excursions. 1960 BMW Isetta - "Family Matters"
If you came of age in the 1990s, then there's a strong chance that TGIF and Family Matters are permanently burned into your brain. And, of course, who could forget Jaleel White's star-making performance as Steve Urkel, the next-door neighbor who quickly moved from side character to series regular.
Chances are, however, that you don't remember the car that Family Matters producers assigned to über-nerd Urkel. The 1960 BMW Isetta bubble car was the constant butt of jokes, whether it was the fact that Urkel was actually paid to take it off the hands of his uncle, or that it was eventually hopped up to supersonic speed capabilities to play on its reputation as one of the slowest vehicles ever made. We're not saying Urkel's association with the Isetta permanently associated it with uncool for an entire generation of TV watchers, but the message Family Matters writers were putting out there was pretty easy to pick up on.
As with Don Adams, Jaleel White was given the Isetta as part of his contract with the network. Fortunately, it hasn't been victimized by the same level of bad luck afflicting the oft-crashed Sunbeam, and White still drives it to this day. 1995 Dodge Ram - "Walker, Texas Ranger"
Remember how gung-ho Chrysler was about buying its way onto the small screen in the 1990s? That same strategy was applied to Chuck Norris' most famous television series, Walker, Texas Ranger , where Dodge stepped in and erased the original hero truck, a GMC Sierra, in favor of a 1995 Ram after the initial season.
The Ram was an even more important model for Chrysler than the Viper, as its radical styling and available V-10 and turbodiesel powerplants helped elevate Dodge from also-ran status to contender in the pickup truck wars. It also became a key component of Norris' onscreen identity, forever linking the karate master with the Dodge/Ram brand.
Most of you are probably saying 'wait a minute, everyone knows that Walker drove a Ram—how could you say we've all forgotten about it?' That may be true, but we're willing to bet none of you remember the big-time upgrade that Dodge presented the Texas lawman in the 2005 Walker TV movie Trial by Fire . It's here that Norris slipped behind the wheel of a Ram SRT10 pickup, thus linking the first and last fruits of Chrysler's all-out TV action onslaught. 1970 Aston Martin DBS V8 - "The Persuaders"
British television seasons are notoriously short, and so the brief run of The Persuader s is no doubt the main reason why many Americans have almost no recollection of its on-road hardware. That's really too bad, as the Roger Moore/Tony Curtis vehicle made prominent use of a 1970 Aston Martin DBS V8—then advertised as the fastest four-passenger car in the world—throughout its entire run.
The Bahama Yellow car was actually a somewhat earlier six-cylinder DBS that featured V8 badges to help Aston Martin promote their latest model. As official suppliers to the show, they would have gladly handed over the real thing, but the coupe was so popular with customers that there were none to spare. This was the last role Moore played before moving into another Aston Martin–heavy franchise: James Bond . 1960–1964 Chevrolet Corvette - "Route 66"
It's entirely possible that Chrysler's inspiration for its television sponsorship focus dated all the way back to the 1960s. The program Route 66 followed a pair of men driving across the country along the titular highway, seeing America through the windshield of a Chevrolet Corvette.
That choice of sports car was no accident, as Chevy had a heavy hand in supplying and promoting the show. In fact, each passing season saw a brand new Corvette used as the hero car, thanks to GM's hard-working PR department. Route 66 isn't discussed all that much in a modern context, but it would be easy to assume that of course each of these 'Vettes was painted bright red. In actual fact, the black-and-white TV show had no use for such a dramatic hue, and in any case the red paint proved too reflective under the TV lights. This kept the Route 66 Corvette color palette restricted to much tamer shades such as light blue, beige, and tan.
Unlike several other entries on this list, Chevrolet didn't have an explicit agreement to give the show's star, George Maharis, his own Corvette to match what drove on-screen, so he schemed of a way to get one for free by telling the sponsor he would be tooling around in a competing Thunderbird (that he didn't actually own). The strategy was an effective one, and soon enough Maharis was heading home in his own 'Vette. 1976 GMC K1500 Sierra Classic - "The Rockford Files"
The last big truck on our list is also the most obscure. The Rockford Files has long been part of the gearhead television dataset due to James Garner's title character driving a Pontiac Firebird Formula in nearly every single episode. Less well remembered is the fact that he also occasionally got behind the wheel of a 1976 GMC K1500 Sierra Classic, a truck that ostensibly belonged to his on-screen father.
Despite it having faded into the mists of syndication, at the time the GMC's role in the show was fairly well known. A big part of this was because Garner had a sideline as a huckster for the brand, appearing in ads for the trucks and helping both GMC and Hickey Enterprises (the aftermarket outfitter that added the oversized fuel tank, roll bar, bumper bar, and driving lights to the truck) move as much metal as possible. 2000 Bentley Arnage Red Label - "Hannibal"
What kind of car would a serial killer drive? Oh, wait—we forgot to add that said multiple murderer is also a fantastically successful psychiatrist. The answer, according the producers of the show Hannibal , is a 2000 Bentley Arnage Red Label, as seen in the possession of famous face-eater Hannibal Lecter.
The Arnage Red Label was one of the last times the crew at Crewe sent a car out into the world with the old school 6.75-liter V-8 under the hood, making it something of an anachronism in the modern age. There's no doubt that its stately presence, well removed from the riff raff of daily life, is a subtle comment on the status of Hannibal Lecter in society. It's also likely that the majority of viewers gloss over the winged 'B' on the hood and view it as just another slab-sided super-luxury car, effectively anonymizing it in much the same way that Lecter exists at the periphery of the American legal system, barely visible despite the whirlwind of crime that surrounds him.