Motion Pictures Where does hollywood get their movie cars from??

I actually found some destroyed movie cars in some of the self service wrecking yards back when I lived in L.A.

 

I rented my DD 59 El Camino out for a Diamond Rio music video 15 or so years ago, got $400 cash for the day, thought it was great. The producer happened to see it parked in front of my shop and stopped, said it was exactly what he wanted. Problem was this was 4pm and they were shooting starting at 6 the next morning. It had snowed the day before and I froze my a-- off washing it that night after work, no way I'd show up with it with the road grime. Showed up the next morning and the first thing they did was wet it down and run up and down a dirt road to "make it dirty". A buddy of mine was pissed when he heard about it, he was sceaduled to be there with his 64 Elky but got a call the night before canceling the use of his!

My brother seems to collect 4 doors and wagons, says they look more correct pulling his restored vintage camp trailers. Before he moved to Colorado he was renting them and sometimes the trailers too to movie and tv productions all the time. They need "normal" cars like 4 doors to be era correct. They even hired him as an extra to drive them, I gave him a hard time about being the "old guy in the 4 door"

 

My T-bird was used and abused for a movie Sean Penn shot around Omaha in '91. Transportation director contacted local clubs through the Eastern Nebraska-Western Iowa Car Council (the same group that puts on the Lincoln Swap Meet in early March), asked people to send Polaroids of their cars to see if they could use them, and offered to pay same as they do for extras ($50/day plus they fed you). Sent pics in of my buddy's '63 Galaxie 500 4-door with a 390, multi-colored body and a rose beige vinyl interior, and my 'Bird. My buddy was asked if he'd sell his car for $1K - wife thought car was a POS and he got pressured to sell since he wasn't working. They did a bondo/quickie paint resto on the thing and used it as a police car, spray-painted the interior dark blue. They actually ended up keeping the car after filming and used it in serveral '60s-era movies over the years.

I got a call late one afternoon to bring my car to Omaha for some night-time shooting - long story short I drove the car past Viggo Mortenson 20 times - he kicked the quarter panel hard enough to put a crease in it. And, no, I was not warned ahead of time they were going to have him kick as I drove by. Transportation director had me bring the 'Bird back to "repair the damage" which amounted to a poor respray of the passenger side complete with overspray into the interior (which was trash at that time, but still WTF?) and the crease was still in the quarter! Had all that fixed when we restored the 'Bird in '00-'04. But the car never made it into the movie - the cars in front and behind me in the same shooting sequence did, though.

 

figures give them 25 bucks to list your car
typical hollywood ripoff

 

The family of a friend of mine in college owned a film vehicle rental company and they owned hundreds and hundreds of vehicles they rented out for TV shows, movies etc. Most of their vehicles were quite mundane late model cars, trucks, bikes etc. If they needed an antique, hot rod or collectible car, they would typically rent those from the owner.
As others have mentioned, beware if a film crew wants to rent your car and read the fine print...While not my friend's company, I know of one feller who rented out his car to a film crew and wasn't able to be with it full-time as he had to go to work 8-5 and when he got his car back, the film crew had put it through a cheap respray because the director had decided that his car was 'the wrong color'...needless to say, he did not approve nor was made aware of the paint job....the fine print in the rental contract allowed for 'minor reversible changes' to be made to the rented property-Not Good.

 

Really??
That's my yellow and red 37 at the top left---I've been doing business with them for more than a few years--good people---and for my "$25", I've made a few thousand from them. It's all in what you do and what you let them do, like any business--it's a contract.
Can't say all the companies are good,but Nationwide Picture Cars are OK in my book.
www.nationwidepicturecars.com
http://www.movievehicles.com/index.htm

 

Most people know that Gene Winfield built a lot of cars for various movies and TV shows. During the late 60's and 70's, Gene had a connection with Chevrolet and furnished current model Chevy's to the studios when needed.

He also rented misc. vehicles to the studios for background and street cars. Over the years, when he saw an interesting car, he would stop people on the street and ask if they would be interested in renting their car to a studio. If they said yes, he got their name and phone number and took a picture of their car.

He put all the pictures in a big album and when he was contacted by a studios he (or the studio) would go through the album and select the cars.

Gene would then call the owners, rent the cars, and take them to the studio sets. Obviously he would charge the studio a little more than he had to pay the owners.

 

I owned a limo company for years in L.A. and provided limos and Towncars to a number of movie rental companies. One time they removed a windshield and dented the hood (wanted close ups of the driver and the interior.) Another time, they ran one off a loading dock and bent the frame. A friend of mine rented his Subaru 360 van out for a Richard Gere movie (Red Corner.) They did a cheap-ass paint job on it to look like a taxi; then did another cheap-ass paint job to make it look sort of original before returning it.

Bottom line: never rent out your car unless you are with it all the time .... and be prepared to say "no" .... and mean it.

 

It was over here in Europe,but I know it got posted on the HAMB, I know a couple of the guys that had their rods hired for that commercial that made the Audi R8 look like the bland soulless Euro box that it is. I know they got really well paid, and good hotel accommodation but they had to allow their cars to be driven by stunt drivers.

There you go, found it!



Paul

 

Having worked in the business, several of my cars have been used in commercials, videos, ect. I've brought hundreds of cars onto sets over the years but a word of caution to those who loan their cars out. Its just another rental to the production crew, not a prized vintage vehicle to them and damage can occur. You should always be on set at all times with it as they will do things you wouldn't allow otherwise. Cars I was in charge of have been wrecked by "professional stunt drivers" accidentally, had headliners burned by lights placed on seats, blown head gaskets from beating on the car, damage to paint from tool belts & camera mounts and people standing on cars. These things happened in a split second and I was hawking the cars every moment. Stuff does and will happen. While production does have insurance to cover such events, some of the smaller film companies may not be as well funded and your car insurance will be void being your vehicle was "for hire". Something to keep in mind and check their insurance policy first.

 

my buddy ice works for a company in the valley they do a ton of commercial and movie cars . the company he works for will get contacted in advance on what they want. then they will go out and buy the cars and restore them or build them to the movies specs (or commercial) . they have lots of throw aways last time i was down there they were cutting a perfect 5 window coupe in half for a rat rod for mattel hotwheels car ... it broke my heart , but there were a ton of throw away parts (quarter panels and roof!) they do a ton of stuff. there was a bridgstone commercial the one with the old people and a cad at bonneville . he built that car too. full race it was sweet looking , but they bought 2 for that one . They did all the green lantern cars and on and on . ton of cars always getting cut up . good job...

then they go to storage never to be seen again.

most car prep companies do this stuff.

good jobs for those that have the skills to GET ER DONE

 

Depends on the production. Usually they'll have a "hero car" for all of the close up scenes where the details really matter and you want a NICE looking car, but then they'll have a handful of clones that are real POS cars that are 75% bondo and mix & match parts and they use those to wreck and to do the stunts with.
A buddy of mine owns one of the original General Lee chargers that they used in the TV show. There were 17 cars left after the show ended on TV and Warner Bros. let them sit in a lot somewhere or other. He got lucky and got one of the cars that was driveable, but it was made up and repaired using parts off of the others that were wrecked & destroyed. The car is full of bondo, and we have counted at least ten other paint colors underneath the orange paint on the different body panels (trunklid, fenders, doors, gravel pan, etc. were all off of different cars)., and the interior was spray painted tan to match the hero car's interior. They just wadded up newspaper and covered the gauges to mask them off! The switches, radio, etc. were all painted tan. They didn't care. Another friend of mine has one of them that was a "wire" car that was just a shell that they pulled along with a wire to make it do the insane jumps and to crash it into trees, etc. because it was too dangerous even for a stunt driver to drive it.
I was an extra in the movie THE BOX and they just advertised in the local newspaper that they were looking for extras and period correct cars for the background. Got an extra $50 per day just to drive my 71 Road Runner out to NASA Langley and to drive it in the background here & there and to park it in the background.
There's also a local production company that I've done extra work for that films a detective show for one of the Discovery channels and they occasionally call me to see if I know someone with an unusual car for their TV show if it is relevant to the "crime scene" that they are filming, but I don't play middleman, I just hit up the local car clubs and ask them to advertise it to their members and get them to call the production company.

 

Can't remember the link, but do some google research on "Joe Dirt movie car". That Daytona is a REAL Dodge Charger Daytona that WAS a beautiful show car. From what I remember, they leased the car from the owner with the stipulation that they returned the car to "show car" condition when they were done with it, but after the movie was filmed the owner realized that the car was probably more recognizable and worth MORE as the POS "Joe Dirt" car.

Somewhere on the internet there are pictures of the work that they did to the car to make it look as bad as it did in the movie, but the underside is still as beautiful as it was when it left the factory! The "rust" is nothing more than paint, they primered some spots and added some crude stuff to the interior... Really cool how they did it!

 

My 65 Star Chief 4drHT daily driver was used as the "Hero car" in a local low budget film called "Splatter - Love, Honnor, paintball" a couple years ago. I was paid $300 for a months use of my $500 car.

It came back cleaner than when they took it but with a shot driver door latch (lots of takes). I fixed the latch and I'm still driving it.

I would never let a movie company use a "good" car though.

Carmak
Riverside, Iowa

 

Take a look at that insurance company commercial with the '61 Caddy convertible to get an idea what they think of and how they'll treat your car if they want to. I have to change the channel when that one comes on.

 

I saw that one also and cringed.

It's obvious that a Lincoln or Imperial would have been a better choice for a derby car. Duh!

Carmak

 

Has anyone ever seen the old Studio Warehouse pics (late '30s, can't recall if Fox or Warner Bros.)
Real cars were stored in vertical cubicles, 5 high. (like a 'Hot Wheels' grid box, about 10 across)
There were Coupes Roadsters, Tourings, etc. They were removed and put back with a large steam-powered forklift.
The pictures were amazing!

 

A good friend of mine has a Monte Carlo that was used in a beer commercial, his dad was in the process of restoring the car. They asked to use the car for the set and they put rims, and engine and a paint job with sticker racing stripes (cheap asses) haha. They used the car and rented it out, after they where done they gave the car back with all the things they put into the car, now my buddy drives it as a daily driver, thought it was funny cause people sing the song to the commercial when they see the car haha -Sam

 

My car was used in a movie that came out last year called "Flipped". Directed by Rob Reiner. They had the car for about a month, but I was paid pretty well I thought. Spent a couple days on set and even drove it in one of the scenes. It showed up in a handful of scenes in the movie. Just background stuff, but kinda cool.

 

I know it is not a 'car', but a teardrop I built to haul calendars and pinstrip products was used in the movie Runaways. We were using it at Pomona and stuck a for sale sign as we used it up and had a 'new' Avion to replace. Some guy comes up and goes crazy over says his friend works in the biz and needs just that, sure. Next day a call from Picture Car Warehouse and a price was met and they sent a rollup up the next day for it. They do a large number of movies and I believe they did all the 'Fast and,,,, and also they built the roadster(s) based on the one build by Shug Hanchard, for the intro of the last Indiana Jones movies. They are always looking for vehicles.

 

my 63 skylark was used in a video clip from a dutch singer

I think it's cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12fVZ-Xt_gs