Car casting is about as important to a good show or movie as actor casting. Sometimes filmmakers get it wrong and it can sort of derail an otherwise good story. What was the most unrealistic car casting?
On Monday, our own Jason Torchinsky pointed out how the super clean old-school Ford Bronco in HBO’s Mare of Easttown doesn’t make much sense. This is a vehicle that, in similar condition to the one in the show, is easily a six-figure car. It doesn’t really fit in the story of low to middle income people. So to car folks, it sort of sticks out like a sore thumb.
Before we continue, let’s look at some good examples of car casting. The first one that comes to mind for me is A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. The cars are a delightful mix of everything from old fire engines to the Nissan Pao.
And when the show did use a vehicle that didn’t really fit, a newer Fiat 500, it wasn’t as distracting as that Bronco is.
Another good example are the cars of Chernobyl on HBO. The work necessary to find old Soviet cars must have been painstaking and probably horrendously expensive. However, the cars help tie the show together into the piece of art that it is.
For me, the most unrealistic car casting comes from the show Gotham on Fox. I know this show isn’t supposed to take place in any determined era, but the car choices still seem a bit chaotic. Cars will regularly shift between classics to 1990s cars that look like they were purchased off of Craigslist for $500. And cars in the background shots just seem to be whatever regular traffic was parked on the street that day.
What was the most unrealistic car casting? What show or movie got its cars the most infuriatingly wrong?