Another "does this happen to anyone else?" thread...

I cant help it, but every time I watch these old 80's movies I always feel sorry for the people who were being forced to drive those absolute crap boxes. Does this happen to anyone else?

Now, I'm not talking about the "good" type of crap boxes that we all love, enjoy, and buy here... I mean the really awful sort of crap boxes. The ones that have so much body roll that they're only driving on two wheels in the chase scenes, or the ones that are so floaty they're still bouncing 10 minutes after running over their last pothole, and then there's the millions of lost hub caps... Even in "Beverly Hills Cop" when they're staked out outside of Axle's hotel I wonder how they can sit in such a horrendous excuse for an automobile for so long and still remain so calm.

That's all, you may now continue about your regularly scheduled program...

Thanks! -Bill

I love the Beverly Hills Cop movies. That is to only comment I have relative to this thread at this time. I'll stay tuned.

I feel bad because all the dogs are dead.

I tend to look at '80's movies and wonder how it would be different if they had cell phones.
The entire Home Alone series of movies gets kind of ruined by this.

I feel bad for the bad guys in Magnum P.I. The bad guys all drove horrific 80's-tacular sedans and Magnum is out in the 308GT. They probably wanted to kick his arse just from sheer jealousy.

I'm with jrw1621...I've started noticing how much different the shows or movies would have been if someone could have used a cell-phone.

Just got done watching the 1st Lethal Weapon movie, where Murtaugh calls the shrink from a freeway overpass on his "portable phone" (those clunky boxes that pre-date cellphones). When I worked for a phone company, they "awarded" me one of those as an employee of the month prize. I never used it, and aside from that movie, I've never seen anyone else ever use one.

The '80s gave us some really bad cars like the Ford Tempo with an optional diesel engine, and some pretty good ones, like the MR-2.

I watch It's a Mad Mad Mad World just for the cars.

Woody wrote: I feel bad because all the dogs are dead.

Me too

In reply to Hungary Bill:

I think to myself:

"Man, it must have been nice to drive that (name of car) brand new!"

integraguy wrote: Just got done watching the 1st Lethal Weapon movie, where Murtaugh calls the shrink from a freeway overpass on his "portable phone" (those clunky boxes that pre-date cellphones). When I worked for a phone company, they "awarded" me one of those as an employee of the month prize. I never used it, and aside from that movie, I've never seen anyone else ever use one.

I used to use a "bag phone" back in the very early 90s when I worked for a radio station. We would use it for call in's when on remotes

The phone thing is particularly noticeable when you watch Seinfeld reruns. The phone rings and Jerry pulls up the antenna on the portable.

mad_machine wrote:

integraguy wrote: Just got done watching the 1st Lethal Weapon movie, where Murtaugh calls the shrink from a freeway overpass on his "portable phone" (those clunky boxes that pre-date cellphones). When I worked for a phone company, they "awarded" me one of those as an employee of the month prize. I never used it, and aside from that movie, I've never seen anyone else ever use one.

I used to use a "bag phone" back in the very early 90s when I worked for a radio station. We would use it for call in's when on remotes

the bag phone like the size of a lunch box, lol

My old boss had one of those. I remember it being crazy expensive, both to buy and to use.

I had and used a bag phone. The batteries were the size of two paperbacks, IIRC they are still in my shop crap somewhere.

I remember these being the shizznit.

X Files did a 'flashback' episode where Mulder and Scully first met at some sci fi convention and to make it period realistic they had him using one of those. I remember thinking 'how the hell did they ever find one?'

I remember around the same time that my boss had the bag phone, we rented a laser level for a job. We had to walk on eggshells around it because it was worth something like nine grand and we had to leave a huge deposit on it. It was delivered by two guys. You can now buy something comparable at Sears for about thirty nine bucks.

I bought two aluminum LED flashlights in AutoZone the other day. These things are machined black anodized aluminum with a bright-ass LED and a waterproof switch. Even included a single AAA battery, all for $2. That same thing was probably a super secret Special Forces type thing that cost the military about a K apiece back in the early '90's.

I was selling these in 2004.

Course, I was in northern Alberta near the oil fields and the old bag phones had, by far, the most range of ANYTHING short of a Sat phone.

Riggers and miners were all rather pissed that there was never a direct replacement for the bag phones in a digital format.

The first time I ever saw a Sat phone, it was in the hands of David Lapworth of Prodrive, the year that they brought WRC cars to the Maine Forest Rally. He was the only one who could make a call all weekend in the woods of Maine. Of course, his calls were probably more important that ours.

Woody wrote: I feel bad because all the dogs are dead.

I was watching Milo and Otis the other day with my son and thought the same thing.

Kinda put a damper on the movie.

I watch them and always think, "holy E36 M3! A rust free AE86 Toyota!"

All this discussion of phones, I cant help but want to go back to when phones were "just phones"... (regardless of size)

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: "Man, it must have been nice to drive that (name of car) brand new!"

Something like: AE86, FC, Grand National = yes

Tempo, Celebrity, Cadillac Cimmaron = ohgodpleaseno!

they always put cops in crappy cars in 80's movies because that's what they got to drive- crappy cars that could be purchased cheap by the departments for the kinds of abuse that cop cars got put thru..

i think they always used the crappiest cars in chase scenes because it looks cooler seeing a 76 Grand Fury taking corners at 50 mph and having a hubcap fly off than it does to see the same corner taken in something more nimble that didn't have hubcaps to fly off.. also, they tended to look the best crashing thru giant piles of empty cardboard boxes or empty 55 gallon drums in some random alley while some extras jumped out of the way at the last second..

when i was a kid i always wondered why every bad guy drove the same white Malibu and how the sheriff's department could afford to replace all the cop cars that wound up in some stream on the Dukes of Hazzard.. this was when they were originally airing..

regarding the cell phones- i was watching some 80's movie with my 10 year old nephew last summer- i don't know what the movie was, who was in it, or what it was about, it was just that bad- but my nephew didn't understand why they didn't just call for help on their cell phones..

As for crappy cars, in the show CHiPs you could always tell which car was going to cause the multi-car pile-up accident because it was always considerably older and crappier than the other cars around it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDSH-PDOkbA&feature=related

One of my favorite columns by Patrick Bedard in Car and Driver back then was about the Hollywood stunt drivers in those films/TV episodes. He said, "..the Harlem Globetrotters never won an NBA Championship, but you don't hear a lot of people saying they can't play basketball.."

The green Corrado had one of the bigger cell phones in it when I bought it (around 2000 or so). If those things are getting collectable, maybe I should see if I can find it..