Where did they get all the cars?

Wife and I are binging Mindhunter, set in the late 70's and early 80's. 

I've seen the series before, so I'm starting to notice more details this second time around.  The thing that amazes me are the cars.  In every exterior shot, there are as new looking cars from that era.  Even cars in the background are period correct.

Where did they get so many plain jain pedestrian cars for the show?  Every one looks new/lightly used.  The cars aren't anything someone would generally restore.  Cars like 4-door Fairmonts, Mavericks, Novas, Plymouths, vans, etc.  For a movie from the 20's and 30's, I can imagine there are enough restored classics to find. But these are very boring cars from the early 70's and 80's.  They're not classic.  Nobody collects those cars.

I'm sure they have a big production budget, but are they finding these cars and restoring them or does somebody store plain cars like these?  Even the interiors are mint. 

-Rob

A few friends got called when they were filming the movie Adventureland nearby. Hollywood people went through the DMV or registration office or something and found locals with 80s cars. Keithspeeds E30 and Marnells 84 rabbit can both be seen in several outside shots. They wouldn't let Dubspeed come because while his rabbit was in good shape it wasn't factory color anymore. 

So that's my guess.

https://thenewswheel.com/how-do-period-films-acquire-classic-cars-for-historic-movie-sets/

I'd love to have a job like that, scouting and finding old cars, checking them out, taking them for a brief test drive to ensure they work, then saving them

Mindhunter was a wonderful show. I wish they'd renew it, but I'm not holding my breath.

I've been told over and over that I need to rent my '75 Duster out for movie shoots. The vehicle in question:

Nothing special, just a well kept econo car. My friend used to rent his cars out all the time, but I just don't have free time to babysit it on set. Yeah they pay you, but not a ton. And if my collector car insurance company finds out I'm making money with the car, they will drop me (or force me to take out a different, more expensive policy). So I dropped the idea.

I ran across a HBO production crew at our local mall and got to talk to the car wrangler. All these are owned by HBO:

They all run and drive just fine (not perfect). He said it was easier for HBO to just buy them and shuffle them around than try to coordinate with owners.

I'm not sure how they get the info but I was contacted out of the blue via snail mail when the TV show leverage was filming in Portland and needed to create an italian street scene and wanted to use my Fiat. It was too modified for their use so they passed . 

How they got the mailing addresses of Oregon italian car owners is beyond me. Oregon DMV refuses to give out any info

When I worked on a film set for a day I was amazed by the jankiness of some of the background cars.  Bodywork repairs might be cardboard and duct tape hit with spray paint.  If it isn't the hero car it'll be a bit out of focus.  Many of the background cars don't run and are just there for "filler".  Even the truck they were using didn't run great and some of the takes were ruined when they went to leave and the engine wouldn't start.

I'm sure jfryjfry will be along directly to tell us far more about the inner workings of movie magic.

Didn't think about how cars in the background might not be runners and just shells.  The thing that got me is that these were plain cars that I would imagine were really hard to find.  Even in Slefan's image above, cars of the 50's have a good following and groups where I would imagine you could easily reach out and find examples.  Can't imagine there's a Fairmont owners group (just one of the examples).  Can't recall the last time I've even seen a Fairmont in the wild. 

Now that I think about it, I guess they're not looking for a specific make/model, just anything within a time range and work from there.

-Rob

C&D did an article about a guy who has hundreds of old cars that he rents to movie and TV productions.

I guess, a lot of times, they are given a 10-foot restoration job only for the angles the camera is going to see.

There's a place in Slidell across the lake from Nola that rents out vehicles for movie productions, as well as sells them. There's always interesting vehicles & other stuff there, but the inventory has seemed to dwindle over the past couple years. I've heard the owner has a sketchy past, so that may be related.