With a sincere nod to the ex-Mt. Prospect PD cruiser in “Blues Brothers,” I think the best active police car in any film is the Renault 4 driven by Inspector Andre, the chief of police of the fictional Beaumont-sur-Mer, in the ’80s classic comedy remake of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” starring Michael Caine, Glenne Headly, and Steve Martin. Just look at it! So much charm! So little ability to actually complete police work!
I do this thing when I fly where I immediately throw on a movie I’ve already seen as a sort of white noise while I get settled in and start working (I get a lot of work done on planes). From 2021-2022 I primarily flew Delta and therefore watched the film “Bull Durham” approximately 37 times.
You could imagine how disappointed I was to find out that Delta had removed the baseball comedy from its in-flight service. Something had to be done.
Initially, I thought “Before Sunset,” the second in Richard Linklater’s relationship trio, but that’s a little too talk-y for a background movie. Next I put on “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and it’s doing the trick thus far. In particular, I love the little Renault 4 driven by the crooked police inspector.
The whole film exudes a sort of late aristocratic French Riveira charm and the police car really sells it. Built to compete with the Citroën 2CV as a post-war everything car for a struggling economy, the Renault 4 is a bit more car than the 2CV. This looks like a later model and, therefore, may feature a gigantic 1108 cc engine! I take back what I said earlier, I’m sure this would do just fine in a police chase with anything slower than a 1st gen VW Golf.
My favorite detail is that, early in the film, the car is seen with no cherry on top. In the last scene a blue light appears on the roof as if, in emergency situations, they have to take the big light out of the hatch and put it on top.
Photo credit: Orion Pictures
I think I saw it once a zillion years ago and was not charmed, but at least Bull Durham has a quite-hot Susan Sarandon in it. Her appeal was (still is IMO) undeniable, regardless of whether you share her politics.
Not sure if I ever saw DRS, but I’ll put it on my to-do list based on this. Thanks Matt. 🙂
“a quite-hot Susan Sarandon” Hmmmm… Nope.
Ach! Come on Sundance! She didn’t/doesn’t look like every other generic actor and that’s so appealing. Honestly, if presented with a line-up of a half-dozen currently-working 20-to-30-something celebs (actors, singers, etc…) I don’t think I’d be able to correctly ID more than one out of six. It’s as if there’s only three slightly different molds, and the rest of the little difference between them is hair and makeup.
Even the weak chin… on her, it’s actually kinda sexy.
Admittedly, she’s about two decades older than I am, which isn’t nothing, but fer petesakes, at 76 she’s still rockin’ it and a fella could’ve done so much worse: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=recent+photos+of+susan+sarandon&t=opera&iax=images&ia=images
I’d normally try to come up with some sort of clumsy automotive analogy about the joy or weirdish cars like vintage Citroens or something like that, but I’m only on my first cup of coffee, so I’ll refrain.
All JMHO of course, but you do know what they say about variety, right? 😉
I hate both baseball and sports movies, yet Bull Durham is still one of my favorites. Not just for Ms. Sarandon.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is absolutely worth your time. Steve Martin is always good, and I don’t think I’ve enjoyed any other Michael Caine performance quite so much.
Drowning Mona. You would think a movie where every car in it was a Yugo would mean that includes the cop cars, but, no. Cop cars need four doors. So the cops drove Omnis. Well, the Chief (Danny Devito) did. The rest of the cops drove Horizons. I don’t know if they explain why the differences not just Yugo and Dodge products, but Omni and Horizon as well, but I did read one review that swore the police cars were Yugos, too!
On top of all that, the movie poster on IMDB shows the cast sitting on a yellow Yugo with a police badge on the side.
A couple of notes here: as it can be seen, the car is an unmarked unit, otherwise it would have GENDARMERIE emblazoned in white across the doors. That’s why it has a non-fixed emergency light. This was very common for unmarkerd police cars back in the day, those lights often came with a siren too, had a magnetic base and plugged right into the cigarette lighter plug.
Now, here’s the thing: Bleu Gendermerie was a specific, very distinct shade of blue (code 498) that Renault reserved for Gendarmerie orders. And these unmarked cars were that exact shade of blue. Gendarmes were fooling no one but themselves with these.
As for the comment about them possibly having the mighty 1108cc engine, if we’re going by external appearance, this one’s more likely a TL model with the 956cc (GTL models of that era would have external plastic cladding matching the colour of the grille and bumpers, which was the case with many Gendarmerie ones). But the truth is these were special orders so maybe there’s no way to be sure what’s under the hood by looking at the external aspect. One curious thing I have noticed is that the final Gendarmerie and La Poste units (third to last and second to last in the production run, if I’m not mistaken) have no plastic cladding, but also the badge in the rear makes no mention of the model (they’re simply badged Renault 4). Not sure whether this was just the case for those final models or if these fleet orders all had this simpler badging.
User name checks-out!
Interesting.
20230218 4L.jpg
Nice Valencian Cuatro Latas! Is that yours? Awsome Alpine wheels!
This is my GTL https://www.instagram.com/p/CvNYZQYs2Ut/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Beautiful, I love the old style Portuguese plates. My 4 Latas is registered in Valladolid where it was made, too.
Oh, Valladolid of course! My bad. Mine was made in Yugoslavia and is still going strong after 32 years. It was in the same family from 91, when it was bought new, to 2020 when I bought it from the estate of my deceased neighbour. Hope it goes for at least another 32 years!
The Dacia on Comrade Detective
My favorite movie police cars are still the Alfa Romeo Giulia sedans in The Italian Job. (the good one with Michael Caine, not the Klingons with smooth foreheads one)
Wait, what? Klingons? Where?
I’m pretty sure we are all in agreement here.
That movie is a comedic masterpiece.
Not mother?
Muppets Most Wanted
I was rolling in the theater aisle after Martin ran around screaming “Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Oklahoma!”
I understand almost none of the movie references people are making in the comments. Is this how David feels all the time?!
I liked the Saab 900 the inspector in The Transporter drove – it looks rumpled, like it’s got its very own Murtaugh list.
http://imcdb.org/i003734.jpg
As a former Renault owner, I always have time to talk about them.
Which one(s) did you have? My first car was a dilapidated 1989 Espace Quadra, and my current daily driver is a 1991 Renault 4 GTL that has been a daily driver for its entire ownership history 🙂
Where do you live where you were able to get a Renault 4 new in 1991? Colombia?
Portugal. They were sold new here well into 1993 (possibly some residual sales in 1994), there was a lot of leftover stock when production in Novo Mesto shutdown in December 1992 – Portugal had been importing a good chunk of the Yugoslav produced cars ever since local production ended in 1989.
I didn’t get mine in 1991, mind you, it’s been with me since late 2019. But I know the car’s history, it used to belong to our neighbour and was bought new by her father. The longest it ever sat was 4 months, right before I started working on it to help my neighbout get it inspected.
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I bought a substantially used Renault 1974 12TL in 1981 while going to college. It was an ok car with some French quirks. My girlfriend could not put the shifter into reverse with the seat all the way forward. It had a glass radiator overflow bottle. It had 3 lug nuts per wheel. It managed to have torque steer with equal length front drive axles and only 85 horsepower. The parking brake failed so I carried a big rock in the console as a chock.
Ironically it overheated while in a snow storm traffic jam so I parked it on the side of the road. When I returned the next day it had been crushed between 2 cars. The insurance paid me double what I had invested. I was a cheap student so I bought it back for $200, pulled out the bumpers using a chain and nearby tree, and drove it for another year. Before graduation I sold it to a pair of Iranian exchange students, for $200.
Oh, I love the 12. I grew up in a 1977 12C break my dad bought used in 1985. That’s quite a story about your TL. I too am familiar with rudimentary ways of fixing bumpers, have used a crowbar more than once to pop the bumper back into shape after getting rear-ended. And I once popped my hood back into place with my foot after someone in a Volvo SUV reversed into me.
Uh, Matt. Did you forget that Mad Max exists?
If if you discount the “last of the V8 interceptors” as a police car since it was never painted in police livery, there were still some cool late 70s Aussie Ford Falcon sedans in the MFP.
I approve this post.
Now you started something. Cop car? Cop Car movie with Kevin Bacon! Just sayin…
I hereby withdraw this post. Yeah has a Crown Vic Interceptor getting thrashed. But the ending? Kevin Bacon should be ashamed of himself. Started out good…Sorry for any inconvenience.
Alfas? You want Alfas? See Equalizer 3! Takes place in Italy, Sardinia or someplace like it…the local cops drive New Alfa Giuliano…there’s one scene where there’s a widescreen row of them…dozen at least! Wonder if this was product placement?!
Giuliano GD Autocorrect.
Here’s the seed for an article. The actor with the coolest cars per movie ratio is Michael Caine. Prove me wrong.
Burt Reynolds…J.J. McClure alone blows Caine’s doors off
Sean Connery. Bond’s Aston Martins and other Bond movie cars (including a roadster Toyota 3000 GT, Triumph Stag, Bentley Blower). Captain Nemo’s Art Nouveau roadster in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the only thing good about that movie). All the period cars in The Untouchables. Vector W8 in Rising Sun.
I’d go with Alfa Romeo Giulia police cars in the original “Italian Job,” another Michael Caine gem.
Ruptecht, leave the cork on the fork.
“Excuse me. May I go to the bathroom first?……Thank you.”
I love that movie.
Why is the cork on the fork?
Oh good..
Just dropped by to make sure Ruptecht was represented in the comments.
“What did we do when uncle Ted was here?”
Despite their abysmal lack of alacrity, those Renault 4s were actually pretty capable, even off road, at least to a degree, as seen in the film Romancing the Stone (since we’re talking about movie cars)
http://imcdb.org/vehicle_3004-Renault-4-L-1973.html
By the way, fun little fact, Pope Francis had one, might’ve been his first car, when he was in Argentina, and when he became pope somebody donated theirs to the Vatican:
https://m.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani-mobile/en/collezioni/musei/padiglione-delle-carozze/renault-4.html
Speaking of Renault 4s in movies, here’s a Renault 4 Fourgonnette in the film Z:
http://imcdb.org/i131621.jpg
Since I’ve not ever actually seen the film I don’t know how this particular Renault was used though it might’ve been used as a surveillance vehicle by law enforcement, espionage agencies, or the bad guys (could very well be all of the above rolled in one) but this vehicle is of particular interest on account of its notably cool rear hatch with its roof opening capability.
Preparing to gradually give chase. Meander mode activated.
It’s definitely one of those movies where the setting is almost a character in itself
In a row?
I wouldn’t keep watching it. After it finished its first run I’d just watch something else or nothing at all. Only when I got on the flight would i turn on Bull Durham.
That was a reference to a Kevin Smith movie called Clerks.
Every time someone uses the number 37, “in a row?” immediately pops to mind
I assure you, I got it.
TRY NOT TO WATCH ANY BULL DURHAM ON THE WAY TO THE PARKING LOT!!!
Hey, hey you, come back here!
There are a lot of fine movies out there, not all of them provide great white noise while you work on a plane.
Most of ’em just cheat on you.
…with, you know, other passengers.