A paint job covered in graphics and a trunk full of speakers. It didn’t get much cooler in the 1990s.
Jim Rockford drove a fairly ordinary-looking ‘78 Firebird Formula on The Rockford Files, while Michael Knight drove an incredibly wild ‘82 Trans Am on Knight Rider. Scooby-Doo and The A-Team both had memorable vans that acted as rolling headquarters.
One of the most overlooked, however, is one of the most disappointing gifts ever given to a son from a father on television. When Eddie Winslow wanted a car on Family Matters, his father Carl, a police officer, did what any father would do, buy a wreck to fix up as a father-and-son project. Being a police officer, it only made sense that he buy Eddie a busted old cop car.
I can honestly say, with a decent level of certainty, that by the time Family Matters aired this episode in 1993, that there would be the odd Mustang chase car being retired from duty and sold off affordably. Chase cars, however, don’t see the level of abuse that regular day-to-day squad cars see on the beat, so there’s just not a good father-and-son bonding project there. Enter Carl with a solid fifteen-dollar car, a battered, beaten, and broken crew cab 1977 Dodge Monaco. It’s dirty, it’s ugly, and it’s exactly what Eddie didn’t want. By the end of the episode, however, the father-son duo got the car tuned right up to 1990’s street machine glory, even though it had a couple of extra doors. Painted in shades of purple, yellow, and hot pink, it was right there with the times. To quote Elwood in The Blues Brothers, “It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks.” Now, I don’t know if it had a 440 in it or not, but it could have been optioned that way. What I do know it had, however, was the most iconic accessory available in the 1990s. So iconic that it made its way into the opening credits of the show. The blower scoop was a signature piece, poking through the hood of many street machines, topping both superchargers and tunnel rams alike. This one, however, isn’t poking
through the hood but rather bolted through it as a purely decorative piece. Honestly, it doesn’t matter that much, as tons of companies have used non-functional hood scoops in the past. What I like is the fact that he’s fiddling with the butterflies in the opening credits in an effort to tune a part that doesn’t do anything. Regardless of that, it still looked impressive when I was a kid, and it will always be cooler than Urkel’s BMW Isetta.
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk
