As kids, we all found people on the small screen that were our heroes. James Garner in his sportscoat casually doing J-turns in a Firebird Esprit was certainly one of them for me, though living in a trailer in Malibu with one’s dad never struck me as that great of an idea.
As an elementary schooler drawing cars and houses, I couldn’t find a better role model than Mike Brady, father of the brood of six kids in that endlessly syndicated sitcom The Brady Bunch, a show that dominated our black and white Zenith every afternoon at around four o’clock.
Played by the late Robert Reed, Mike Brady’s character was an architect by profession in mid-century LA. Just look at this guy. He made a kid like me think that you could get a job actually drawing pictures, making enough money to pay for your “den,” six kids, a doting spouse, and a live-in maid.
This man named Brady living with three boys of his own did, however, disappoint most of us soon-to-be Autopians. He seemed to be a died-in-the-wool Mopar guy, starting with his cool Polara convertible at the beginning of the series:
Once married to Carol – a lovely lady bringing up three very lovely girls – a seemingly endless series of Honey Bronze or Spanish Gold Plymouth Satellite wagons followed. First there was a boxy 1969 model, and later the more fuselage-shaped 1971-on version which was driven to the Grand Canyon and later stolen by some prospector dude.
The ultimate Chrysler product featured on the show was Mike’s cool 1971 Barracuda convertible. Sure, it wasn’t a performance-oriented ‘Cuda with a hemi, and it had those sort of dopey wheel covers with the “ventilation holes” like on the Valiant from Duel, but one would assume it at least had a 318 (thankfully only 132 Barracuda convertibles left the factory with a Leaning Tower Of Power Slant 6 under the hood). Here, I thought, was true justification for getting into the field of design.
What
Mopar superfans will note something strange in the image below: there’s a 1972 rear clip on that convertible, even though there were no Barracuda convertibles made after 1971. The reason? Just for the show itself, a 1972 rear clip was added to the earlier season’s car to get the updated look. As for the damage on the Satellite: it was due to a parking lot incident wherein some dick was trying to extort money from the Bradys, but Mike had a trick up his sleeve and shut him down. [Ed Note: I don’t recall the episode, but I hope the trick up Mike’s sleeve was nunchucks – Pete]
What happened next was as unforgivable as it was inexplicable. Mr. Brady traded the Barracuda for a series of aircraft carrier-like Chevy Caprice convertibles. I mean, today such giant B-body drop tops are pretty cool even in the rare cases when they’re stock and not loaded up with hydraulics to allow them to jump the height of a basketball hoop, but still. Even then you knew that the Barracuda was just so much cooler and it made Mike look about ten years younger.
Why the change, Mike? Did someone at the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer piss you off or make a pass at Carol?
People talk endlessly about storylines in television shows that don’t add up. How did such-and-such a character disappear? Why does nothing that happened in season one seem to be remembered in season two? But no one ever talks about the unexplained loss of Mike Brady’s Mopar soul, much less mourn it. It’s truly a sad event that no young Autopian should have been forced to watch.
Darrin Stevens drove a first generation Camaro convertible, FWIW.
Durwood FIFY
Took me a minute, Endora.
Rockfish (as Garner’s character was known to Isaac Hayes) approves this message.
The TV show Mannix also had a Cuda convertible with a 72 grille and tail panel.
My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Chuck from Happy Days steal the Barracuda from Greg at 31 Flavors. I guess it’s pretty serious.
It must have been. Chuck was never heard from ever again.
I look forward to the upcoming Tales From the Slack, where David expresses concern that The Brady Bunch is too obscure a reference to use for an entire article.
I mean, it was just a mediocre movie from 1995. That’s pretty obscure.
(this is a joke)
Did the Chrysler Corporation make any convertibles after 1971? I think Mike changed out of necessity!
Actually 1970 appears to be the last year for Chrysler convertibles.
Isn’t Nash Bridges’ ‘Cuda a ‘71?
You’re right, but I was researching the full-sizers. Newport’s last year for droptop was ’70; New Yorker was several years earlier.
Cars on TV shows aren’t there by accident. Whoever pays the most gets to be the hero car.
I always enjoy when pilots have whatever cars the producer or director could lay their hands on at the time (even their own personal rides), but once the show gets picked up like a year later and sponsored, they often change dramatically and with no explanation.
Uh, yeah, in the pilot before the show was picked up, the Duke Boys drove a plain blue sedan!
I loved the “hero” car in the first episode of “In Plain Sight”, a purple 1995 Ford Probe SE, trashed a bit and smoking badly. I think Ford pulled some strings and that car didn’t last long in the show as it made Ford look bad. I thought it was a great car for the hero.
The shadows, man. When they were outdoors-outdoors there was only one shadow, just like in real life. When they were fake-outdoors, like in the driveway, they had multiple shadows. I know why, I understand it. But as a kid it drove me crazy to see. Was their driveway under three suns? Don’t get me started on the nighttime scenes where they apparently put cheap sunglasses over the camera to make it look like night but shot in bright light. We were kids, not stupid!
…Pap-pap needs to sit down in his recliner now.
Is that the same phenomenon as how every alien planet on Star Trek looks like Southern California?
And every alien planet on Stargate looks like British Columbia outdoors…
Yeah so does every planet on Battlestar Galactica. Very strange!
Didn’t notice the shadows. The AstroTurf yard on the other hand…
The nighttime gimmick would even show up in properties with a lot more money. Bond movies through the ’70s used it even.
It was a technical camera/film sensitivity limitation that money doesn’t fix.
Even now, lighting for nighttime shots is difficult.
The human eye is far more sensitive than even current camera technology.
Here’s the story… of a many named Brady…
who was living with some MOPARs of his own…
All of them had tons of problems…
because Chrysler…
And he was all alone.
Until the one day when Mike Brady met a Chevy…
And he knew this was much more than a hunch…
It’s true, he somehow formed a family…
But with the gas mileage he damn well couldn’t buy lunch.
My father’s first car was a Plymouth Valiant. His second car was another Plymouth Valiant. He always told me about how after he married my mother, he went and bought a brand new 1968 Dodge Charger. The Charger caused so many problems and needed so much attention just to keep it running (when it was NEW), he stopped buying Chrysler products.
And I mean he stopped. MOPAR did not find its way into our driveway for YEARS. He finally relented when he decided he wanted a Jeep, finally getting a TJ in the late 1990s.
He went to Buick after MOPAR failed him, and stuck with that until our early 80’s wagon ate its transmission, at which point he decided GM wasn’t capable of making transmissions anymore, and from there it was off to Honda, then Subaru. He broadened his horizons a bunch after that, except for the MOPAR thing.
I never gave it much thought because I knew he tended to react to one bad experience for a long time, then my first Chrysler – a 2005 Town & Country – was plagued with electrical problems that mostly turned me of to MOPAR for a long time, too.
Like most sitcom characters, Mike and the Brady family are actual people trapped in a WandaVision style existence. This time controlled by corporate sponsors in Detroit.
For that house I would take that deal.
Side note: that episode has some really cringe Charlie Chan impressions.
I remember that! Apparently, Robert Reed had major issues with Sherwood Schwartz’s writing, and they had a contentious relationship.
However, he was supposedly very generous to the cast (paid out of pocket to fly them on vacations) and was a father figure to all the kids. Not to mention how much it must have sucked to be a closeted gay man in the early seventies and knowing you’d be canned immediately if your secret got out.
Yeah I’d rather have the real guy as a dad. Curious as to what kind of car he actually drove.
The greatest shame in automotive transition in all of television was when they demolished the old Ferrari when they rebooted Magnum PI. The original 308/328 cars just had way more TV personality than the new one they brought on to fill the “role”.
I’m sure it was just a replica prop that got destroyed, but I cried just a little regardless.
Yeah, I couldn’t figure out the point of featuring the original hero car only to destroy it. Why not just keep it in the back of the garage so we get just a peak occasionally? That’s what the show was always trying to (less than successfully) do, remind us of the original.
And agree, the 488 had zero soul.
I always thought it was either a prop or some glorified CGI effects, because there is no way Ferrari would allow an original vehicle to be destroyed on the screen.
Slightly fun fact – PJ O’Rourke delivered the original Magnum 308 from New Jersey to California and wrote about it for Car & Driver (he mentions the episode name of the pilot in the article, but had no idea what Magnum PI was going to be).
All you’re talking about are the cars?
Really, Jan.
The barracuda update is interesting as the convertibles were only built in 70 & 71. Working in the Architectural/Engineering (A/E) industry, it is always the joke that architects want to be like Mike Brady. TV always show these types designing fancy houses or big buildings, the truth is much grimmer, there are very few “Star-chitects”.
Wait, so there aren’t a bunch of Bibi Galinis coming to you all the time with off the wall architectural requests?
The BradyFu is strong in this one… Beebe Galini!
Ha! I don’t do architecture but I still get Beebe Galinis all the time (“I want to have five touch screens, all battery powered to last six months”)
I’d think an EV with a 100+kWh battery could power a few touchscreens for six months easy.
I used to drive a 1969 Chevy Malibu convertible with a 1968 front clip. Apparently, there was something of a story about how it got that way, but that was the way it was when I bought it.
“Front Clip” is such a funny and understated term. It sounds like something that might hold the license plate on the front of the car.
If one didn’t know anything about cars I would expect them to be surprised the “front clip” includes everything they can see forward of the windshield; so depending on the car 1/4th to practically 1/2 the car.
Maybe more in certain long hood cases like a Panoz, Corvette, Viper, XK8, e-type, Morgan, Mopar, etc…
I’m older than dirt. We always called the front clip the “doghouse” .. Not sure if that was just a local term or not.
Ha I grew up in the Midwest and among gearheads “front clip” was definitely the term used especially by classic American car enthusiasts. It stood out to me bc I just don’t recall hearing it used much in the past 25(ish) years.
I am curious what is common term for the front in other parts of the US and the world?
The cars of Frank Lloyd Wright would make an interesting article…How about it, Torch?
Ha Frank was well known to have something of a disdain for automobiles or at least he did when it came to home design as he thought car garages were a waste of space that most people ended up using to store boxes of stuff they didn’t need; you’ll therefore find most of his residential home designs have a carport instead.
He had the same view of basements and attics, i.e. wasted space used to store boxes of stuff people should get rid of instead…
He was a quarky dude
I read a biography of him that showed him pretty unfavorably. He always wanted the largest, fanciest car – because they were a status symbol. He liked to display his wealth. I can’t find the book, but found this: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/automobiles/09wright.html#:~:text=Wright's%20Cord%20can%20be%20seen,with%20is%20the%20Lincoln%20Continental.
Yeah he actually wore shorts which was unusual in his time among other habits. And it is reported he was pretty terrible managing his money, basically any time he had a big payday for winning some drsign contract he’d spend it all on art & stuff and be broke again.
If you’re ever in Wisconsin and have a day, his arch. school (Talisen) near Spring Green is worth a visit.
Famously ‘Talisen West’ was created in Arizona bc Talisen in WI cost too much to heat in the winter bc it wasn’t insulated well enough.
“You know I always wanted to pretend to be an architect!”
-George Costanza
Greg’s Pre-Johnny Bravo Candy Apple Green Mosrite was still way cooler than any of the. cars! https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTVkNzBjZGEtZjQwYS00Njk3LWE1ZWEtNzZlMWJkNDZjNTVlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDU5MzIzNDI@._V1_.jpg
He made a kid like me think that you could get a job actually drawing pictures, making enough money to pay for your “den,” six kids, a doting spouse, and a live-in maid.
Maybe your first clue of less than truth in TV of the era was an astronaut rebuilt for a mere $6M with artificial nuclear powered legs, arm and eye who could lift boulders and busses on a regular human spine. Even as a kid I would only suspend disbelief so far.
You’d think for $6 million, they could’ve implanted an acting chip, too.
That reminds me there is a wonderfully terrible Lee Majors movie that involves Phirranas called killer Fish, bad enough Mystery Science Theater added their commentary…
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9132014/
I think I saw that movie without the benefit of real time satire. It was pretty awful.
If this were rebooted today, I think we all know that Mike would drive an Acura Integra like all good architects
And live in a cardboard box with six kids and no wife.
If this was the 80s, and we’re going by Top Gear standards, Mike Brady would probably be driving a Saab 900.
Or some sort of Volvo
Of the two architects that I know best and used to share an office with, one drove a lifted 2004 Tacoma with a shell and a surfboard rack and the other drives a late model four-wheel drive Sprinter camper with which he regularly takes his family to the mountains as well as being his daily driver.
Damn I thought there would be more /r/cars denizens here. This is reference to a meme from there where someone claimed that the new Integra “looked like a car an architect would drive”
My family had a ‘73 Satellite wagon just like the one pictured. I learned how to do bootlegger turns in that thing. And launch hubcaps. We called that color “brown,” but Honey Bronze sounds delicious. Good name for a decorative assistant to a TV P.I. from that era.
As soulless as those Chevy’s might have been, they’re still convertibles.
Ten times cooler than anything you can buy at a Chevy dealership today.
The only thing convertible at a Chevy dealer today is your credit being converted to a debit.
I hope not. We have an Equinox EV on order in Radiant Red with the Adrenaline Red (black and red) interior. At least this one will have colors.
IIRC, Mrs Brady kept the Plymouth wagon after Mike moved to Chevrolet.
The big issue was that Chrysler was no longer selling convertibles after 1971 – but GM was.
That blue Chevrolet is clearly not a Caprice – See the Impala badge just aft of the DLO?
Man, Mike and Carol were some first-class pricks. The guy was a friggin’ architect. He had that huge-ass den that could have easily been converted to two more bedrooms. But nooo…they wanted their kids to live like they were permanent residents of a government run detox center.
Jerks.
the single bathroom was the most unforgivable offense
And it didn’t even have a toilet
Hey – Greg got to move to the attic!
The extra bedroom belonged to Alice – after all, you can’t expect your six children to help with the cooking and cleaning…
And there were 3 bathrooms in that house – the one behind the screen in Mom and Dad’s room, the Jack and Jill bathroom between the kids rooms, and Alice’s bathroom. That’s pretty good for the 1970’s.
We had “only” five kids till my folks divorced. Then we had eight when the old man remarried, but that number varied after his three more marriages. Up and down.
But we always had three bathrooms…because shit happens.
Let’s not forget that Jim Rockford also had a sneaky business card printing machine in the glove box – the man was a PRO
Not to mention very well-rehearsed insurance agent, county assessor, and funeral home director patter.
Don’t forget Jimmy Joe Meeker, Oklahoma oil tycoon.
Oh good one – he reoccurred a few times I think, right?
The kids did have some good stuff though – Greg memorably buys his buddy’s Bel Air convertible (and almost manages to fix it by himself with only a Haynes manual), and I recall Marcia dating a guy with a Triumph at one point.
Bigger issue is that he supposedly he even repainted it in the episode, which even as a seven-year-old watching reruns I though was improbable.
Earl Sheib, $29.95 in 1972.
Most likely the production company ended their association with Mopar and switched to Chevrolet. Poor Mike had no choice in the matter.
Yes, the different rear clip on the Barracuda helped for a little bit but they needed a new car for later seasons, and by 1974 the big GM drop tops were about the only thing left.
The Barracuda in the lede shot has the correct 71 rear clip. The shot next to the wreaked station wagon has a 72 clip.
Yep. When you see a TV show or movie that predominantly uses the same brand of car in all roles, it’s not an accident. *cough* Smokey and the Bandit *cough*
Or all the Chevy Impalas in Live and Let Die.
Side note. Hal Needham wanted Mustang King Cobras, but Ford decided not to provide them, so he went to Pontiac and the rest is black and gold T-Top history
Or all the AMCs in The Man with the Golden Gun
“Daddy, the top came off!”
Still trying to verify if the story about all of the Pontiac LeMans destroyed at the end of Smokey and the Bandit II were really cars refused by a rental agency in Arizona that accidentally came without air conditioning
Smokey and the Bandit II – Wikipedia
I just read that very recently too. At first glance it seems unlikely, but then again the story about the rejected Iraqi Malibus being sold in Canada is definitely true, so who knows.
Watch pretty much any movie or TV show produced by Universal, Paramount or Desilu in the 50’s-early 70’s – and with few exceptions, all you’ll see are Chryslers.
Police car or Taxi? You can count on it being a Chrysler product
Disney was mainly a Ford studio – for obvious reasons.
But the reason the show went to Chevrolet convertibles was that Chrysler no longer built them – but GM still did.
Rocky did not live in the trailer with Jim. Rocky had his own house, which was the house that Jim grew up in.
This. Rocky was just over at the trailer all the time trying to fix the various things that were broken, and seemingly always wanting to paint it, much to Jim’s dismay.
that was my confusion. He just seemed to ALWAYS be there, just like Angel
Angel was my favorite sidekick of the era
What?!?! Angel was as bad as Gilligan at mucking things up!
Gimme Huggy Bear anyday. That dude was an asset!
He was! Still, you kinda gotta wonder how perps wouldn’t have figured out he was an informant pretty quickly and kicked his ass. Sort of like how you’d think that all the drug dealers in town would know that Crockett and Tubbs were heat on Miami Vice after the second or third bust.
Why Crockett was never slowly fed (while still alive) to his alligator by Tony Montana’s goons is beyond me. Nothing left but Crockett’s head with “The World Is Yours!” carved on it.
This is darker than Adrian’s nail polish. It may be the darkest thing I have ever read on The Autopian.
Or how Magnum could constantly tail and/or surveil people while driving a likely 1 of 1 on the island bright right red exotic without anyone ever being suspicious when it’s parked down the street…
Same for Whitey, the snitch who informed O’Brien and Giambone on “Night Heat” (the Canadian show in which the cops drive Chrysler K-Cars). How this guy can deal with hot merchandise in plain view of the police and not get arrested is amazing.
That’s because he was always trying to repair the damn door every time some bad ass ripped it off the hinges looking for Jim.