QOTD: A Hero Behind Each Door?

Movies and television have delivered countless heroes and villains, more than a few femme fatales of dubious loyalty, and still more ethically challenged antiheroes. Quite often, they do not take public transportation.

What’s interesting to note is that, when you think back to all the famous TV and silver screen characters strongly associated with a specific car, the star vehicle, more likely than not, sports just two doors. The mind immediately flashes to the famed Bullitt chase between two well-matched ’68 coupes. Magnum’s Ferrari 308. Rockford’s unusually powerful Firebird Esprit. Anything Don Johnson drove. Even Jerry Seinfeld’s Saab 900 convertible.

Yes, you could even throw in Uncle Jesse’s Ford pickup or Daisy Duke’s Jeep. With this mind, what four–door vehicle with an acting credit deserved to be remembered?

It could be a repeat character in a TV series or the vehicle of choice in a solitary film. It just has to have made an impression on you, dear reader.

Kojak’s ’73 or ’74 Buick Century 455s weren’t the most talked-about vehicles of their day, but who’d turn down one of these muscle-bound intermediates if given the chance? Perhaps the sedan with the most repeat appearances was Steve McGarrett’s black ’68 Mercury Parklane Brougham, seen on Hawaii Five-O from 1968 to 1974 (after which a ’74 Marquis Brougham carried the series to its 1980 conclusion).

Surely the former sedan still has a few re-run viewers thinking about Mercury — and perhaps its sad end. Then there’s the trio of red Valiants (a ’70, ’71, and ’72 model, only one of them a V8) that carried Dennis Weaver’s meek character through his life-and-death battle with a mostly unseen trucker in Duel. Most unlikely human and vehicular heroes in movie history? Could be.

The choices of revered (or at least remembered) cinematic four-doors are numerous, though not as plentiful as the two-door variety. Which comes to mind first?

[Image: Steph Willems/TTAC]