THE STARS ARE CARS : Auto Makers Compete for Exposure but Won’t Let Products Be TV or Film ‘Villains’
Remember Magnum P.I.’s Ferrari? It was supposed to be a Porsche.
Remember Knight Rider’s talking Trans Am? It was almost a Datsun Z.
Those are just two of the more notable secrets of one of Los Angeles’ least-known, but most-fascinating cottage industries--the job of placing cars in front of Hollywood’s cameras.
Today, getting an auto maker’s cars and trucks exposure on a television show or in a feature film has become a big and competitive business. Now, car companies have agents for their cars just like actors do, to read scripts and fight for roles. The auto makers annually turn over roughly $10 million worth of free cars to Hollywood; right now, several hundred cars are sitting on agents’ parking lots around Los Angeles, available for use by virtually any major studio or production company.
For Hollywood, the arrangement saves hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in production costs that would otherwise have to be spent on renting or buying new cars.
In return, the auto makers’ prize is free exposure, at a time when comparable advertising time costs a fortune. “It’s the type of exposure you can’t buy,” observes Bob Hadler, of Hadler Public Relations, which represents Chrysler and Mazda in Hollywood.
Keep Close Tabs on Cars
But car placement was not always such a big deal. Back in the 1960s Detroit’s auto makers gave the process little thought, and poured free cars into Hollywood like water. Often, one auto company would provide an entire fleet for free to a studio.
Yet the auto makers had little control over how their cars were used; sometimes they didn’t know whether the cars would end up in front of the camera--or in the hands of the producer’s latest lover.
But no longer. Now Detroit and the German luxury car companies--the Japanese still have only a limited involvement with Hollywood--keep close tabs on the cars they provide for television shows and feature films.
Rights Retained
“General Motors auditors retain the right to check that the cars are being used properly in the movies,” notes Eric Dahlquist, head of the Vista Group, an agency that represents Oldsmobile, GMC Truck and Mercedes-Benz.
At the same time, film makers now are much more selective about the cars they display, and in some cases audition two or three before making one a star.
Cementing today’s more formal relationship between Hollywood and Detroit are the car agents. Now, five Los Angeles-based agencies, working on retainer to the major auto companies, dominate the business of turning cars into celebrities.
Those firms--Hadler, Norm Marshall & Associates, the Vista Group, Unique Product Placement and Rogers & Cowan--along with the transportation coordinators at the major studios and production companies, form a tightly knit, constantly networking community that determines which cars you see on the silver screen.
“You become known in the placement field for follow through and service, just like any other business,” says Dahlquist.
“We are just like actors’ agents, we look for a role, and compete against three or four other guys,” adds Frank Devaney, senior vice president in charge of product placement at Rogers & Cowan, which represents Ford. “What brings the car into the show is the relationship you have with the production company.”
The agents also work closely with the studio transportation coordinators to determine what their cars can and cannot do once they go before the cameras. That’s because the car companies are now very wary about what movie people will do with their cars.
For instance, most auto makers, mindful of their images, refuse to provide free cars to be driven by movie villains. While some are a little flexible--Rogers & Cowan will OK a Ford to be stolen by a bad guy as long as it was originally a car belonging to a good guy--all companies reject drug dealers, sex offenders, or other really evil characters.
“There are degrees of bad guys,” says Devaney. “I would say no to a drug dealer or a kidnaper, and we won’t have any rapes in the car. But if a bad guy steals the car, why not? It’s not his car.”
Of course, the movies still have truly evil characters, and they drive, too; so producers have to buy or rent their wheels instead.
Often movie makers must rely on used cars and rentals for chase scenes and stunts as well.
That’s because at least since the movie “Smokey and the Bandit”--which featured a souped-up Pontiac Firebird in plenty of chase scenes--the auto makers have become cautious about providing free cars that will be used in any reckless driving scenes. Pontiac reportedly was hit with a series of lawsuits from parents of teen-agers hurt in accidents after trying to emulate Burt Reynolds’ driving in the movie.
The high cost of new cars has also made the auto industry less willing to turn over perfectly good cars to be smashed up. In fact, the car companies now demand their cars be returned at the end of filming in the same condition that the producers got them; any repairs have to be performed at the studios’ expense. The cars are then resold as used--often with no one knowing they were once in the movies--through auto dealer auctions.
To keep its cars out of stunts, GM’s Chevrolet division has a strict policy that none of its products given to a production can be filmed with two or more of their wheels off the ground.
GMC Truck, another GM division, did provide pickup trucks for the stunt-laden television show “The Fall Guy,” but none of the stunts in the show were done with free vehicles from GMC. Instead, the producers built a special vehicle--one that looked like a GMC truck--for many of the show’s stunts.
Producers also can’t rely on Detroit for classic cars used in period-piece movies. Usually, the studios go to rental agencies--a Budget outlet in Beverly Hills and Avon Rental in West Hollywood are popular with transportation coordinators--that carry specialized cars.
But just as the auto makers have become more particular about how their cars get used, the competition among auto makers to get their products in front of the cameras has reached an all-time high.
Today, casting calls for cars are becoming more and more common.
For this summer’s James Bond movie, “License to Kill,” Bond will forsake his beloved Aston Martin for the first time, in favor of a Lincoln Mark VII. But Ford won the role only after auditioning against both a Mercedes and a BMW, according to Devaney.
Sometimes, such competition has had a big impact on well-known shows and movies.
The creators of Knight Rider, the show built around a talking car, originally planned to use a Datsun 280Z sports car for the central role. But Dahlquist, who then represented Pontiac, happened to live next door to Knight Rider’s producer.
Dahlquist lobbied the producer, telling him about Pontiac’s new Trans Am, which was about to debut, and showed him pictures of the prototype. The show switched to the Trans Am, giving the new car priceless weekly exposure just as it hit the market.
Still, sometimes car companies drop out of the bidding if they are unsure of a show. Tom Selleck ended up in Magnum’s famous Ferrari only after Porsche refused to cooperate with the show’s producers. Before Magnum first aired, the show’s creators were sold on Porsche, and planned to use a 928 in the first season, switching to a new 911 Cabriolet when it came out in time for the second season.
But Volkswagen of America, which distributed Porsche cars in the United States at the time, balked at the cost of meeting the producers’ demand that the car be fitted with a special sunroof unavailable on production models.
Eventually, Magnum’s creators rented a Ferrari, and VW and Porsche lived to regret it.
Refuse to Pay
Even with the intense competition for exposure, however, the auto makers still refuse to pay the studios for the placement of their products.
Agents say only one firm--Toyota--has ever paid a fee. The Japanese auto maker, which doesn’t have a product placement agent, paid a reported $50,000 to get its truck a prominent role in “Back to the Future.”
For “Back to the Future II,” now filming and set for a Christmas release, the producers once again sought fees from the car makers. This time Ford and other firms were asked to pay to have a futuristic dealership bearing their logo featured in the sequel, which is set in the year 2015.
Ford refused to pay, and the dealership eventually went to Pontiac, which is also supplying several rare, futuristic-looking concept cars at considerable expense. Sheila Main, a Pontiac spokeswoman, refused to say whether Pontiac is paying for the dealership spot in the movie.
But car company agents hope that Pontiac didn’t pay. “We’re holding the line on paying the studios,” says Norm Marshall, of Norm Marshall & Associates, which represents Chevrolet. “They say it’s an advertisement, but they can’t guarantee whether a movie is going to be a hit. We will keep resisting it, because once we start paying, we won’t be able to stop.”
