For the classic car enthusiast, one of the joys of watching old TV series is spotting the then-current, now classic cars used by the producers of said TV shows. For instance, ITV4 here in the UK regularly runs The Saint, featuring the most famous Volvo of all time, his white P1800S, as well as a surprising number of American cars.
Besides The Saint, British TV is replete with classic cars in period dramas. The Professionals featured a Ford Capri MkIII among others, Gene Hunt “fired up the Quattro!” in Ashes to Ashes, Emma Peel drove a Lotus Elan in The Avengers, and of course Inspector Morse made the Jaguar Mk2 a car for the law-enforcing as well as the law-breaking – and this is but a very small sample.
Of course, it was easier then to get the right cars as they were current; for makers of period dramas today it’s still relatively straightforward to make sure they get the details such as clothes (they can just get some made) or even furniture (ditto) right – but for obvious reasons it’s a lot more difficult to get the cars right – there are not so many of those cars about these days and it’s neither cheap nor easy to recreate them. With the difficulties caused by lack of supply, it’s not a surprise when producers – or their “expert consultants” – sometimes make mistakes, as we’ll see later in this piece.
I’ve just binge-watched the new series on ITV of The Ipcress File, itself a remake or re-imagining of the classic 1964 film with Michael Caine, which in turn was an adaptation of Len Deighton’s Cold War spy novel of the same name. The series stars Joe Cole in Michael Caine’s old role of Harry Palmer, Lucy Boynton as Jean Courtney and Tom Hollander as their boss William Dalby. A lot could be said about the period fashions, hairstyles, depiction of the class system and not least the geopolitics – few TV programmes can have been launched at a more apposite time as this 6-episode series – but as this is a website about classic cars, obviously I’m going to focus on the real stars of the show, the cars, for there are many delights for the classic car spotter in The Ipcress File, which is set mostly in 1963, and I’ve attempted to identify most, though certainly not all of them.
The classics start appearing within the first couple of minutes, as a blue and white Auto Union 1000 drives across the screen, and very shortly thereafter we see a FIAT 1200, a FIAT 500, a VW Microbus and a Fintail Mercedes-Benz.
Other cars that feature in the first episode include an MG Magnette, Rover 80, Ford 100E, a blue 1962 Austin Cambridge, and in West Berlin, a Volvo Amazon, a VW Type 3 saloon, a Ford Taunus 12m at one of the West to East checkpoints and of course, on the East side, a Trabant, as well as a whole bunch of military vehicles of which I have no idea. A Vauxhall Victor HB Estate makes an early appearance, and makes a very decisive return in the series’ last half-hour.
Often in shows like these the same 3 or 4 cars appear in various locations, sometimes shot from different angles to make it look as if there are more of them than is actually the case, but here, it seems the producers have made considerable efforts to at least give the appearance of having used a wide variety of different cars, though they have made the odd slip-up.
One of the most obvious errors is with the Rover 80 from episode one, which T-bones a small van and is rolled. It appears again early in the next episode, in perfect condition – the (fairly obvious) giveaway is the number plate, something you would have thought the continuity people working on the programme might have spotted and at least changed.
In the second episode, we see a cream MGB roadster being very aggressively driven by the main female protagonist, played with icy froideur by the lovely Lucy Boynton channelling Alexandra Bastedo – readers of a certain age may remember her from a bonkers series called The Champions, a trio of enhanced spies who save the world, or part of it, at various locations around the planet.
In one short sequence she weaves her MGB roadster (spoiler alert: it gets blown to smithereens later) between an Austin Cambridge (making it’s second appearance), a Ford Zodiac and the previously rolled but somehow miraculously rebuilt Rover 80 – the continuity people must have been sleep – as if she were taking part in an event at Goodwood. Also in shot at various times in this episode are a Humber Hawk and a Wolseley 16/60.
When the series moves to Beirut, there’s a nice shot that includes a back from the future Opel Rekord B, a FIAT 850 and a Citroen 2CV outside the city police station. A couple more Mercedes-Benz Ponton saloons also feature, one as a taxi, the other as the villains’ mode of transport. In another scene, I spotted what I thought was an orange FIAT 1500 in the distance, and later, another time-travelling car, this time a Mercedes Benz W114, and a Chevrolet Nomad Wagon turn up to disrupt a prisoner handover that ends in a shoot-out, with a Volvo Amazon caught up in the middle.
The series spends some time in the US, or the imaginary Sopinofu Island, to be precise, as well as a brief sojourn to Bastion, Virginia, where an ahead of its time Cadillac Sedan Deville makes an appearance, and outside a typical period diner, there was parked a huge metallic green Cadillac Fleetwood Coupe de Ville, and in the same episode, a VW Beetle and an Austin Westminster that had somehow found its way across the Atlantic. There’s a scene at a drive-in where the only shape I recognised was that of a Pagoda Mercedes; I’m afraid I wasn’t able to identify the American cars, not helped by the darkness in which they were filmed.
The sixth and final episode sees the appearance of a whole bunch of British classics – a pale blue 1957 Morris Minor and one of its Traveller siblings, another Ford 100E saloon and an estate, a Jaguar MkIX (I think!) and a 420G, a Ford Zephyr and a Zodiac Estate, a Standard Eight (possibly a Ten), a Riley One-Point-Five, and two more US classics, one of which is a ‘63 Buick Le Sabre.
The series ends with Jean and Harry driving off in her new Lotus Elite, quite an upgrade from her no longer extant MGB. As a spy story, this version of The Ipcress File is pretty good, particularly if you can forget about the film, and for a classic car spotter, it’s especially good fun. I couldn’t identify them all – combination of ignorance and lack of lighting – no doubt some of our more knowledgeable readers, if they get the chance to watch the series, will do better!
