The detective’s car

A 1970 Buick Electra 225 sedan, much like the car Terry Cahill drives in “Rincon Point.” This one is a little nicer than his.

As a Gen Xer, I grew up in an era when cop and detective shows were a significant presence in popular entertainment. It was also a time when pretty much any kind of action show needed to have plenty of car chases.

This led to cars playing a pretty big role in those kinds of shows, and two trends regarding these star cars seemed to peak in the 1980s. Given the increasing focus on material items and luxury lifestyles in entertainment of the time, it was only natural to have some outrageously expensive hardware being wheeled around by TV detectives. Magnum's 308 GTS, and Sonny Crockett's Daytona Spyder and Testarossa are obvious examples.

The other way it could go is basically the opposite of that, and the 1980s offered a plethora of great hoopties on-screen, both in TV and movies. Think of the terrible Riviera Chevy Chase drives in "Fletch," or Axel Foley's "crappy blue Chevy Nova." Rick Hunter's and Sledge Hammer's battered full-size Dodges. The Dude's miserable Torino in "The Big Lebowski" is a more contemporary throwback to the theme.

Cars don't seem to hold the same place in TV that they did in the 1970s and 1980s. I think these days action shows, particularly old-style, shoe-leather detective shows, are less popular than they were back then, but obviously people still watch cop shows. The difference is that now technology more often plays the role cars once did.

Hey, it's a different time. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it just is. But if Jim Rockford had an iPhone, most episodes of "The Rockford Files" would be about 10 minutes long. In the days before popular use of the Internet, detectives had to go out and seek information by talking to people and looking up public records in libraries and various government offices. That meant a lot of driving around, and a lot of scenes shot in cars.

Since things happening in cars was such a big part of these shows, the cars themselves needed to be interesting, to add something with their own presence. That's probably why the cars featured prominently tended toward the very high and low ends of the market. Middle-class cars weren’t entertaining. They were what most of the audience drove themselves. But a flashy, expensive car offers obvious thrills, and a clapped-out beater provides opportunities for comedic moments.

The reason I set "Rincon Point" in the summer of 1991 is I didn't want to write a story about people looking things up with computers. I wanted to write an old-fashioned detective story about someone having to go out and interact with people in varied environments. That meant a car would figure heavily in the story, and I wanted to pick the right one.

This 1967 Malibu parked at the harbor captures the old-school California clunker vibe I remember from my youth and wanted to capture in the book.

Being someone who was influenced by the entertainment of my youth, I knew I would probably follow one of these two trends before I sat down to write "Rincon Point." And I'll admit, it was tempting to go the rich-guy cop route. After all, you get to live somewhat vicariously through your characters when you write, and wouldn't it be cool to make your protagonist drive your dream car and have a big house with a closet full of expensive clothes?

It would. But ...

But it wouldn't feel authentic to me. It would feel cheesy, contrived. There are writers who have done it well, and created stories I enjoyed. But it's not the direction I felt would work for my story. I also wanted to put some distance between my own personality and that of Terry Cahill, my protagonist. If I gave him something resembling my dream car, it'd be a little too personal.

So I went with a hooptie. In "Rincon Point," Terry drives a beat-up 1970 Buick Electra 225, much like the one in the first picture here. And this car was carefully chosen for a few reasons. First, growing up I thought Buick was about the least-cool automaker in the world. Even the name just sounded like old people. But for this story, the opposite of cool was exactly what I wanted.

The Buick Electra is also considered a quintessential hooptie. So much so that a 1969 model stars in the music video for Sir Mix-a-Lot's "My Hooptie." It's a nameplate with substantial pedigree in the world of jalopies.

1970, of course, was the only year Buick offered the Electra with a high-compression version of its then-new 455 cubic inch V8. That's 7.5 liters for countries that speak metric. I may be giving my protagonist a junker of a car, but I am giving him the one with the best engine. I'm no dummy.

I find something endearing about well worn cars, particularly big American land yachts from the mid ‘60s through the Malaise era. These were the definitive full-size American cars, and they were all over the world I grew up in, not just on the screen but on the streets every day. The Big 3 made tens of millions of them new, and they were a popular choice for cheap transportation for a couple of decades before a fatal combination of age, lackluster build quality, depressing performance, terrible fuel mileage, difficulty passing emissions tests, and the availability of better used cars started taking them off the roads in the 1990s, right around the time my story opens.

About a decade later, high scrap metal prices cleared many of them out of junkyards across the country, drastically reducing the main source of cheap parts to keep the few left on the roads running. You still see hoopties driving around, but today they’re much more likely to be cheap compacts and midsize sedans. Still, you might see a lot of failed clear coats and missing hubcaps, but you don’t see nearly as many rusty cars or cars with major, unrepaired body damage in the wild anymore. It’s not the same, but it’s probably an improvement.

But when it comes to the screen, I think we need more hoopties in mainstream entertainment today.

Honk if you agree.