STARS AND THEIR CARS – THE STARSKY & HUTCH FORD GRAN TORINO

For a long time, Starsky & Hutch was a fixture on BBC1. Every week, Captain Dobey would order, “You two jokers - in my office”, and Huggy Bear would observe “You ever try to get ten horses in a basement?”. And every week, Detective-Sergeant Dave Starsky, played by Paul Michael Glaser, and Detective- Sergeant Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, played by the late David Soul, would fight crime in their Ford Gran Torino.

Starsky & Hutch ran from 1975 to 1979, and the show’s creator, William Blinn, originally wanted to use a green and white Chevrolet Camaro Convertible. However, General Motors could not assist, and Aaron Spelling of Spelling- Goldberg Productions asked his transportation chief, George Grenier, to choose a car that would suit the new series.

Spelling-Goldberg Productions had a close association with Ford’s Studio-TV car loan program, so Grenier looked at the manufacturer’s entire lineup. Two Gran Torinos were used in the show’s pilot episode The Word on the Street, filmed in spring 1975. The 351 Windsor V8 engine powered both, and conversions included modified rear shock absorbers, a chrome-tipped exhaust pipe, and Ansen Sprint five-slot aluminum alloy wheels.

The production team also added a ‘Wimbledon White’ stripe to the ‘Bright Red’ paintwork, leading Soul’s co-star to nickname the Fords “The Striped Tomato”. One Torino had a camera mounted on the roof, and the show used the other for exterior shots. Glaser took the wheel for normal driving scenes during filming, with a stunt professional taking over for the pursuit scenes. The front bench seats proved impractical during a high-speed chase, and Glaser recalled, “It took us a

year to get them to put bucket seats in it so David wouldn’t slide all over the place whenever I took a corner”.

Such was the Torino’s impact that viewers called the Spelling-Goldberg offices with such questions as “What kind of car was it?” “What model is it?” and “Can we get the stripe?” Nor did fans of the series complain that the opening credits featured the over-dubbed sound of a high-powered V8. Californian smog regulations prevented engine modifications to the S&H Fords.

The second season employed two new Ford-supplied Torinos with 460 Lima V8 engines, with a 351-powered model owned by 20th Century Fox studios as a back- up car. Ford eventually offered their own Starsky & Hutch limited edition model, based on the 1976 Torino, the final model year of production.

Starsky & Hutch proved a global phenomenon, including in the UK – by late 1976, the show attracted 19 million viewers to BBC1. Corgi made a splendid die-cast replica for younger fans while one chief constable complained about the show’s impact on some of his officers. “Police on patrol duty were adopting sunglasses and wearing their gloves with the cuffs turned down. They also started driving like bloody maniacs”.

Further evidence of the show’s impact was the number of very bad Starsky & Hutch replicas. The red and white Mini Clubman used by Morecambe and Wise in their sketch Starkers & Krutch reflected the lookalikes of varying degrees of awfulness that proliferated throughout suburbia during the late 1970s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIhsQLddllc

The thought process behind such amateur conversions seemed logical on the surface. “Even if I lack the budget to import a Gran Torino, with some spray paint, I can transform my 15-year-old Ford Anglia 105E De Luxe into an authentic

looking Starsky & Hutch car”. The reality tended to lack conviction even when viewed at a distance during mid-October, in twilight, in the middle of a thick fog.

But on hearing that theme tune, who could resist turning their 1965 Vauxhall Viva HA or 1967 Triumph Herald 1200 into a red & white Gran Torino?

David Soul – 28^th August 28, 1943 – 4^th January 2024