Everyone Forgets About The Other Ford In Starsky & Hutch

We tend to be fans of the underdog at The Autopian, and that sometimes includes the vehicles on our favorite old television shows. Magnum P.I.‘s titular Thomas Magnum drove a 308GTS that was cool, but many of us prefer TC’s multi-colored VW Vanagon. The Miami Vice Ferraris? I always liked Riccardo Tubbs’ sixties Cadillac convertible instead. And here’s one more that I’d forgotten about until recently, a car that even the show’s lead actors seemed to prefer to the “hero car” of the show. Let’s revisit Hutch’s bedraggled Ford Galaxie, second fiddle to Stasrsky’s boldly striped red Gran Torino, but first in my heart.

What About Huggy Bear?

If you’re of a certain age, you grew up on grainy reruns of seventies crime dramas that showed us the swagger and sense of humor we were supposed to exhibit and, more importantly, how Real Men should drive when we grew up. There wasn’t a better example of this than Starsky & Hutch, a weekly saga of two scrappy undercover cops on the mean streets of the fictitious and gritty Bay City.

The show’s creator, William Blinn, had envisioned the duo driving a Camaro convertible not unlike the one he’d owned years before, but there was a problem with that idea. Ford Motor Company’s Studio-TV Car Loan Program was the lease supplier for Spelling-Goldberg productions, so they were stuck with the cars on offer in Dearborn’s motor pool. In the mid-seventies, that was more like a cesspool.

This is how Starsky ended up with the famous Bright Red Gran Torino coupe featuring a lifted rear end, mag wheels, and the signature white stripe down the sides and over the roof. Young viewers like me loved the thing, but you know who didn’t? Paul Michael Glaser, the actor who played Starsky.

Glaser apparently hated it from the moment it was first presented to him. Not only did Glaser think it was a big, ugly, and childish-looking car, he also seriously questioned how anyone would believe that two “undercover” cops would drive such a showy ride. His quip that it “it looks like a striped tomato” stuck as the nickname for the car on the set.

Indeed, after a run around the block, both Glaser and David Soul (Hutch, don’t give up on him baby) truly despised it. The vinyl bench seats caused the duo to slide into each other, the handling was crap, and the 351 Windsor was so underpowered that the standard 2.75:1 rear axle had to be replaced with one that would give it sufficiently dramatic wheelspin and better acceleration off the line for stunt work. Of course, this meant that the top end was so severely limited that the cars reportedly had Dymo labels stuck on the dash telling drivers DO NOT EXCEED 50 MILES PER HOUR. After the pilot, the production company wisely ordered Torinos with 400 V8s for additional (but still rather subpar) power.

As much as Glaser hated the Gran Torino, his character Starsky was supposed to be a car person who loved his fake muscle car. His partner? Not so much.

Should Have Worn Padded Pants

Hutch, by contrast, was envisioned to be totally indifferent to motor vehicles, and the crew found the perfect car for him: a beige 1973 Ford Galaxie 500 sedan.

Once Dearborn’s top-of-the-line “standard-sized” car, the Galaxie relinquished the pedestal to the LTD by the early 1970s, and the Galaxie was reduced to bargain-basement status. As a bare-bones car, the Galaxie was far more in line with what an undercover cop would be driving.

Still, Soul and Glaser initially hated this thing nearly as much as the “striped tomato.” Since the show premiered in 1975, the Galaxie was obviously a fairly new car and in good condition; the two actors felt that Hutch’s character would never drive such a pristine late model ride around a dump like Bay City. Reportedly, they spent the better part of an afternoon hitting the car with sledgehammers to give it that “beat up” look; I’d assume that the motor pool body shop also gave them that mismatched front fender to really push the disheveled look.

The storyline also included the bit where the horn inadvertently honked when the driver’s door was opened. Early on, the Galaxie gained a giant dent in the roof, and if you’ve watched the opening credits as many times as I have, you’ll know exactly how the dent got there. In a scene where Hutch is making a quick escape, he jumps off an elevated section of pavement directly onto the Galaxie’s roof.

It’s a surprisingly long fall and hard hit that looks like it could hurt; you’d think that Soul would have used a stunt person. In retrospect, he should have; it actually caused permanent tailbone damage to David, which was a constant bother to him in the ensuing years. Well, at least they caught it on tape in a scene that had us Toughskin-wearing kids convinced that these dudes were badass.

Ironically, David Soul would claim years later that the Galaxie was a far better-driving car than the fancy Gran Torino; admittedly a low bar, but a surprise nonetheless. Soul stated that in a quarter-mile race, it would have easily won. It’s not known if the tan sedan had a 400 under the hood or even a more special 429 or 460, but any of those motors would indeed have easily shut down the early 351-equipped Torinos.

The Galaxie ended up getting destroyed in season two by going off a cliff. In typical seventies show fashion, you can see that they actually sent an older model Ford (a 1970) to its death instead:

Hutch buys a “similar” car to replace it, which is, of course, the same Galaxie that was “totaled” with a different license plate and altered faux weathering to make viewers think it was a different car. This “second” Galaxie meets its final fate when it gets blown up in a season four episode:

This time, Hutch’s character chooses a different car to replace it: a Nash Metropolitan named “Belle,” all part of the storyline that David Soul’s character was truly not a car guy. [Ed note: I’d think a not-into-cars undercover cop would choose anything but a Nash Metropolitan. – Pete]

Thankfully, I don’t believe there are any scenes of the Nash in chases with the magnetic red light stuck onto the hood.

Don’t Give Up On Us, Baby

Glaser was right: the “striped tomato” Gran Torino was a pretty stupid car. A Camaro was off the table, but if the Ford leasing company could have procured them a rusty, faded, and dented Ivy Green 1965 Mustang convertible (like my parents had at the time) with a 289 V8, it would have been much cooler.

Still, in the show’s day, a lot of people liked the silly red-and-white coupe, enough so that Ford even made 1,302 “Special Edition” Gran Torinos in the Starsky & Hutch paint scheme for 1976. Around 100 are reported to survive, but there are countless unofficial tributes out there. Whatever you think of it, Spelling’s team undeniably gave us an oh-so-malaise touchstone of television history.

Nobody made tributes to Hutch’s Galaxie back then, but today you’ll occasionally see some. This pair of replicas was sold in Britain back in 2022.

I first saw Starsky & Hutch when my family was living in the UK; the Brits were nuts for the show, so it’s not surprising that it was English fans who made such accurate facsimiles.

We can’t let the passage of time cause us to forget the boring-looking sedan that played a distant second banana to the big tomato. My guess is that up until his death a few years ago, David Soul probably remembered that car every time he had to sit down too fast. Ouch.

Top graphic image: Manor Park Classics