In what’s now become a rite of passage, my daughter has waited until the leaves started dancing to the ground and crunching underfoot to begin the first of what I assume will be many Gilmore Girls watchthroughs. It’s been hard to bite my tongue as she expresses discontent with such eventually beloved characters like Paris Geller.
I’ve seen the show enough times that I am well aware that one of the eponymous Gilmore girls proudly drives a Jeep Wrangler. What I’d forgotten was that in the pilot she drives a YJ, which is swapped out for a TJ in every subsequent episode.
Neither is a great Connecticut car, which is what makes it excellent car casting.
A Little Town In Connecticut That’s Actually A Little Set In California
If you know nothing about the world of the show, just know that 99.8% of it takes place in rather small part of Connecticut. Richard and Emily, the grandparents, live in Hartford (Richard works in insurance, so this tracks). Lorelei and her daughter Lorelei–who goes by Rory for practical reasons–live in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, which is somewhere in the central part of the state.
The elder Lorelei, as played to perfection by Lauren Graham, gets knocked up at 16 and flees her embarrassed, overbearing wealthy parents. She continues to raise herself and her daughter, and by the time the show starts the younger Lorelei/Rory are fully a part of the quirky Stars Hollow.
The town is actually the village set on the Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank. If you yearn for a certain sort of comfort food television, it’s also the town square used for the show Hart of Dixie (and roughly one million other projects). Having the plot of Gilmore Girls etched into the grooves of my brain, I now zone out and just watch the same red Ford Probe circle around the same gazebo.
Like standing too close to a Seurat painting, you can look at something so much you don’t even see it at all. I’m not rewatching the show to rewatch the show, I’m rewatching it to bond with my kid, which means I’m more interested in what she thinks than what happens on screen.
However, the Jeep Wrangler of it all did start to amuse me. At first glance it very much feels like a choice made by people who never visit Connecticut who just grabbed a car that happened to be available at the time (the pilot was shot in Ontario, thus the two different Jeeps).
Would Lorelei Actually Own A TJ?
I can practically walk to Connecticut, and my daughter’s own grandparents live near Hartford, so I know that soft top Jeeps aren’t entirely uncommon around here. It’s a popular enough choice in summer, though they mostly and conspicuously disappear around November. Growing up in Houston, a soft top Wrangler was basically always a soft top Wrangler, which is also true of David’s California-owned YJ.
Connecticut gets cold in a bitter sort of New England way that makes a soft top seem like a bad idea to me, which is why the hard-topped Jeep in the pilot makes more sense. You’d maybe imagine Lorelei would employ the optional factory hard top at some point, but I have done a full study of this and she’s pretty much always got the soft top installed.
Curiously, she also never seems to put the top down at any point ever in the show. Presumably, this is a production choice and not a narrative choice. In fact, the whole thing is preposterous based on Lorelei’s own well stated proclivities; She doesn’t like going outdoors, she’s not adventurous in the way you associate with most Jeeps, and she says she’s not a convertible type of person.
For all of these reasons, of course the vehicle makes sense. This came up on Reddit a few months ago, and someone pointed out that it’s a car that her parents would hate, and that the Jeep “is her counterculture symbol of rebellion.” The grandparents did end up buying Rory a Prius, which is the early 2000s antithesis of a Wrangler.
Not being sensible is the most Lorelei trait possible, and owning a soft top Jeep convertible that you never take off-road and never use as a convertible has a twisted logic to it.
The Car Is Real And Doug DeMuro Wants It
@cars_and_bids Doug DeMuro and the Gilmore Girls Jeep SAGA! Find or sell your cool car on @carsandbids #carsandbids #dougdemuro #thiscarpod#carsandbidspodcast #quirksandfeatures #carenthusiast#carenthusiasts #cars #gilmoregirls
As you can see in the above TikTok video, our pal Doug DeMuro considers Gilmore Girls the greatest television show ever made. He’s also kind of obsessed with this particular Wrangler, which was auctioned off when the show ended (to, of all people, a woman who lives in a small town in Connecticut).
Doug tracked down the daughter of the auction winner, hoping to acquire it. He was tersely rebuffed, saying it was “a family heirloom.” Doug was undeterred, pointing out that the “crossover before car enthusiasts and Gilmore Jeep enthusiasts is me, you’re going to want to sell it to me!”
What I’m realizing now is that every time I’m in Connecticut visiting the grandparents I’m going to have to look for that Jeep, if only to send Doug a photo. Here’s hoping it hasn’t been hit by another deer…
Top photo: IMCDB
I’m a lifelong New Englander who’s flown out of Bradley airport a bunch of times, and there’s puh-lenty of soft-top Jeeps in the I-91 corridor. Especially back when Gilmore Girls was current, because soft-tops were cheaper and people just sorta dealt with it.
You make Connecticut sound like it’s Maine. It’s the southernmost New England state. Its climate equivalent is like Pennsylvania. And I’m sure there are plenty of people comfortably driving soft top Jeeps year round in Pennsylvania.
As someone who likes both cars and Gilmore Girls, it is nice to be seen.
I always figured Lorelai just didn’t really think about it when she bought her jeep – same as she just didn’t really think about anything when doing anything.
Although I guess having a car that draughty would extend the amount of time that you would be able to wear your fall wardrobe well into the spring, which must have been of some benefit.
Fun fact! If you look in the background of 2007’s indisputably greatest film, Norbit, they’re actually filmed on the exact same set.
That is 2007’s greatest film.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the show, but my YJ with a soft top is pretty warm even in cold weather. The 4.0 is pretty good at turning gas into heat. And the exhaust pretty much gives you radiant floor heating
Theres many odd car choices here.
The 2wd C20 with a granny gear 3 speed? High school kids with ‘cheap practical’ cars like a 64 valiant and 71 amc ambassador. The grandfather deciding to be a gearhead and buying a 1930s rolls.
I think Luke’s truck is prefect for him, in a it was his father’s truck or his father had one like it kind of way.
True- its mostly the 2wd in CT that throws me off. Inwould have expected a hardware store owner to get a 4×4. (Also Lukes lack of general car knowledge through the series is surprising for somebody that daily drives an old car)
Which would explain why the writers chose to have her name her daughter the same thing and then call her Rory, for some reason. I mean, Lori was right there. 😛
Unless the mom goes by Lori, in which case you have Lori and Rory and…this is all just terrible naming. Having never watched the show, I’ll give the writers the benefit of the doubt and assume it was character commentary and not just bad writing.
It always seemed like good car casting to me. Especially as she was supposed to have been 32 with the mental age of maybe 16 when the show started. I could see her being obsessed with the clueless character wanting wanting one and getting sold something.
I just read this to find out who the hell Lorelei Gilmore is. I learned she is a character from a television show called Gilmore Girls (I sorta knew a TV show with that name existed) and that show is set in Connecticut.
If I ever get sick of cars, I will continue to read The Autopian just so I can understand outdated pop culture references.
I think this is past outdated. I’m pretty sure my wife wanted to watch it with our oldest daughter, who is an early teen. Or was it Gossip Girl? Not sure now that I think about it.
Anyway, it’s ancient. Like, 4:3 ancient. But I think reading The Autopian will keep you up to par with most other auto enthusiasts who, like you and I, know very little about these sort of things.
Is it like those 90’s teen movies (is Freddy Prince Jr. still alive?) in which the teenage characters are played by people who could have been their characters’ parents?
No in this case. Alexis Bledel who played Rory was 16 when the show debuted in 2000, and probably 15 when they started filming. Maybe a year or two older than her character, who I think was a freshman in high school at the debut.. I think the other teens were of similar ages.
Not like 90210 where a couple of the “teen” actors were in their 30’s, and all of them were old enough to be well into college, not high school!
I have thought about this TJ over the years, but never thought it needed to be Autopian content. But this is absolutely the Autopian content I crave.
The Autopian: Everything you never thought could be car related but is.
I would purchase this t-shirt.
When I was stationed in Colorado one winter long, long ago for USAF tech school, I had a buddy who returned from Xmas break with a rather old, faded red, soft-top CJ-7.
I think he has from Upstate New York – where they don’t care if the windchlll is sub-arctic or rust has rotted thru the floors as long as the coffee and pancakes are hot.
I dunno, I’m from Upstate (eff off to anyone that claims Western NY isn’t upstate, it’s not “downstate” and that’s all that matters…we get lake effect snow)..where was I going with this?
Go Bills
Depending on where they live in Manhattan, some consider all points north of Times Square “Upstate.”
Upstate is south of Albany but outside the NYC metro regulation bubble. Western NY is its own thing. Lived in WNY my whole life and try to make it clear to the clueless out there that I’m 300ish miles from NYC. Since everyone living further away than Pennsylvania or western New England automatically assumes that since I’m from NY I must live in NYC.
We so need a WNY/southern Ontario Autopian meetup!
My favorite question in all of my travels is asking how far my house was from Central Park. Six hours on a good day? I dunno, I grew up driving tractors and selling corn along the road. NYC was a tourist destination like anyplace else, but I had an antipathy towards it because I was *the rest* of NY.
My parents, both with Iowa roots, lived in 17 different places, including up and down the U.S. east coast, France, and Brazil. They lived in Corning, Buffalo, and Lancaster NY and always said Western NY had a strong midwest vibe to it. Very not NYC.
You hit a deer?
No! I got hit by a deer!
Ha true story. When I was in college I was back home (as east as you can go in IA). One night I took the ‘farm’ S10 based GMC Jimmy for a drive out in the country. I was in the ‘Swiss Valley” Park area. Out of the corner of my left eye I see some movement, turn to look just in time to see a deer jump over the guard rail.
It was running, clearly not parallel enough to the truck and graized the left side, leaving a brush mark all down that side, which fortunately did come out after a wash, though there was a faint scratch / mark from the antlers that never did fully come out. Being a truck that was used mainly for trips to the family farm, there was really no point with a paint correction.
Fortunately (or not depending how much you like deer), I did see it stand up and amble away appearing none the worse from the encounter.
I’ve been having both computer (Windows 11) and interet (Spectrum, which has a reputation much like Windows does in some parts) problems over the past month, so I haven’t been around.
I taking this brief moment of connectivity to say Thank You to Matt for this bit of automotive/pop culture analysis. This is the sort of thing that makes an Autopian membership just that extra bit of worth it. 🙂
I drove a CJ with no top for three years in Massachusetts. You can get used to anything.
….how?
Briskly.
well said, although no one in Boston is moving briskly.
Boston traffic is either light speed or stopped. Often in the same mile.
And ugh – I have to go up there week after next for a work gig.
Bring a raincoat.
Been rainy up there?
Better October than January. Brrr. Actually skipping Boston as it turns out, going to Holyoke, so flying into Hartford and out of Portland.
Still not as bad as Steve McGarrett driving a big Mercury hardtop in triple-black in Hawaii.
Jack Lord famously loved that ’68 Park Lane (with no AC!) to the point where he refused when FoMoCo wanted the producers to replace it with a new 1972 Marquis Brougham.
He eventually relented in 1974 – after the writers destroyed the Park Lane on screen (which has since been restored)
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-and-automotive-history-good-lord-the-1972-mercury-marquis-and-its-flirtation-with-infamy/
i could never get past 5 minutes of the show. the way these women were motor mouthing everything was crazy annoying.
It’s utterly bizarre to me that this show had fans at all, much less diehard ones. Painfully trite and poorly acted. I could never stomach more than an episode in a sitting, of any season, despite having a teenage girl that enjoyed it. The things we do for love.
For me, the dialogue was the point. Peppered with lots of literary, political, and pop culture references. There wasn’t much else on TV at the time that did that.
Perhaps, but the way that dialogue came out was just super annoying for me.
We are currently re-watching the West Wing, its very similar in a lot of ways – just a bit more serious. Quick dialogue and lots of pop-culture references thrown in. TV was just better then.
Many people put “Before Sunrise” on the same altar as Citizen Kane. Missus and I saw it the other day for the first time and we were like, WTF is this shit?
People like weird things.
this is true. I haven’t watched Before Sunrise, but maybe people like it because it is “original”? Can’t seem to get that in Hollywood these days. Seems like every movie or show is a “remix” of an old one now.
No stranger than the flip side of this (from a show Millennial Matt always omits), that MacGyver would drive a hardtop instead of softtop YJ throughout much of the series, even though he lived in LA.
The less said about his last series “Taskmaster” Chevy truck the better…
Compounded by his simultaneously almost never driving the Chevy Nomad wagon his grandfather left him.
I’d completely forgotten about that…man, as soon as we knew he was “Angus” it all went off the rails…
Lorelei Gillmore is one of the best depictions of pathological emotional parentification, enmeshment and emotional incest, cutely veiled in season one, and snowballing to avalanche proportions in subsequent seasons.
Neither Rory, nor even Kirk can save the show from the extreme weirdness the initial cuteness morphs into, becoming festering material in the latest seasons. Whoever wrote this show must have laughed at least as hysterically writing this, as Paul Verhoeven probably laughed while writing Starship Troopers with a “let them figure out who the bad guys are” sardonic giggle.
No Jeepness redemption will save Lorelei for me. She could drive donuts in the snow around me in a Willis throwing handfuls of OEM BMW bolts for all I care, I’ll still run and cuddle behind Kirk’s 1964 Thunderbird, and still won’t feel safe.
Out of context, I fully agree – some of the shit Lorelei pulls is unforgivable.
In the context of who her mother is… I have a ton more sympathy. I would have run away as well.
She certainly got lucky she ended up with a “good kid” because she didn’t have the skills to deal with anyone even slightly more difficult than the angelic Rory.
Not Kirk’s Bird, it was Taylor’s and Kirk was driving it so Taylor could espouse the benefits of the traffic camera that “blinded” Kirk and caused him to crank the wheel and hit the throttle.
How do you tell us that there was a YJ in the pilot – then not post a picture of it?
When I lived in L.A. I always heard that Lauren Graham was a monster to other people on the set. I had a hard time watching after that.
I’ve lived here for 30+ years and work/ed in the business, though I’ve never heard that. Doesn’t mean it ain’t true of course. I did see her having breakfast at a place called Home (I think) in Los Feliz (ditto) years back, long after Gilmore Girls had gone out of production, and she looked like bearable company over pancakes, at least from my vantage across the street.
Of course, I always though that she’s cute as hedoublehockeysticks, so maybe I was mistaken and she’s actually an ogre. 😉
I knew some folks that did background work. They said that she referred to them as cockroaches. The truth’s probably somewhere in the middle.
I met Steven Segal years ago through work (body replacement, because he runs like an exaggeratedly effeminate unicorn with sagging britches) and he is every single thing that you’d imagine him to be.
This, Sir, puts you in the pantheon of lasersharp definitions. I have been looking for this half my life, now the dread is gone. Thank thee for this.
Incidentally, for half of my young life (when I was actually watching his movies), this very way of running made me think, for some reason, that he’s 5ft tall. Boy, was I wrong.
I worked on a couple of his movies (in post production/visual effects) though I don’t think I’ve ever watched any of them in their entirety. The only one I can actually remember anything about is that one on the Navy(?) ship where Erica Eleniak (I think) jumps out of a cake topless, and of course, that’s the only part of it that I can actually recall.
Years after I was doing VFX, I met her when I was doing casting work for RTV shows. This was maybe 10 years ago. She was pleasant and friendly, and looked more like a slightly chubby mom at that point, and not like the sort of lady who spends much time inside of hollow cakes.
But time gets us all of course… i.e.: I went to a small celebration of life gathering last weekend for a former VFX coworker who died recently, and saw there some people that I used to work with 30 years ago, back when I was a 20something wunderkind. Almost all of the guys were old, grey, and sported beer bellies (like me) and almost all of the ladies still looked lovely.
Since I’m male, I’m not complaining, but it’s funny how that worked out.
They could have gone with Lorelei, Jr.
It worked for the Souphanousinphones.
This is an excellent dad move.
Insects flying around in crash test videos, commentary on 20 year old TV shows… The Autopian is firing on all cylinders.
Ignoring 4wd for a snowy location in the world(albeit short jeeps do kind of suck in the snow) also seems more NYC Cralopnik type writing to me as well.
I’ve seen quite a few outfitted with plows for clearing small parking lots over the years.
More manoeuvrable than the average pickup, in those cases and still practical enough for driving all four wheels.
100%. I’ve seen a whole lot of rusted-out Wranglers with plows on the front. The heater on these things is strong!
Was about to say the same thing. The heater in my LJ felt like it could air fry an egg in the middle of winter.
Whichever engineer spec’d that sucker never wanted to be the least bit chilly
There’s someone in Providence that has home-built crane/rig thing to drop in fancy curbstones into sidewalks…that front end sure is taking a beating.
right, just like the old scouts they were often used for plow duty. That was probably fine for low speed snow pushing, but on roadways, the short wheel base kind of resulted in spinning around more than a heavy 4 wd truck. WHen there is traction aids involved, like say a locker, then the tires getting traction can sometimes catch while one wheel spins on ice, this seems to result in uneven traction that feels like the wheels are pushing unevenly and it tries to push you off track one way or another, but only until the other wheel gets traction and jerks forward. Not saying they don’t work in the snow, just that better vehicles exist.
Lorelai makes poor choices, so yes this is good car casting.
Long story short, Doug wants to by a HOLY GRAIL Jeep
Doug is not interesting, though I do find it funny he was turned away.
Fixed.