Like all Americans of a certain vintage, I learned about justice and the fine art of fool pitying from a series of televised documentaries known as The A-Team. This show about a group of Vietnam Special Forces veterans on the run from the law over some vague and unwarranted set of charges while they righted various wrongs across the countrywas known for many things, but the most important one for us was how they tended to weld a bunch of crap to cars or other vehicles every week.
This was a key part of the fairly formulaic plots: they’d come, someone would need help with, um, something, they’d come up with some plan that required an armored vehicle, which B.A. Baracus (played by the singular Mr.T) would make with an acetylene torch and whatever was handy, and then there’d be some kind of action scene where things drove into other things (and incredibly no one was killed, bad guys would just roll out of mangled cars rubbing their necks) and then somehow everything would be solved.
I don’t really remember many specifics of these episodes, except for one: I vividly remember that a Renault LeCar was transformed into some manner of armored vehicle to accomplish…something. It’d been years since I’d thought about it, but I finally decided to look into it.
And, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found it. Not just a reference, but a video of the whole LeCar transformation scene and its eventual glorious destruction:
Honestly, the most shocking thing about this whole scene is not that a 51 horsepower 1981 Renault LeCar was able to drive with what had to be nearly 800 pounds of scrap metal (including a huge I-beam on the front bumper), but that all of this effort was expended to…sell some rapidly aging watermelons? This whole episode was about getting watermelons to a local produce market?
Are you flapping kidding me? I guess I never fully appreciated how literally cutthroat the central California watermelon-growing community was.
But let’s focus on this little Renault and its dramatic transformation into Watermelon-related war machine. The LeCar was the American-spec version of the Renault 5, and differed from the European version in a few ways, mostly larger 5 mph bumpers and sealed-beam headlamps, which went from round to rectangular in 1980.
You can see the LeCar from the show up above, and it looks to be brand new; in the context of the show, it was, owned by Amy, who is somehow related to the watermelon-growing concern.
The need for a fast, nimble, small armored vehicle to escort the large, clumsy armored truck was established, so Amy was coerced into donating her nice new LeCar to the cause, letting BA get to work with that acetylene cutting torch there.
The armor was primarily sheets of what looks like fairly thick sheet steel, including a snowplow blade on the lip of the hood.
The front bumper was transformed into a battering ram with a steel I-beam and three sharp spikes. The LeCar’s canvas sunroof was ringed with a steel turret, making for a protected point from which a gun could be fired, again, to assist with watermelon sales.
Rear quarter windows were armored with corrugated metal, and the rear featured a large array of hay bales which were lit afire to create a crude sort of smokescreen effect. Honestly, that’s pretty clever, if it didn’t mean you’d have to drive around with a massive wad of burning haybales just feet from the gas tank.
Of course, being the A-Team, this car’s fate had to end in a nice spectacular high-speed crash, which, again because this is the A-Team, was survived by the driver and passenger (Howlin’ Mad Murdoch and Face, respectively) despite the small car’s crashworthiness severely compromised by all those pieces of massive, heavy, sharp-edged metal.
I wonder how that thing drove with all that metal?
All this to sell some watermelons. And I think temporarily delay some kind of crooked land deal? I’m not really clear how much was solved once the A-Team left, but you know, once the episode was over, that wasn’t anyone’s problem.
One thing that now goes through my mind ; nobody thought it was odd that there was a ‘need’ for vigilantes to right the wrongs done by corrupt and/or plain criminal people while the police/government just didn’t do anything. Could we envision a modern 2026 A-Team series? Battling with the police/dea/ice and corporations and what not to help innocent civilians, using up-armored cars, car chases and overly shiny automatic weapons, helicopters and copious amounts of explosives?
Is the country less corrupt now than 40 years ago? Or is there less space for people to stand up against the government, corruption and criminal entities?
That’s probably plywood or even cardboard painted to look like metal.
I calculate that the I beam alone is 75 pounds per foot
I had a railroad rail for the front bumper of my pickup – it was NYC and it was definitely worth it – and I think it was about 200-250 pounds.
My grandfather had a Le Car when I was a kid. I just remember it was easy to identify as it was bronze and said “Le Car” in huge letters on the side.
He replaced it with a brown Chevy Nova Hatchback, that I learned to drive stick on.
He had a thing for tiny hatchbacks. Must have rubbed off a bit, since I’m daily driving a Ford Fiesta. However, my other grandfather loved his massive luxury boats. He was a Cadillac Man. Had three Sedan De Ville’s in a row.
I guess that explains the Buick Regal TourX I got for the family hauler… (Couldn’t afford the CTS-V Wagon, sadly. Heck, even used, I still can’t because they refuse to drop in value!)
Some years back, I watched Miami Vice for the first time since the ’80s and I was impressed at how well it held up. I actually thought it was better than I remembered. Sure, there was some cheesy stuff and obvious network restrictions that sometimes seemed a bit goofy (people getting shot, but no blood or anything, just falling down like my friends and I as kids playing assassination), but I think it also helped in some ways. There are several episodes that end with someone offing themselves, usually with a gun. They couldn’t show a close up of that, so they’d cut to a freeze frame of Crockett yelling, “No!” to close out the episode. Were they not restricted, they’d likely show the gore, but I think the freeze frame closeup reaction yell was more effective in showing the emotional toll the job took on the characters over time, trauma being a major theme overall. It was pretty ahead of its time along with that and more focus on longer-term story arcs than the more episodic writing of most programs of the time (not a criticism, they had to make these programs for the time—no streaming, obviously, and reruns would be months away, rentals whenever longer still—so they had to allow for viewers missing an episode or two and not being lost).
With that positive experience, I thought I’d check out some other stuff from that time that I used to like, at least expecting some cheesy fun. I tried ALF and, even though I didn’t have high expectations, I couldn’t make it more than maybe 10 minutes and I was pushing myself. A-Team I made it a little longer, but probably less than half an episode. They were torture and that ended my nostalgia trips. I probably should have started with Knight Rider as I suspect it would have been more tolerable, but I’d rather preserve that as a more positive memory.
I loved the old Miami Vice. As a teenager then the violence and the topics (drugs, weapons, murders) was on the edge of what I was allowed to watch, but nevertheless I managed to get it done. Loved the cars. Loved the setting in sunny Florida, the cigarette boats, the connection to the Colombian cartels etc. It did feel like a real battle between police, dea and criminals. Last year I downloaded a lot of older episodes but after a few it did feel a bit stale, though I did see a lot of details I didn’t catch when I was about 40 years younger.
Actually now I write this I wonder where the 40 years went.
On topic regarding Autopian, I recently bought a 1:18 white Kyosho Testarossa. Which was kinda expensive (second hand) but I think worth it. Because I loved that white one in Miamia Vice. 40 years ago.
As someone born in 2002, I think the original Magnum PI holds up. I’ve been watching it recently, and enjoying it.
I don’t have any bad impressions of the show, but I only ever saw a few episodes. I don’t know if that’s because it was on too late or some weird time or what. It had to be less goofy than most of the stuff I watched back then.
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… the A-Team.
Torch does torch. You do you.
This is the one episode of the A-Team that I have the most memories of. The LeCar was the butt of the joke for much of the episode but ended up kinda saving the day after B.A. Baracus’ tasteful mods.
This was also when I became aware that the Renault 5 was sold in the USA.
How did the LeCar save the day? After watching the clip, I couldn’t figure out what it was for. The truck smashed through the roadblock with the car following it. The car disabled the chase vehicles (that had possibly been smashed by the truck already, but were undamaged?), but the truck was immediately disabled by the IED and the car went flying off the road. Then everyone was held at gunpoint.
I had the idea that it was Amy who showed up in the LeCar later in the episode and ended up having some part in helping the team, but I didn’t really remember Murdock crashing the car. It’s probably my memory’s rose-tinted glasses doing their thing. But I do remember feeling ecstatic – even if somewhat confused – that a Renault 5 was so prominently featured in an episode of the A-Team 🙂
Definitely a cool car. I just can’t figure out why they had to ruin it.
I can imagine they did it purely for comedic effect; the LeCar was famously unloved in the USA so it’s normal that they’d make some fun of it in a show like the A-Team. The over the top mods and the crash at the end feel like quintessential A-Team gags. I bet a lot of the audience got a nice chuckle out of seeing a european crapcan being turned into a makeshift armoured car and immediately geting junked too.
You’re probably right. In those days most people we knew called Japanese cars “rice burners” and frowned on anything that wasn’t American. These days we know how that turned out.
That always struck me as odd; Americans at the time seemed to be pretty aware of how shitty American cars had become over time, but were quick to dismiss imports as shittier nonetheless – whenever gas prices were low, at least.
They were clearly wrong, not just about Japanese cars (which had great reputation in the rest of the world), but even stuff like the LeCar, which was nowhere nearly as bad as it’s been made out to be: its EU-spec counterpart is a beloved automotive icon this side of the pond and you still see quite a few on the road all over southern Europe; its engines are some of the most reliable in european subcompacts of that era and powered all sorts of iconic cars around the world, not just Renaults. I’ve been daily driving a Renault 4 with a 1.1L, 34hp Cléon-Fonte engine for a few years now and know exactly how dependable that little engine is. The fact that the US-spec cars that got engines from the same family are considered unreliable there is mind-blowing to me.
I had a good laugh at 3:19 in the video where they were showing the snowplow angle brace being held to fender sheet metal with a machine screw.
Hell yes watermelons are a tough business. You’ve never seen Mr. Majestyk? Charles Bronson will show you how to drive a pickup truck!
Talk about heavy metal! Rock on…
“I pity the fool!”