Have you ever seen the Coen brothers’ movie No Country for Old Men? It’s great. I mean, maybe a little unsettling, but great. It’s an adaptation of a novel by Cormac McCarthy, a writer known for a distaste for punctuation and his bleakly pessimistic and spare worldview. The movie takes place primarily in West Texas in 1980, and the film, like all Coen brothers films, is very carefully produced and crafted. There’s almost nothing anachronistic in the film, with wardrobes and scenery and everything very painstakingly selected to be appropriate to that time and place.
That includes, of course, the cars.
The movie is full of great and mundane mid-Malaise-Era iron. There’s very little flashy about these cars, mostly midrange domestic family cars and trucks. There are hardly any imports, hardly anything fancier than a Buick. It’s pretty much what you’d have seen on a rural West Texas street in the summer of 1980. It’s clear the car casting was taken seriously.
I think that’s why this detail is so fascinating to me, because it shows how important the filmmakers felt the car-casting should be, and the lengths they’d go to make sure everything was just right. But at the same time, it’s also hilariously half-assed. It’s in this scene; see if you can spot what I’m talking about: [Ed note, and spoiler alert: feel free to stop the video after Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) gets out of the patrol car, if you’re averse to mild screen gore – Pete]
It doesn’t have anything to do with the white Ford Granada with the one broken reverse lamp; I think a smashed reverse lamp was a factory option for those. It has to do with the Chevrolet Caprice cop car behind the Granada. Take a look at the cop car; does anything look sort of … off? 
Here, let’s get a little closer. Computer! Zoom and enhance!
See it now? Look that the headlights; what’s going on with those lights? Why is the outboard light about, oh, 10% bigger than the inner one? And, wait a minute – are those even two separate headlights? Why do their borders look kind of wonky?
There’s shenanigans happening here. Shenanigans involving what appears to be black gaffer’s tape, being used to visually disguise one wide, rectangular composite headlamp into what appears to be two rectangular sealed beam headlights! But why?
Well, the reason why is pretty straightforward: anachronisms.
You see, this generation of Chevy Caprice – the third generation – lasted from 1977 to 1990, but during that healthy lifespan, the car received three facelifts. The first sub-generation was from 1977 to 1979, then tweaks were made for the 1980 to 1985 cars, and then one final refreshing in 1986, continuing until that generation ended in 1990.
That means for the movie to be accurate, only the first sub-generation and the very first year of the second could be used. Those wide composite headlights didn’t appear until the final facelift in 1986, well after the scope of the movie.
For reference, here’s a 1981 Caprice’s face:
…and here’s a 1990 one:
There’s some other minor differences – grille size, shape, mesh pattern, and so on – but arguably the most readily noticeable difference are those headlights. The wide composite lamps just change the look of the car a surprising amount, and they just feel like something of the 1990s, not 1980s, at least in America.
So, this is what we have going on:
They had a 1986-1990 Caprice police car, and they needed to make it look like a 1980 (at latest) Caprice police car. But the headlights were too big a giveaway, hence the gaffer’s tape.
According to the sleuths over at the Internet Movie Car Database, the No Country for Old Men Caprice cop car is a 1990, based on the door-mounted seat belt. They also note other attempts to make the car look older, like the removal of the CHMSL from the rear package shelf.
That car above there is an example of a 1980 Caprice police car. There’s a good bit different from the No Country for Old Men car, but I think the prop people made the right call in that the headlights are the most important element to try and reconcile. But even then, I have to wonder why they just did it with gaffer’s tape?
I mean, if it was important enough to change at all, and it clearly was, why didn’t they try and find a period-correct car? The car isn’t just a background car, it’s used by one of the main characters for an extended period of time. It seems like it’d be worth getting the one you actually want?
Maybe finding a good cop car with a more rural Texas-type livery – not a classic big city black-and-white – was harder than they expected. Maybe that was the only car they could use. If that was the case, why not actually change out the headlight units?
It wouldn’t have been hard or expensive; the size and shape of the housings between the two types of lights are basically the same. One should bolt right into place of the other. They could have picked up the older headlight bezels and inner headlight buckets for probably, what, $150 total? They’d bolt right in! These are daytime shots so they wouldn’t even need to wire anything up!
But instead they picked tape?
I’m just baffled. If this is important enough to do something about, why did they do something so half-assed? I mean, they could have at least measured and put the damn dividing line in the center!
I know all those gaffers have tape measures on them. It’d have killed someone to measure this? The fact that the size difference is noticeable even at a distance is ridiculous.
I’m not entirely sure what to think about all this – it’s such a strange contradiction or maybe juxtaposition or contrast or one of those words about how two things relate to one another where incredible care was paid to the idea, but less so in the execution.
It doesn’t hurt the movie at all, though, and I never even realized it until the Bishop pointed it out to me today, so I suppose in the grand scheme, it hardly matters. Still, I can’t stop thinking about it, and I’m kind of delighted to know it’s A Thing.
Also, if I’m honest? The tape basically works. It’s probably good enough.
Maybe if the Coen brothers decided to release a re-mastered version, they’ll use CGI to superimpose the proper headlights over those goofy taped-up ones. Seems like a good use of money.
Top graphic image: Miramax
Well, I didn’t notice the headlights. I thought it was going to be something about not having a non-exempt license plate. But I don’t know what protocols Texas state and local law enforcement agencies followed back in 1980.
The LAPD black and white definitely has an inaccurate (normal non-exempt) plate by California standards. Marked units always have an exempt plate. They had an “E” inside of a vertically stretched octagon back in the day. Now there’s “CA EXEMPT” in all red letters at the top of the plate. I was a news photographer back then and had cool press photographer plates that had “PP” arranged inside of a triangle. Nostalgically, I regret not pulling the plates off my car when it was rear-ended, totaled and towed. I don’t know whether those plates saved me any tickets and some colleagues chose not to have them, thinking they would be targeted by thieves. Issued to me in 1980, mine were blue with the embossed yellow PP icon and numerals.
I have noticed press (not just photographer) plates in New York with the letters NYP in a smaller font. I also saw plates from New Jersey with that notation, although in a different format. I don’t whether neighboring Connecticut offered them as well.
When I moved from CA to western NY and Ohio, in the early 90s, I was surprised to see the red light bars volunteer firefighters were allowed to have on their personal vehicles. I understand the rationale, but I think the potential for abuse was there.
I had to turn off the movie when I saw that. /s
Looking closely at a still, of course it is wrong. In motion, on film it likely passed. Job well done.
I absolutely noticed this when I saw it for the first time. The tail lights are 1986-1990 specific too.
The older Caprice they’d gotten for the role didn’t have a SAG card and they had to roll with this Chevy-Come-Lately at the last minute or blow up the expensive shooting schedule.
The cop car would probably have been an Impala, not a Caprice, and you can see where they appear to have covered much of the turn signal with body color brown, leaving only the thin strip where the side light on the 80-85 Impala would have been. But you can’t just swap light modules – the whole fascia is different.
The Caprice from the auction site is wearing early S-10 base model hubcaps t
What is Mr Tailight doing up front, anyway? Get thee behind me, Torch!!
“It’s an adaptation of a novel…”
If anyone has seen the movie and is thinking of reading the novel I will save you some time. The movie follows the book EXACTLY. I have never seen a more faithful adaptation. If you really want to read the book; just flip through and read the italicized monologues in the bookstore quickly and put it back down.
Similar error in Fargo. The Oldmobiles have the later, round window and roofline, not the year proper straight roof and vertical rear window.
I’ll allow it, far from the worst Hollywood car anachronism. I give it an 7 of 10 for realism.
Go back and look at the actual 1986-1990 Caprice. The composite headlights were NOT 50/50 like the sealed beams were. Putting tape down the center would have made each inboard element look like half a light. Their choices were to either mimic the 1980 light dividers for period accuracy but have a glitchy-looking light on each side, or follow the 1986 light dividers to match the car they were actually using, but have Torchinsky complain about it. Who’s to say if they made the correct decision…
not just complain about it: complain about it almost 20 years later!
Those damn gaffers!
Anton Chigurh my boy! Holla’!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfKe_DEOdFg
The one that jumped out at me was the ’83+ Crown Victoria taxi…
This was absolutely a thing that was discovered on-set by the Cohen’s who demanded it be fixed far too late to get a correct vehicle, or even swap out the headlights for the correct ones, so some poor grip did this to shut everyone up and stop wasting the $10,000/minute they aren’t filming.
One of the worst I saw was “The Iceman”, a stone cold ’70s hitman driving a new Lincoln with Walmart plastic hubcaps. This rates FAR lower on my rage scale.
Yeah, sometimes I wonder if they even bother to include car people in period pieces, I think we know the answer.
As a computer person, watching people use computers in movies is 10x more infuriating, until recently they couldn’t film actual computer screens so the actors would just mash they keyboard emphatically, and it never matches what’s actually on the screen. The Net starring Sandra Bullock was quite possibly the worst offender, given that it’s supposed to be about computer hackers.
I understand, I’m a mechanical engineer with about 30 year’s industrial maintenance experience. I see things in film that make me want to die. Suspension of disbelief.
Watch “Swordfish” sometime, just get in a good mental place first.
Enough people have told me to watch it, usually with lines like “You’ll love the tech stuff” that I know I absolutely won’t. I prefer old monster movies 😀
So you know what is coming… My movie tastes run older too.
The first year of my career I was Joker in Full Metal Jacket. They taught me just enough not to fall in a hole and kill myself, the rest I had to figure out.
I rose up from shift supervisor, day supervisor, planner, scheduler, engineer, mtc manager over about 6 years and a few companies.
I now lead all mtc operations for my entire corporation.
The Americans was great in many regards (especially car casting and music selection) but got the office equipment so wrong. I guess there weren’t any prop houses that felt like hanging on to giant 1980s copiers.
I too noticed this immediately and wondered why they couldn’t just find an older box-body Caprice cop car.
They even went to the effort of removing the CHMSL from the package shelf, so this wasn’t a last second on-set update.
https://imcdb.org/vehicle_117256-Chevrolet-Caprice-1990.html
That goes a step further than Stranger Things where they just black taped over the one on Mike’s mom’s Colony Park.
The car was playing a role, why are you picking apart its performance?
I bet the reason they used tape instead of changing the headlights, is they didn’t figure out the mistake until they were there filming. At that point, they didn’t have time to order parts, they just had to figure out a way to make it work. I credit them for even making the effort. I didn’t catch that.
But what I did catch, and I may be wrong about this, is I don’t think those hubcaps came out until the final facelift as well. That’s what stood out to me. I think in 1980, a cop car would have just had little dog dish hubcaps.
I could be wrong though. An even bigger nerd than me will have to fact-check that.
Beat me to it, on the last minute on-set change. Yeah those hubcaps are wrong for the car. I had a 79 and it had full-face hubcaps, but they just used the dog-dish hubcaps on the police cars.
They also could have used shiny tape. Maybe a narrow strip of chrome tape over a wider strip of black.
Such a great movie.
Tiny, baffling, fascinating details have to be like 40-50% of Autopian content. And 80-90% of Torch posts.
Content like this is the reason this website is the best on the web.