Austin Powers to Magnum — Iconic movie cars fill Detroit Auto Show

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DETROIT, MICH. — The worst family vacation ever, destroying dad’s beloved sports car, and that time dinosaurs ate everybody — now you can relive all those great memories.

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One of several new exhibits at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, running now until Jan. 20, is a nostalgic display of some of the most iconic vehicles in TV and movie history.

“People love it,” said Casey Maxon, senior manager of heritage for Hagerty Drivers Foundation. “It brings them back to when they were a kid watching these movies.

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“So many people come up reciting lines from the movies. Lots of fun. Lots of smiles.”

The Detroit Auto Show is hosting the exhibit with automotive lifestyle brand Hagerty, which is also doing a live tear-down and rebuild of a flathead Ford V8 engine on Wednesday and Thursday.

The display of 1980s and ’90s showbiz cars — from Magnum, P.I. to Jurassic Park — follows an exhaustive effort to gather them from coast to coast.

“It takes quite a bit of coordination and transport,” said Maxon. “They come from both ends of the country. The Ferris Bueller car came from Maryland. Some of the other cars came from California. This might be the first time the Magnum, P.I., car and the Ferris car have been together.”

The car that will likely stand out the most is a replica of the epic eyesore that is the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster. It’s from 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation, about the ill-fated family road trip involving the death of a cranky aunt and her dog, among other calamities.

Created for the movie, the Family Truckster was based on a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon.

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The metallic pea green station wagon is a monstrosity, with eight headlights, faux wood-paneling, and roof racks sturdy enough to carry the Griswold’s dearly departed Aunt Edna.

As Eugene Levy’s Ed the car salesman said, “you think you hate it now, but wait ’til you drive it.”

Another highlight is the Ferrari Modena Spyder California from the hit 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Some of the cars are replicas, but this is the actual one from the movie. It’s on the U.S. National Historic Vehicle Register. Laser scans and photographs of the car reside in the Library of Congress.

Fear not: It’s in better shape than it appeared to be at the end of the movie, when it flew out a window and crashed to its death.

The “Swinger 2” Volkswagen Beetle from 1999’s Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, is also an original from the movie.

The shiny red Rosso Corsa Ferrari 308 G from the 1980 to 1988 TV series Magnum, P.I., is another show original.

If Knight Rider was more your thing, get ready to take “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist.”

A replica of KITT, the talking, self-aware Pontiac Firebird Trans Am from the most ’80s of all the ’80s TV shows, is also on display.

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KITT was half of a crime-fighting duo with Michael Knight, played by David Hasselhoff, a former cop who got a new face and started working for a secret crime-fighting organization after he was shot in the head.

There is also a replica of the 1993 Jurassic Park Jeep Wrangler — objects in the mirror really are closer than they appear — from the classic cautionary tale about cloning dinosaurs. Spoiler alert: it’s a bad idea.

While the nostalgia and star power is a big draw for these cars, Claire Williams, Hagerty’s vice-president of marketing strategy, said the appeal goes beyond the movies.

“This era of cars is gaining in popularity for collectors, these newer kind of classics,” she said. “We’ve got these really great classics from the ’50s and ’60s, but we wanted to bring this new era of vehicle that appeals to the new generation of collectors.”

Detroit Auto Show

The public portion opens Saturday and runs daily through Jan. 20 at Huntington Place (formerly called Cobo Hall) in downtown Detroit.

To buy tickets, go to detroitautoshow.com. Ticket prices: Adult US$20; Seniors US$12; Kids US$10. Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (except Jan. 15 and 16, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Jan. 20, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.)

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