James Bond Car Trivia: Toyopet or Topoyet?

Those are all valid observations, but I will add one more to the mix. When I was a kid, Bruno–our trusty TV repairman, who was a USAF veteran–arrived at the house while I was watching a Western. The first words out of his mouth were…Did they have contrails in the sky, back in the 19th Century? :wink:

Sure enough, there were contrails in the sky. I guess that the director of that movie was one of those “one-take” guys, or he was incredibly NON-observant.

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As bad as the movie “One Million Years BC” with contrails.

lol … I think if it were available in 1964, even “spell Czech” would have flagged that topoyet isn’t a valid word.

One of my favorite TV series when I was about 12 years old was ‘The Rat Patrol’. British Special Air Services (SAS) in WW2 North Africa. It was really all American. Cast, props, and plots. The SAS did use a few lend lease US Jeeps to supplement their Land Rovers but they were armed with the same 2 twin Vickers .303 machine guns and sometimes an additional single Lewis gun. Not a single US Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine gun. Of course all of the German half tracks and tanks were poorly disguised US equipment. A few years ago I ordered the complete series on DVD from Netflix. After viewing the first 2 episodes I returned that DVD and cancelled the rest. Concerning the fake ‘Migs’ “The Hunters” starring Robert Mitchum (1958) Uses mat gray painted Republic F-84Fs with single red stars (Russian) portraying Chinese (red star and bars Mig-15s. Overall a pretty good film. I suspect the Russian markings may have been politically intentional as they were the bigger “boogyman” in 1958.

Concerning the movie “The Hunters” . . . yeah, that’s what I mean

The aircraft were “wrong” but the movie was pretty decent, IMO. The Robert Mitchum character was pretty good, but the Robert Wagner character was kind of a loser, and he wouldn’t have made it, if the other guy hadn’t taken him under his wing, if I recall correctly

Huh?
Land Rovers did not go into production until ~2 years after WW II ended, so it would have been impossible for the SAS–or any other British military unit–to have used those vehicles during the North African campaign.

Very likely because most all of the actual German half tracks and tanks were either destroyed during the war or were destroyed as a condition of surrender.
The same situation exists for Japanese war planes. North American T-6 Texans were modified to play the part of Mitsubishi A6M “zeros” in a lot of films due to the rarity of airworthy zeros, and were nicknamed “Hollywood Zeros”.

Now when it comes to anachronisms, it’s hard to beat this. Colt peacemakers in 1836? Really?

Another likely reason . . . the movies and tv shows were filmed in the US

I’m guessing relatively few German tanks and half tracks made their way over here . . . not thousands, in any case

Of course with today’s digital film technology, they can just computer simulate them. Does Hollywood even use film anymore? Yet, the term “footage” will probably remain in the lingo, just like “album” remained in the recorded music lingo long after 78 rpm record albums were replaced by a single long play microgroove vinyl disk.

The aircraft were the most similar configuration available in 1958. My only problem was them being painted and marked incorrectly which would have been just as easy to accomplish. The plot was the “old experienced gunfighter” mentoring the young “hotshot” Know it all who would most likely not have lasted very long. Ironically I’m watching 'Air Aces" Robin Olds episode. Same plot. Real life. Plus Colonel Olds had a lot more “Young Guns” to mentor.

My apologies. I knew that. My Father used to say getting old aint’ for sissies. As always he was right. SAS first acquired Land Rovers in 1947 and first used them in Malaya and Suez. They used Jeeps in WW2. They did use Vickers twin, single, and Lewis machine guns.