The Cars of Breaking Bad

The CarStuff crew discuss some of the cars featured in AMC's acclaimed television series Breaking Bad.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Good morning, afternoon, or night to all
you car stuff fans out there, whenever it may be,
wherever you may be. I am Kurt Garren and I
am in the passenger seat again for this episode of
car Stuff. I'll Scott is out on the road. And
although that bit of news may make you feel as

(00:22):
if you aren't firing on all cylinders, I think I
have the perfect fix for all you car stuff lug
nuts to my left in the driver's seat as a
car Stuff legend, I am thrilled to reintroduce Ben Bowling.
It's a pleasure to have you today. Ben. Thank you
so much for having me on this show. Man. This
this is surreal to me. You know, this is the
first podcast I ever did, and I am thrilled to

(00:44):
be back. I have been doing a lot of stuff, man,
I've been on the road like Scott as well. But
thank you for having me. No no problem, man, thanks
for being here. Um So I guess we can start
by you telling everybody what you've been up to in
this period of time. Yeah. Yeah, So, first, a whole
to all of our long time listeners. I saw a
lot of us returning to the car stuff Facebook page

(01:07):
and the social media and so on. I like Mark Twain,
assure you that the rumors of my death have been
greatly exaggerated, right, I've you know, Kurt. Nowadays, we're all
in the gig economy, so I've been doing a bunch
of like schemes and side jobs. Yeah, and I've still
been doing the podcasting stuff. I'm on stuff they don't

(01:29):
want you to know, ridiculous history. I've been making a
lot of shows, but I've also been producing developing stuff,
and I've been on the road. Most recently, I was
in Alaska for the first time. Have you ever been
to Alaska? It's amazing. It's like the last Frontier. And
we had to get a rental car and got a
gmc Acadia, which is like a mid size suv kind

(01:52):
of crossover thing, and it was pretty neat because I
still drive my old Monte Carlo. So every time I'm
in a car that was made after two thousand six,
I feel like I'm sitting in the future, you know
what I mean? And oh, yep, that's true. I should
point out for everyone my Monte Carlo is still around
the transmission still is still a little a little slippy,

(02:15):
little squirrel e, but I just love not having a
car payment and as will come to find, Monte Carlo's
are iconic vehicles. You and I were talking off erker
about a couple of things leading up to this episode.
There's some spoiler alerts that have to come into play
because you and I talked about El Caminos, which I

(02:36):
didn't know that you and I personally have some background
with l Communitos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we might save
that for future episode. But we also talked about the
new Breaking Bad film El Camino, right, which makes this topic.
Have we even we have to go ahead and say
what the topic is now? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we
should probably get to that part. Yeah, let's do that

(02:57):
at the beginning, right, Yeah, we're gonna be talking about
the cars of Breaking Bad. So El Camino has just
been released to the world, and I've we have both
seen it and inspired us to revisit this particular topic
because when the characters drive cars that kind of fit
their personality in a way. Yeah, we do have to
say that spoilers will be present in this show. We're

(03:19):
not going to go out of our way to ruin
the show for anyone who hasn't seen it. But if
you have not seen Breaking Bad yet, it is an
excellent piece of television. Go ahead and pause this, watch
the entire show, and then come back. We'll wait. You
don't have to watch the whole show, but do be
warned seriously, there will be some light spoilers, both from

(03:39):
Breaking Bad in a little bit from the follow up
film El Camino. Kurt, if someone asked you to summarize
Breaking Bad in like just a couple of sentences, what
would what would you say? I think you did a
pretty great summation of it off the air earlier. Basically,
the show is about Walter White. He's the highest school

(04:00):
chemistry teacher and this is all in the first episode.
So he finds out he has an operable lung cancer.
He then tours a meth lab that his brother in
law just busts up with the d A. He sees
how much money that drug dealers are able to attain,
so he decides that he wants to use his chemistry
skills to cook meth and partners up with a student,

(04:21):
a former student of his name Jesse Pinkman, a k A.
Captain Cook Right Captain Cook. He then comes up with
this scheme to cook meth to make money for his
family because he only has two years to live. You know. Yeah,
his brother in law is a d A agent, and
his son has cerebral palsy, and his wife is pregnant
and chemo of course is tremendously expensive, tremendously traumatic to fund.

(04:46):
He also has poor health care, so he he has
to come up with a plan for that too, and
he's got a family to support. They've got two kids, etcetera, etcetera.
It starts in dire times and it quickly escalates the time.
Name of the whole show takes place over two years. Man,

(05:10):
I think that's a fantastic synopsis of it, and that
gets us right where we need to be to explore
some of the cars. So when we talk about the
cars of Breaking Bad, we owe a lot to a
guy named Dennis Milliken. Dennis Millikan is a transportation coordinator.
This is a dream job for a lot of folks. Essentially,

(05:33):
he oversees all of the cars, trucks, vehicles for any production,
both on and off screen. So like the vans that
drive actors to and from the set, he's in charge
of that. If there's a Ferrari, he's also in charge
of the Ferrari. He's literally the car guy. He got
his start on a show called Dallas, and he's worked

(05:55):
in TV and film ever since. You can see some
of his stuff RoboCop some of the stuff in twenty four.
It's weird to me that someone could have a job
that important and that pivotal and still be kind of
a name that people might not commonly know, you know
what I mean. So Dennis Milliken worked closely with the

(06:18):
creator of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan, to scout out cars
and just just picture this as your day job. Okay,
what if today, instead of doing our you know, usual
podcast stuff, you and I just go out in Atlanta
and we have a list of fictional characters, like a
short description, you know, what they're about, what their thing is,

(06:40):
and we just walk around the city looking for cars
that seemed like the kind of cars these fictional characters
would drive. That. Yeah, that's what Dennis Millikan does, and
he like, he would send Vince Gilligan pictures and they
would be like, I don't know, that's that's that's too
cool for Walter White or that car is too nice
for Jesse Pinkman. Let's find a better fit. And they

(07:03):
applied this process to everything. And now we're talking about cars.
I gotta tell you, man, one of the I don't
want to be offensive, of course, because it's your money.
You should buy and drive what you want. But one
of the things that really hit me when I first
saw Breaking Bad was how much I hated Walter White's

(07:23):
original car, the two thousand four Pontiac az Tec. You
remember that one, right. It was a kind of a
dull green color, had factory aluminum wheels, but the one
on the rear driver's side was missing and replaced with
like just your standard steel, spare looking looking wheel is.
It's a pretty sad in decrepit car. And in the

(07:44):
first episode he has trouble shutting the glove box. The
trouble start just from the get go with this particular car.
And I think it was I think it was known
for being not a terribly great vehicle just in general.
I mean that that's the thing. So the Pontiac Aztec

(08:04):
was made in two thousand one. I think they first
hit the market two thousand one, two thousand five, and
their crossovers, you know, what I mean, So it depends
on what you want out of it. It's got a
four speed automatic transmission V six engine. We've got some
good stats, you know. That's a three point four leader
engine there. The problem with it is that for a

(08:27):
lot of people, maybe there's an aesthetic thing, but for
a lot of people, a crossover is a compromise, right.
It's it's for someone who says, I want to sedan.
I want to be able to see, you know, more
than two people Like I wouldn't a pickup truck or something,
but I also want to be able to change that
into a cargo hauler if need be. I feel like

(08:50):
the crossover replace station wagon in a lot of ways,
and this particular one has a very wagon feel to it,
although it's definitely a bulky car. The particular color of
this car reminds me a little bit of the truckster
from Vacation that's not as olive green, but has that
feel to it, especially the front end. We just got
like four holes for the grill. It just looks very weird.

(09:13):
And the fact that it's a Pontiac at the end
of Pontiac's existence may have had something to do with
the results this car received stars reviews. Go yeah, I
did have some poor reviews. And it's interesting because it
ties into the story of Walter White in a very
in a very real and depressing way. Definitely Yeah. So
GM said, Okay, we're gonna sell seventy five thousand Aztecs

(09:39):
every year, Pontiac Aztecs. That means we need to create
thirty thousand every year to break even. The model's best
selling year was two thousand and two. Uh, they sold
a little bit less than twenty eight thousand, so they
weren't meeting demands. One of their big problems. This way,
it ties into Walter White. One of their big problems
was that the asked was too expensive for the consumers

(10:04):
they were trying to pitch too. And it's like, it's
it's a car for Generation X, you know, he's growing up.
It's nice. I like vote now I have a mortgage
by an Aztec. But the problem was it was more
expensive than a lot of other competing vehicles in the
same space. So when we see Walter White's increasingly busted

(10:24):
up Pontiac Aztec, we're seeing not only a guy who's
got money problems, the guy who probably paid too much
for his car. That's the that's the implication, you know,
And he's trying to ride it out for as long
as he can, right exactly, Yeah, because now it's not
the time to buy a new car. Even after how
many times does the wind shall get broken? Three that

(10:47):
I can remember, and it kind of becomes like a
comedic thing in the show. After the first time it breaks,
Jesse breaks it with a rock or something, and then
he runs into a couple of rival drug dealers and
the classic scene from the show and breaks the windshield again.
Finally meets its maker towards the end of the series,
when uh he intentionally crashes it to try to throw

(11:09):
his brother in law off the trail. The car has
a nice run in the show though, and it definitely
parallels walts existence. Yeah, and I love that sen you're
talking about where Well intentionally and crashes the car, whereas
d e a agent brother in law. You were also
telling me that off screen they were using not one,
but multiple aztecs. Correct. They had the regular one I

(11:31):
guess they would use as Waltz driver, and then they
had a couple of other ones, a crash vehicle and
a parts vehicle, and another crash veel. So I think
they have three total, and that's very common for a
lot of on screen vehicles. You've got the vehicle that's
just for exterior shots, you got the stunt vehicle. Then
you have the vehicle just for parts, or the vehicle

(11:52):
for maybe modified so that one can film inside, you
know what I mean. There's for just one car. But
there is one kind of car that I have always
been a huge fan of, despite the fact that they
are far from perfect, and that my friend is the
Chevy Monte Carlo. Jesse Pinkman when we meet him under

(12:14):
the Moniker, Captain Cook drives a nineteen eighty two Monte
Carlo low Rider. I like these, it's very much a
personal opinion of mine. But the two Monte Carlo low
Rider is from the fourth generation of the Monte Carlo
dynasty from one to four, so it's got a restyled body.

(12:37):
It's the two door coop layout, and there are different
engine options and so on. To me, this is a
classic car. Now, I have not driven this kind of
well that's not true. I have driven this Money Carlo,
but I I've never owned one. In this story, Jesse's
Monte Carlo very much looks like a small time criminals
busted up car. It's dirty. You know he's got doesn't

(13:01):
he have like a vanity license plate or something? Says
the captain. Captain's kind of spelled like Captain and crunch
c a p in on. Definitely Jesse Pinkman's type vehicle. Yeah,
and it also has hydraulics. Oh yeah. A classic scene
in the show when Tuco is having the gun battle
with Hank and it turns into a standoff Old West

(13:22):
style and in the desert with a bouncing hoopdie. Tuco
grows in their window grass for his gun and it
switches on the hydraulics of the cars sitting here bouncing
gun battles about to pop off, and all the while
Jesse and Walt are in the bushes kind of hiding
from Tuco, who is like a real scary dude. Yeah,
bouncy to HOOPTI. I you know, it's it's interesting. I've

(13:45):
got to ask you, what do you think of that
style of Monte Carlo? Is that two old school for you?
Do you like him? Would you drive it? Yeah? Yeah,
I like that era of car, and it had some
scoop to it. To admit what's what's it up out out? Oh,
I believe the max speed is one hundred and three
miles per hour. Yeah, it's zero to sixty I think

(14:06):
is just a little over fifteen seconds for the time.
That's that's not that's not terrible. That makes that makes
you think, you know, if I were a small time
drug dealer, I would I would appreciate having a little
bit of zip to my ride, you know, just in case.
Although with the customizations that Jesse had on his car,
that's a very good point. Had the wheels on it,

(14:28):
the spoked wheels, and everyone was a low ride er too. Yeah, yeah,
when you know, bouncing all around, things rattle loose and whatnot.
And he's just the speed bump away from ruining. Yeah.
And so this car essentially is a snapshot of early
Jesse Pinkman has some potential, but is not very well

(14:52):
cared for and dirty and has not lived up to
its potential at this point. Of course, people watch Breaking
Bad before know that Jesse does not spend the rest
of his life in the show driving a Monte Carlo,
which is unfortunate because if he had just fixed it
up a little bit man or not put the hydraulics

(15:15):
on it. Anyway, we know that there is another pivotal
vehicle that comes relatively early in the story of the show.
And it's not a car, right, It's not a crossover,
it's not a sedan. What is it, well, Ben, It's
an RV and to be specific, as a nineteen eighties
six fleetwood Bounder that Jesse nicknames the Crystal Ship. Yes

(15:38):
with a K, Yes, that is correct, So the fleetwood Bounder.
I have to be honest with you. I love r vs.
Growing up. I always had the romantic notion of traveling
the world, or traveling the country at least on an
eternal road trip in an RV. We've had I've had
folks who have written to me to demystify the idea

(16:00):
right when they say, well, actually driving in r V
can have its ups and downs. You know, gas mileage
is surprised not that great. You gotta find the hookups.
The depreciation on the things can be tough as well.
And even though I know all of that is true,

(16:21):
I still really want to want an RV. You know
what the option now, Walt and Jesse, when they get
the RV, they're not getting it to go on a
road trip. No. No. They decide early on that this
is the this is where they need to cook their
meth chet. Walt can't very well cook it at his house,
and Jesse doesn't want to cook it at his house
either for obvious reasons. Um, So they decide that a

(16:44):
mobile meth lab is the way to go, and Jesse
is tasked to go out and find this RV. Walt
runs into the bank and comes out with I don't
know if the amount is specified or not. All to
say is his life savings of less than seven thousand dollars,
so between six and seven, probably closer to seven thousand dollars,
and they it doesn't go according to plan. So Fleetwood

(17:09):
r V or Fleetwood Enterprises, the company that makes these,
sadly went bankrupt in two thousand and nine. I think
they filed for chapter eleven, which is so weird because
in two thousand and seven they were the top selling
manufacturer of r vs in the market. So I don't

(17:30):
I don't know the entire story behind that, but in
two thousand and eight they were already closing UH factories
across the US. Yeah, so Scott and I just did
an RV episode. So it's up there for you guys
to check out. But after the housing bubble births, the
RV industry has been going to full on decline. Two

(17:51):
thousand nine seems a little soon for them to just
completely collapse, but maybe they just got out of the
game while they getting was good there. Well, they get
purchased by a private equity firm called American Industrial Partners,
and then another group, CaCO Industries. They were buying different
pieces of the company, So Cavco bought their manufactured housing,

(18:14):
they made a lot of that, and then A I P.
Bought their r V assets and so Fleetwood r V
is still around now. It's headquartered in Decatur, Indiana. Essentially,
what happened is these different companies acquired the trademarks. So
while the Fleetwood Enterprises entity has gone, you can still

(18:37):
see things there. Yea, the King is dad long lived,
the King, etcetera, etcetera, except with r vs. So there's
another vehicle here that I want your take on, Curt,
because this lead system questions that helped me learn a
lot about people. Jeep Grand Wagon Ear, which is drive

(19:00):
been by Walt's wife Skyler, leads me to ask you,
are you a Jeep person. I'm not a Jeep person,
but I do. I really dig this particular car. Why
is that it doesn't look like a Jeep? First of all, um,
it's kind of it's um, this was the first luxury
four by four. It doesn't look like it it would

(19:21):
be a luxury car. Um. But it just it looks
neat as the wood foul wood paneling on the side,
and well, at least to me, it's one of the
cooler cars in the whole show. Does Jeeps go. I'm
not a huge fan, like the what is it like
the c J five or whatever? You forget the number,
the one that used to flip over all the time?
That it's perfect right, right? But yeah, they probably has

(19:44):
to do with how they were driven to Yeah, that's
the thing. It's a known problem. But the Jeep Wrangler
was also known for rolling over when people would literally
turn the wheel too quickly, So the wagon ear doesn't
suffer from the same prevalence, right, But this was also
what's interesting here is that I want to say, was

(20:08):
the last year of production for this vehicle? Is that correct?
That's correct? But this particular car did have the longest
production run, the third longest production run the US automotive history.
So that's kind of neat nice. So if we were
to speculate on the show runners logic for choosing this

(20:30):
car for Skylar, than we could say, let's see, it's
it's a four by four, but it's luxurious, right. I
believe it's the first luxury four by four. It's established,
and it's at the end of its line, you know,
So maybe there's a deeper statement there about their character, right,
A strong person capable of going on the rougher roads,

(20:54):
but also with the taste for the finer things in life.
I don't know, man, you know, I'm just a bitballing. Yeah,
I was trying to imagine this car being one that
they may have gotten when they first got together, maybe
around the time they first got married. Maybe it was
their only car at the time, so they splurged on
a nice like like this may be a single owner
vehicles what I'm saying, and it was the whites and

(21:15):
the get go. Yeah, that's kind of that's how I imagine,
and it's not explicitly stated in the show. Let me
ask you this, Kurt Um, if you were this entirely
hypothetical for everybody listening to this show. My good buddy
Kurt here is not a drug dealer. But if you were, uh,
not a small time like Captain Cook level drug dealer,

(21:37):
if you were a successful, higher end criminal, what kind
of vehicle would you drive? I think I had to
use my head a little bit on this one. So
nothing too flash nothing too flashy. Maybe something like Volvo
V seventy. That's very specific. I like that you have
thought this out. That is the car driven by Gus,

(21:57):
the chilling Lee, robotic, tenacious, incredibly organized, calculated, calculated, great
word mastermind of a global meth empire, who also, by
day is is the proprietor of the very highly rated

(22:18):
local fast food restaurant Los Boyos Amonos, which you know
he's the Chicken Man. It may be the most well
known non existent restaurant ever. That's true. I have I
have a T shirt from it doesn't even exist, well,
it does exist, and breaking bad Land, I guess. And
I'm sure that there have been other maybe there have

(22:40):
been fan events where they create pos amnos for the day.
Everything about this character Gus is focused on making him
look innocuous. In fact, one could say his error is
that he is too successful in being innocuous. He supports
the local police Eastman's ball. I think at one point

(23:02):
someone puts a tracker on his car and they see
that he literally drives the same route at the same
predictable times all the time. It's too clean. It's too clean.
You need if you wouldn't be believable, you gotta have
a little bit of dirt on your fingernails there. Uh.
The Volvo V seventy is very much one of those reliable,

(23:25):
dependable cars that is meant to function as a daily driver.
It's not there to be flashy, it's not there to
be impressive. You're not gonna pull up to a traffic
light and then show off to the car next to you,
and you're probably not going to rev the engine to
see if they'll race you. When most people hear the
word Volvo, they think safe right there, that's us for you,

(23:47):
right there. Just just safe, very calculated, very safe, very quiet.
And so is this Valvo. This is strange because we
are building a case where each of the cars you see.
It's weird when you think about these main characters have
all been introduced with a car in some way. Now,
let's take a look at another car. We've mentioned Hank

(24:08):
the d e A Agents several times. What does he
drive and what does it say about him? The car
that we see him in most is a two thousand
six Jeep Commander, so that would be the d A
issued vehicle. His partner, Stephen Gomez has the same color,
same type of car, so you can assume that was
just the standard issue car for these folks and the

(24:29):
d A around the time. And this is you know,
I gotta be honest. I like Jeeps. You know, I've
never owned one, and I like him. I should say
I've never owned one and I've never rolled one over.
So maybe maybe changed my mind. Yeah, maybe I just
I was just been turning the steering wheel too slowly.
But this does feel like it is a statement about

(24:53):
the guy, right, just the fact that it's even named Commander.
You know, it's the kind of car that would have
heeld to that kind of person, right, And it's a
good vehicle to Uh. It's like the Pontiac Aztec goes
through a lot in the course of the show, right, Yeah,
it does has several lives, and it's implied that he
gets it repaired pretty quickly and then gets it back

(25:14):
on the road right even after there was a shootout. Yeah,
and the shootout with Tucco where Jesse's car was involved,
the Commander also gets shot up pretty badly, and it
does show up again later same license plates, so it's
assumed that it was repaired, but it could have been
replaced and had the same license plate popped on a
new car. And then it also gets shot up again

(25:35):
later in the show. Um when a couple of characters
known as the Cousins attack Hank in a parking lot.
That's a fairly intense scene as well. Hank, He's in
the center of some of the most intense scenes in
the show. Oh yeah, I mean he's like, he's all
he has to be learned to walk again and uh
and he collects minerals the way you In the first

(25:58):
episode of the series. Hank is not a very likable character.
He's a guy that guy that is just kind of obnoxious,
but also you get the vibe these a bit insecure
and so survealed throughout the show that he does have
this side and he actually one of the most likable
characters by the end of the show. Like him and
Jesse are the ones that kind of come out unscathed,
I think, And yeah, and also it speaks to the

(26:20):
depth of the writing and the story, because you're right,
when we first meet Hank, he is kind of a bully.
He's condescending to Walt. You get this feeling that he
doesn't have much respect for this guy because he says,
you know, I'm law enforcement ideal with bad, bad dudes,

(26:41):
and you deal with you deal with high schoolers. So
let's let's level set here, buddy. And it turns out
that he's completely wrong, and his brother in law becomes
this evil supervillain, right, And that all may play into
the psychology with Walt. He has a lot of potentially
as he can do things, and he has this potential

(27:01):
to be this great mind, and he never got the
chance to show it in Flex, And I think that
if there is any redemption for Walt's character, it's that
he does get to show that he's capable of something right, right,
And we see that come out when there's a particular
scene I'm remembering wherein Walt has a couple of drinks

(27:22):
and then starts saying some real out of pockets stuff,
the stuff you should not say if you want your
drug empire to remain a secret. So we we see
that there's a little bit of instability already showing in
Walter White's character. Speaking of instability, I just want to
hit this one real quick, whout spending too much time

(27:42):
on it. The two thousand eight VW Beetle, driven by
Hank's wife Marie. Marie is far from my favorite character
in this story. Now. I do like Beatles. I like
the older ones. I don't know about you. Are you
a Bug fan? Yeah? I was. I wonder what happened
all of them? That's all. It's weird because yeah, yeah,

(28:05):
well you still I feel like, I, oh, you know what?
You know what it is? Man? I feel like I
see them all the time because I is someone who
lives in my neighborhood has one, so I just see
the same one all the time. Yeah, and the Beetle
itself has such a fascinating history, which I think we

(28:28):
did an episode on a few years back, So do
check out that one if you're interested. Of course, everybody
knows what the Volkswagen Beetle is, the bug which has
tons of other nicknames. Did you did you know about this? Okay,
So I'm not gonna read all of these, But in
other languages, it turns out the VW beetle has tons

(28:50):
of nicknames. It's called the peta or turtle, and Bolivia
it's called the bug. Here in the US, of course,
it's called the kiver. In Belgium and the Netherlands, it's
called the kodak or frog. In Indonesia, the list just
goes on. Oh, it's called the foxy in Pokistan. Uh.
And I, you know, without without being disrespectful towards the

(29:13):
VW beetle, I definitely wouldn't describe it as a quote
unquote foxy car. It's kind of the opposite of that. Yeah. Also,
throughout the show, Hank's wife Marie is just a continual
source of problems rather than solutions. Yeah. I find it
interesting too. That's not interesting because everything she wears is

(29:36):
of that purple hue. A few times then the show
does she wear a different color, And I think that
may be black, but you know, everything is purple that
she has in her car. I think it's as close
as they could get it to purple. It's this dark blue,
very unattrictive dark blue color. Um b M. Marie is
a mean she's kind of a little bit of a
domaniac I believe, which Jack supposed with Hank's character allows

(29:59):
him to show kind of his sweet side. I think
you become more endeared with Hank seeing him interact with
his wife. I think she takes the beatle and runs
over this child's r C car at one point, and um,
Hank goes over to the kid and kind of and
just slips him some money. And as Maurice speeds off
in her frantic state, Hank deals with outside of his

(30:21):
hard exterior, it's just kind of soft and understanding. And
plus he's his wife is sitting here stealing all this
stuff and he knows about it, and he's law enforcement,
so kind of says like, look, he turns a blind
eye to his wife. At least maybe he can understand Walt,
but he never you know, he'd never understand that. But

(30:42):
where there is a little thought maybe that like this
is where the show is going to go, but never
ever was going to go there. And there are so
many different directions that the show could have taken. It
got a chance to explore some other possible avenues of story,
not in Breaking Bad, but in the spinoff Better Call

(31:04):
Saul Better Call Saul, of course takes Bob oden Kirk's
character uh known introduced to us as Saul Goodman, who's
a scheming lawyer. In Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman drives Cadillac Deville.
It's not a secret man. I like Cadillacs. I'm down

(31:25):
for it. You know. I come from a long line
of people who like land yachts, and I don't aim
on changing now. So, uh this, can you tell us
a little bit about the Cadillac Devil in question? Another
vanity plate shows up on this one. It's l W
y r U P so lawyer up. I think it's

(31:46):
kind of a success symbol for him. In fact, in
Better Call Saul, one of the characters was Marco tells us, Uh,
Jimmy McGill Saul's original name is Jimmy McGill, slipping Jimmy
uh that he should get a Cadillac when he becomes
a lawyer. Obviously, as soon as Saber Jimmy or Saul
becomes a lawyer, he gets his Cadillac. And did you

(32:08):
notice that Vince Gilligan appears to have a thing with
vanity plates. If someone has a vanity plate, he's implying
that there's something trashy about them a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
lawyer up right. And we also know that Devils make
another appearance later in the show when Walter White drives
in nineteen seventy seven Devils Sedan on spoiler alert, the

(32:32):
last day of his life. Yeah, and coincidentally enough, it
is his fifty second birthday. The show begins on his
fiftieth birthday, and with his cancer diagnosis, he has given
that two year time frame, And so we said. Walt
starts off his criminal career as the proud owner of
a Pontiac Aztec that is not the only car he

(32:54):
drives throughout the show. He drives that Deville Sedan for
like a day or two, but then he also drives
a two thousand twelve Chrysler three hundred, which I believe
was a birthday gift. Yeah, it is a birthday gift
to himself. After he recks his Aztec on the way
to take Hank to observe the meth lab, he takes

(33:17):
his astet to a mechanic and sells it to the
mechanic for fifty bucks I believe. And then Um goes
out and purchases himself a two thousand twelve christ or
three s R T eight. It is interesting that the
car is a two thousand twelve model because of the
time frame in which the show takes place, right, this
would be two thousand ten, righteous, right, the show begins

(33:38):
in oh nine, way by his birthdays. And these are
pretty cool cars. I mean, four hundred seventy horsepower six
point four leader V eight. I would I I'm just
gonna put it out there my birthdays in August. I
think that's a great present to get anyone. Doesn't have
to be me. Treat yourself and what it may have

(33:59):
been taken a little bit of inspiration from Gus with
this particular car. However, it stands out. It does stand
out a little bit. It stands out a little more
definitely more than that Volvo for sure, yea, and more
than the Aztec as well. Yes, yeah, or stands out
at least in a different way. But as we saw
earlier in the show, having a busteed up car could

(34:20):
lead to you being encountered by the police. I believe
after the windshield gets broken the first time, Walt is
pulled over and Pepper sprayed and arrested, I forgot I
totally forgot about that. Let's go to Jesse's next car.
Remember he was originally driving that Monty Carlo low Rider.
He ends up pushing a six Toyota Tursell. Now, Toyota

(34:44):
Torsell's are not for everybody. They're not compact cars. Technically
their subcompact cars. That's how small they are. I had
an experience with a nineteen eighty one cell. I want
to say that put me off of them for the
rest of my life. So I do not. I do

(35:07):
not agree with this choice on Jesse's part. But Jesse
finds this car in a junkyard, right, Yeah, so um
interesting tie in here with the Chevy al Camino. When
Jesse takes the RV to Clovis's junkyard, Yeah, he needs
a car to drive away, and he is eyeing a

(35:27):
Chevy el Camino, but he can't swing the costs, so
he is then directed towards this Retrissell. Yeah, with the
idea literally being that he just needs transportation. Right, And
some people say this also marks a stepping stone in
Jesse's evolution into a more mature person because he doesn't

(35:50):
get a flashy vehicle or he doesn't pimp this one
out right. Although the idea of pimping out it's her
cell is is pretty fascinating. If anybody Steed has some photos,
please send them along or post him on the Car
Stuff Facebook page. I would love to see them. There's
one last car though, that we have to talk about.

(36:10):
It is by far one of the coolest cars yes
in the show, and I think we're on the same
page about that. Yeah, the two thousand twelve Dodge Challenger
s R T eight. Yeah, this kind of shows up
in conjunction with the two thousand twelve Christler SRT um.
There's that weird scene in the driveway when Walt and
Walt Jr. A Revenue engines and it's got this music

(36:33):
going on. It just comes across as being an ad,
which obviously is because the cars weren't even out in
the context of the show yet. Yeah, I can't figure
out if it was Vince Gilligan's way of making it
just completely obvious. It's comical and it stands out, which
fits the whole purpose of it being in there in
the first place. And then there's that thing where Walt

(36:53):
is bragging to his brother in law about the specs
or something, and it just got like He's like he's
reading a sheet right right right. I mean they're great things,
but Dodge Challenger, but it does stick out a little bit.
It's like, let's take a break from the plot and, uh,
let me tell you a little bit more about this
Dodge Challenger. Hank uh. In case you're considering moving on

(37:14):
from your jeep, commander, why don't you look for something
with six point four leader v a, you know, for
seventy horsepower. I'm just gonna go on for a while,
you know what I mean. That also symbolizes this feeling
of success. Owning your dream vehicle is aspirational, you know
what I mean. And everybody, even if they don't consider

(37:37):
themselves quote unquote car nuts or something like, everybody has
a dream vehicle of some sort. And for Walt, this
Dodge Challenger feels like the attainment of something that was
previously unattainable, you know what I mean. It's interesting because
at this point in the show he has enough money

(38:01):
to buy an exotic car, supercar or something, but instead,
and of course there are a thousand problems with that.
What's that guy doing with a Bugatti in his driveway? Wait? Actually,
I don't know if he could have afforded a Bugatti
at that time. Scratch that, but you know what I mean,
higher Enva. Uh maybe that's too flashy, but the Dodge

(38:23):
Challenger is still also very flashy for his neighborhood, for
where he's at in life, you know, especially just to
pay cash. And it's a big step. I mean we're talking,
it's a year from when we met Walter White. I
kind of get that vibe from just the character that
this maybe like his first new he's a youth car guy.

(38:45):
So and not only does he buy one, but he
buys two. He buys one for himself and then he
buys one forrests On as well. That's so nuts to me,
you know, I Uh, the idea of walking into where
and buying two cars is at once with cash new
I'm a used car guy through and through, just because

(39:05):
just because honestly, I'm a little bit too cheap for
it in a way. I mean, I guess it is
flashy for Walt in a subtle way. It's definitely shows
his evolution as a character over the short span of
a year. Well here's the question too, who owns that
Dodge Challenger. Does Walter White own it or does Heisenberg,
you know what I mean? Like, which was that the
jackal or the hide buying the car? And that's that's

(39:28):
an interesting question. But speaking buying the car, that's something
we should that's something we should squeeze, and we would
be remiss if we didn't mention this. Curt Leads and gentlemen,
it turns out that if you were plugged in, and
if you if you had some pretty fortunate timing and
a little bit of scratch and cheddar to burn, you
could have actually bought some of the cars from Breaking Bad.

(39:59):
In October of two thousand and thirteen, they had an
auction of some of the cars from the show. They
auctioned off the ter sell Um at a starting bit
of bucks, so it eventually sold for a seven thousand,
two hundred dollars. They auctioned off some of the other
cars as well, like Skyler's Jeep and Walts as Tech
one of the as text I think it was one

(40:19):
of the crash cars um. Interestingly enough, they auctioned off
Todd's El Camino, so that was like they gave up
one of the one of the cars that was going
to be shown in the future, which is interesting Chevy Comino. Yeah, yeah,
we should just do an episode on El caminos. Man.
I was thinking about this, I was, I was thinking

(40:42):
about this earlier this week. I was looking back through
small pictures of El caminos. It's weird how you don't
see them on the road as often anymore. And I
would be into driving one, would you, Yeah? They, I
think so they. If I had one, though, would be
one of those cars where it's kind of reached classic status. Yeah,
so you want to drive it, but you also want

(41:02):
to just collect it. But I'm not one to collect cars.
I feel like cars should be driven, So yeah, definitely,
all caminos are awesome. It's funny. I have multiple friends
who always drive pickup trucks or something like an El Camino,
primarily so that they don't have to be the person
driving everybody around, because they can just say, oh, yeah,

(41:24):
we're going down as a group. I can take one
person with me, uh you know, or you can hop
in this guy's SUV or something. Also, when you have
a truck, people want you to help them move often,
but I feel like the al Camino is so small
that you can't really use it as a truck either. No,
It's such a compromise too, because if you pack the

(41:44):
bed of an El Camino the way one would pack
the bed of a pickup truck, then the bottom is
going to be all sorts of wonking, you know what
I mean. It just doesn't have the load bearing capability.
Last thing they have to say about up this auction
Walter White's Aztec one of them, uh did go up

(42:05):
at auction as well. I believe the starting bid for
the Aztec was one thousand, mainly because it needed a
lot of work, and I think the most expensive starting
bid was actually a VW Beetle, wasn't it. Ye. So
if you had to pick, and I think I know
the answer here. If you had to pick any vehicle

(42:28):
from the vehicles we've discussed, were the vehicles not on
our list today, any vehicle from the Breaking Bad universe
to drive? What would you pick? Um? I would probably
I'm gonna change it up here. Um. I think I
said in the beginning that Skyler's Cheep was my favorite
car from the show, which still may remain true. Okay,
but I think I would choose Jesse's Tersell. No, are

(42:49):
you serious? What? Why? It's just this a cool little car.
I like hatch bags, okay, and you can consider this
one a hatchback. So yeah, that's what I'm gonna go with.
I'm gonna go with Todd's El Camino. Man, I've got
the El Camino fever. I couldn't drive it though, just Todd.
It tainted that car. Yeah, you know, yeah, you would

(43:12):
want a El Camino, maybe same model year, but not
touched by That's just the type of person that you
just don't want to be around anything that had to
do with him. Yeah, there maybe something hiding in the
El Camino that you didn't know was there, you know,
in the seats or something. Also weirds me out a
little bit. The actor playing Todd's a great actor. Man,

(43:33):
he plays that role with just so well. That guy
looks so much like Matt Damon a little bit. It's
when I was when I first watched it, I kept
thinking that was Matt Damon. But you know, maybe I
have some kind of weird face blindness or something. I
I was definitely focus more on the main characters and
more on the cars. It has been an absolute pleasure.

(43:56):
Thank you for having me on car stuff any time.
Anytime yourd to come back. I know, that this episode
was more of a list right, and we're exploring and
television show as well. But in the future, if you're
cool with it, I think we should do a whole
episode on the story of the El Camino and maybe

(44:18):
see what our odds of getting the El Camino resurrected are.
That's definitely let's do that. So Ben, for all time's sake,
fly us out of this episode with ways that our
faithful listeners can contact us and interact with us. Absolutely. Yeah, man,
we are all over the internet. You can just type
car stuff into your search assistant of choice and uh

(44:41):
and it should lead you to us. You can find
us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram, you
can find us on Twitter. All the hits, all the
good ones where car stuff h s w on each
of those. And while this concludes today's episode, it does
not conclude our show to in next week, where Kurt

(45:03):
and Maybe I will be returning with some more car stuff.
Let us know what you think to folks, what's your
favorite car from Breaking Bad? What would you drive? Will
Kurt and I still be able to hang out together
despite his last minute plot twist love for Toyota Tursells.
Maybe stay tuned next time. Thanks everyone for listening. Car

(45:27):
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