Sometimes you’re just walking past a place and need to snap a picture.

This past summer, a small mechanic’s shop on Ottawa’s Gladstone Avenue was open to the world on a hot summer afternoon. Who wouldn’t peer in?

The automotive fare might be on the boring side, but the look of this bay sure shows screams ‘hard-fought small business’, with distinctive hints of family and ‘labour of love’. There’s character here, and I hope small auto shops like this don’t disappear in the face of some sort of societal progress.

The French Connection (1971)

This holiday season I got the opportunity to once again indulge in one of my favourite Christmas movies – The French Connection.

Okay, so it’s not a Christmas movie per se, but there is a scene of Gene Hackman beating another man while dressed as Santa. That has to count for something.

The real reason this 1971 crime drama is at the top of my must-watch list isn’t the fleeting yuletide cheer, but the simple fact it’s one of the best – and grittiest – cop movies ever filmed.

And it’s a car lover’s paradise.

Can’t you just taste the air?

With its main set piece being a grimy New York City in the cold, grey early winter, William Freidkin’s film perfectly illustrates the widespread decay of the 1970s American urban landscape.

You can feel the grittiness ooze from the screen. The raw exhaust notes emanating from the vast masses of rolling Detroit iron. The aching toes brought on by pounding the cold, cracked pavement in pursuit of ‘Frog One’. A landscape so far from the warm sun and a clean soaking of rain.

This isn’t the New York of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it’s the New York of Death Wish and Mean Streets.

*not a still from the New York City Tourism Bureau

Though it was critically acclaimed – winning Oscars for best picture, actor and director – the film is, as one Guardian writer recently stated, one of the most nihilistic to ever grace the silver screen. Hell, its promotional poster features the protagonist ‘Popeye’ Doyle triumphantly shooting a man in the back.

Gunning…for critical acclaim!

The film’s thrilling (and nearly suicidal) chase sequence between a 1971 Pontiac Lemans and an elevated commuter train took place on an open road, with no safety precautions and real vehicular casualties.

For all of this, it’s a certified a classic. A raw filmmaker’s film. And for a car lover, a treasure trove.

The rolling centerpiece is a 1970 Lincoln Continental Mk. III, a vehicle imported from France and shared between the characters of Alain Charnier, a well-to-do Frenchman with sketchy allegiances, and Henri Devereaux, an erudite French actor.

Despite being that perfect ’70s colour (dark brown), the Continental shines. The model reeks of class and distinction, its luxury contrasted by the unsavory backdrops through which it travels.

Of course, this would be the last decade that the Lincoln brand would be looked on as the pinnacle of American motoring luxury, and the Mk. III can arguably be seen as the last ‘great’ Lincoln.

In many ways, the car was metaphorically catching up to its movie surroundings.

1970 Continental Mk. III? Don’t mind if I do…

Gene Hackman’s ‘Popeye’ character gets no such luxury, however. His ride is a bare-bones 1968 Ford Custom, and his lifestyle as a hard-drinking narcotics officer is best summed up by the scene in which ‘Frog One’ and Frog Two’ are gorging themselves in a perversely luxurious a la carte restaurant, while he eats coffee and cold pizza on the frigid sidewalk outside.

Because so much of the action takes place on the street, where a vice cop is normally going to find himself, the audience gets a huge dose of early 70s rolling stock.

In pre-Oil Crisis America, the Big Three ruled the roadways. You’d be hard pressed to even spot a Volkwagen in this flick.

Ever run into a movie star before?

And don’t the vehicles seem indestructible? What is it about that era of cars that makes it seem an average sedan could jump from an overpass and still make it okay, just a little bit banged up?

Certainly, Doyle’s appropriated LeMans takes more than a few wrecking yard-worthy hits in its pursuit of the train, while still staying in the game. It’s a sequence that makes you realize modern car chases are terribly boring. Exploding plastic fascias and deploying airbags do not a good car chase make…

Because it’s a well-formulated detective movie, The French Connection builds slowly as the connections are realized. It’s so very, very worth it, yet I fear many people might overlook this film. And by ‘people’, I mean those of the Millennial generation, who generally believe that any movie worth making should have been made after 1995.

If you’re into films and into cars – or even just one of the two – you need to devote time to watching this movie.

This young couple knows what colour floats their boat.

The 1970s are known for a lot of things – Watergate, the Oil Crisis, disco, leisure suits, ABBA – but it will also be known for a singular colour.

Brown.

Yes, the crayon everyone ignores was the shade of choice in this heady, wide-lapelled decade. Its offshoots were there too – tan, beige, bronze, copper – rounding out a colour palate that went perfectly with sunflower yellow and olive green, seemingly the next most popular shades.

Proudly carrying the brown flag for GM was the Pontiac Catalina.

Definitely, you wanted a car that matched your wardrobe, kitchen, rec room, and drinking glasses. (Check out how far the indoor trend went here.)

As everyone knows, I have a distinct passion for land yachts of this era. Yes, show me a Baroque barge with a detuned engine and a landau roof, and I’ll start salivating like Pavlov’s dog.

So long, so heavy, so underperforming, so plush, and often, so BROWN. These are the cars that would be piloted by a bad guy’s henchmen as they shadowed Jim Rockford or Detective Kojak through the grimy streets of Gerald Ford-era America.

Gazing at one of these block-long wonders, you can almost smell the velour (or vinyl) seats, deep-pile carpet and fake wood veneer that lurks within, waiting to surprise a lucky driver with an explosion of tacky opulence.

Everything about them hinted at a decadent lifestyle of excitement and pleasure, slathered in brown (brown everywhere!), just like in this homoerotic, Japanese cologne commercial starring Charles Bronson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEqA84R0lYU

Nothing lasts forever, as the saying goes, and as the decade drew to a close, so did the earth-toned excess. A new era of taste and sophistication was dawning – one that would bring pastel shirts and rayon blazers, neon bike shorts, turbocharged fours, cocaine-filled speedboats and minivans.

The fuselage-bodied Chryslers and Lincoln-Mercury barges of the early 70s adopted the brown motif like it was going out of style. Which it was.

With hindsight being 20/20, maybe the gold/brown/orange/tan/beige/copper/bronze paint and polyester of the ’70s wasn’t the worst thing ever thrust on Western society.

While the earth tones era covered seemingly everything in a layer of mud, its important to remember that car colours regularly go through phases of popularity.

Who can forget the ‘champagne metallic’ (bright beige) cars of the mid-to-late 1990s?

And how about silver? At one point in the previous decade, nearly half of new vehicles hitting the road were silver.

What’s funny about these phases is that in the early years of motoring, few cars were any colour other than black. Ford Model T ads of the early 20th century poked fun at this byproduct of assembly line manufacturing, declaring that a customer could have any colour they wanted, as long as it was black.

In the late 1950s, customers of nearly every manufacturer could order tri-coloured cars in dozens of combinations. Tu-tone colour combinations lasted until the 1980s, though were not nearly as popular by then.

‘Elite’ is right. No one would argue with that color.

Nowadays, it’s normal to see a car or crossover offered in just five colours – usually black, white, grey/silver, blue and red.

Why the consolidation? Ask a manufacturer. Dollars and cents. Too much choice affects the bottom line, as there will always be an unpopular option that can be jettisoned. ‘Close enough’ rules when car colours are concerned.

After all, it’s the car and all that technology and luxury underneath the paint you’re interested in, right? Why offer limitless paint colours when we can settle on an abbreviated palate that satisfies most people most of the time.

Heck, offering questionable colours could leave some cars sitting unsold on the lot!

So predictable are today’s colours that it’s nice to see someone offering choice, even if it’s something you or I wouldn’t go for. Hats off to Dodge for taking that plunge.

I give them four out of four ABBA’s for their bravery.