“The seals dry out; the gas goes bad,” Moser said. “You basically have to restore the car.”
He also has to make them period correct, which often involves trading out tires, hubcaps and windshield wipers. Moser then presents that budget to the producers. Sometimes when he knows that particular cars will be too expensive or too tricky to source, he will suggest alternatives. For example, a “Duster” scene written originally to include Audis now features BMW Bavarians.
Many viewers don’t pay particular attention to a show’s cars. But for others, the wrong car will interrupt the story. The right one, by contrast, will enrich it, in ways that even a casual watcher might appreciate.
In “Duster,” there is an obvious symbiosis between Jim and his vehicle. The Duster and how Jim drives it tells us who Jim is. “It’s his right hand; it’s his best friend; it’s the thing that gets him out of trouble when he needs it,” Morgan said.
An early model Duster was chosen for the series pilot, which was filmed in 2021 in Tucson, Ariz., before Moser was hired on. (Later episodes were filmed in and around Albuquerque.) Morgan was enticed by the relative rarity of the Duster, which Plymouth produced for about seven years starting in 1970, and by its speed and maneuverability.
“It is really fast, unassumingly fast,” Morgan said. This felt right for Holloway’s Jim. “It has a little bit of a charm, which of course Josh Holloway has in spades, and a lot of swagger,” she said.
Holloway (“Lost”), who learned to drive before he was 10, was drawn immediately to the Duster. “You can make it do things that now computers [in modern vehicles] won’t allow you to do,” he said. “You can spin that sucker, throw it any way you want.”
