Something on another forum got me thinking about this - and as this forum is much bigger, I thought I'd raise it here to see if we get any different ideas and views. Wasn't sure whether here or motors was the best forum choice though!
I was born late 70's and grew up in the 80's. During that period, there were a plethora of US hit shows where the car was either the main star or had almost equal billing. I mean, just off the top of my head:
Knight Rider (and a nod also to Street Hawk and Airwolf)
A Team
Fall Guy
Dukes of Hazzard
These led to me having an unhealthy obsession with US muscle cars and (a dark secret) even an occasional hankering for a ridiculously large pickup truck. And, looking back, it occurs to me that there was no similar UK based series during my childhood. So nothing, beyond Bond (which did a brilliant job on it's own of getting me to love Astons to be fair) to get me similarly obsessed with more UK or European motors.
Now, for people slightly older than me, whose formative years were in the 70's, the story is very different. They had things like:
The Avengers
The Persuaders
The Sweeney
The Professionals
Which mostly seems to have resulted in a love of Capri's as far as I can tell.
So, after that long intro, I come to the questions I meant to ask:
Am I wrong, and I just can't remember the car-led 80's action programmes from the UK?
What car's can you distinctly remember starring in UK 80's media, beyond a mucky Reliant Supervan and Nurse Gladys Emanuel's Morris?
If I'm not wrong, what's your theory for this phenomenon? It's not that us Brits are too stuck up to like such things, because the previous decade was full of them. Why did they just stop dead at the end of the 70's? Did the TV makers decide we couldn't compete with the budgets of the US ones? Or maybe with the glitz of Hollywood stars and guns?
I was born late 70's and grew up in the 80's. During that period, there were a plethora of US hit shows where the car was either the main star or had almost equal billing. I mean, just off the top of my head:
Knight Rider (and a nod also to Street Hawk and Airwolf)
A Team
Fall Guy
Dukes of Hazzard
These led to me having an unhealthy obsession with US muscle cars and (a dark secret) even an occasional hankering for a ridiculously large pickup truck. And, looking back, it occurs to me that there was no similar UK based series during my childhood. So nothing, beyond Bond (which did a brilliant job on it's own of getting me to love Astons to be fair) to get me similarly obsessed with more UK or European motors.
Now, for people slightly older than me, whose formative years were in the 70's, the story is very different. They had things like:
The Avengers
The Persuaders
The Sweeney
The Professionals
Which mostly seems to have resulted in a love of Capri's as far as I can tell.
So, after that long intro, I come to the questions I meant to ask:
Am I wrong, and I just can't remember the car-led 80's action programmes from the UK?
What car's can you distinctly remember starring in UK 80's media, beyond a mucky Reliant Supervan and Nurse Gladys Emanuel's Morris?
If I'm not wrong, what's your theory for this phenomenon? It's not that us Brits are too stuck up to like such things, because the previous decade was full of them. Why did they just stop dead at the end of the 70's? Did the TV makers decide we couldn't compete with the budgets of the US ones? Or maybe with the glitz of Hollywood stars and guns?
