Loved that show as a kid; little did we know how wallowy the suspension was, how slow the 2bbl engine
was (and that the screen car had single exhaust and didn't sound anything like the cool sound effects
they used in the show).
Hutch called it the Tomato.
Yep, I remember Ford selling replicas through dealers, too - saw more than one on the Ford dealer lot
locally.
Ironically, I took Drivers' Ed shortly after the series became a hit - in '73 4-door Gran Torinos the school
system used, painted that awful green color. Those things, hard as we tried, would NOT do the cool things
the TV car would (they had governors on them that choked the life out of them).
The cars had two-way radios in them, on which the Instructor would bark orders at us.
I still vividly remember being assigned Car 23 for those two weeks - and getting almost constantly yelled
at by the Instructor on that radio: "CAR 23, SLOW YOUR *** DOWN!!" "CAR 23, DO NOT LOCK THOSE
BRAKES AGAIN!""
