Can You Identify this Detective Program (1970s)?

Banacek?

It was Banacek, from the NBC network, and starring George Peppard. The Packard was a 1940 or 1941 model, which was significant because no new models of passenger vehicle were allowed after the United States entered the second world war, until about 1948 or 1949. Pre-war models were very popular with collectors, even though they were not necessarily more rare.

Damn his Lordyship . . . he beat me to the punch.

Banacek's 1941 Packard convertible. The series was set in the contemporary time frame (1972-1974) when it was shot.

That is one beautiful car.

No doubt six miles per gallon, but beautiful all the same.

A third series was planned but had to be abandoned because George Peppard quit the show to spite his wife who he was in the process of divorcing (to stop her getting a larger percentage of his earnings)

The Packard 180 had an in-line "straight eight" with a displacement of 356 cubic inches. It might have gotten more than six miles a gallon, but not by much. With gasoline at about 17 or 18 cents a gallon, who gave a s***?

Boy howdy, that was fast! Thank you all. Gratitude.

17 cents in today's money would be about $2.47. So.... still not super expensive gas, but not so dirt cheap as 17 cents a gallon sounds at first.

(got that from the US Inflation calculator http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

Some people just like to argue. Click here for some 1940 prices compared to 2012 prices. (There's a nasty pop-up there, but you can just "X" it out.) A loaf of bread for eight cents, a movie ticket for a quarter? It's not so easy to compare these things. When i was a kid in the 1950s, gas would drop to 16 or 17 cents a gallon during gas wars, and ran about 20 to 25 cents otherwise. What changed our world in terms of ordinary cost of living terms was the Arab oil embargo of 1973.

It was more of a fun trivia thing than argument. Geez.