Like all Americans of a certain vintage, I learned about justice and the fine art of fool pitying from a series of televised documentaries known as The A-Team. This show about a group of Vietnam Special Forces veterans on the run from the law over some vague and unwarranted set of charges while they righted various wrongs across the countrywas known for many things, but the most important one for us was how they tended to weld a bunch of crap to cars or other vehicles every week.
This was a key part of the fairly formulaic plots: they’d come, someone would need help with, um, something, they’d come up with some plan that required an armored vehicle, which B.A. Baracus (played by the singular Mr.T) would make with an acetylene torch and whatever was handy, and then there’d be some kind of action scene where things drove into other things (and incredibly no one was killed, bad guys would just roll out of mangled cars rubbing their necks) and then somehow everything would be solved.
I don’t really remember many specifics of these episodes, except for one: I vividly remember that a Renault LeCar was transformed into some manner of armored vehicle to accomplish…something. It’d been years since I’d thought about it, but I finally decided to look into it.
And, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found it. Not just a reference, but a video of the whole LeCar transformation scene and its eventual glorious destruction:
Honestly, the most shocking thing about this whole scene is not that a 51 horsepower 1981 Renault LeCar was able to drive with what had to be nearly 800 pounds of scrap metal (including a huge I-beam on the front bumper), but that all of this effort was expended to…sell some rapidly aging watermelons? This whole episode was about getting watermelons to a local produce market?
Are you flapping kidding me? I guess I never fully appreciated how literally cutthroat the central California watermelon-growing community was.
But let’s focus on this little Renault and its dramatic transformation into Watermelon-related war machine. The LeCar was the American-spec version of the Renault 5, and differed from the European version in a few ways, mostly larger 5 mph bumpers and sealed-beam headlamps, which went from round to rectangular in 1980.
You can see the LeCar from the show up above, and it looks to be brand new; in the context of the show, it was, owned by Amy, who is somehow related to the watermelon-growing concern.
The need for a fast, nimble, small armored vehicle to escort the large, clumsy armored truck was established, so Amy was coerced into donating her nice new LeCar to the cause, letting BA get to work with that acetylene cutting torch there.
The armor was primarily sheets of what looks like fairly thick sheet steel, including a snowplow blade on the lip of the hood.
The front bumper was transformed into a battering ram with a steel I-beam and three sharp spikes. The LeCar’s canvas sunroof was ringed with a steel turret, making for a protected point from which a gun could be fired, again, to assist with watermelon sales.
Rear quarter windows were armored with corrugated metal, and the rear featured a large array of hay bales which were lit afire to create a crude sort of smokescreen effect. Honestly, that’s pretty clever, if it didn’t mean you’d have to drive around with a massive wad of burning haybales just feet from the gas tank.
Of course, being the A-Team, this car’s fate had to end in a nice spectacular high-speed crash, which, again because this is the A-Team, was survived by the driver and passenger (Howlin’ Mad Murdoch and Face, respectively) despite the small car’s crashworthiness severely compromised by all those pieces of massive, heavy, sharp-edged metal.
I wonder how that thing drove with all that metal?
All this to sell some watermelons. And I think temporarily delay some kind of crooked land deal? I’m not really clear how much was solved once the A-Team left, but you know, once the episode was over, that wasn’t anyone’s problem.
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