My wife and I have for some time now been watching Mannix episodes, in chronological order. We're now into the early part of the sixth season (there were eight seasons total), which means the fall of 1972. Over the five-plus seasons we've viewed, we've seen lots of wagons, and I haven't taken photos of any of them until now. That's because this is the first time I've ever seen a clamshell wagon in any episode of this or any other show we've been watching from that era, like Hawaii Five-O and Mission Impossible. You don't get a very good look at it as it's just a prop and not actually used by Mannix or anyone else in the episode. Mannix and this other guy are just talking for a few moments, and I took a few screenshots. It appears to be a Chevy, and it has a manual tailgate and a luggage rack. My wife commented that Mannix needs a wife to check what he's wearing before he leaves home for the day. A plaid jacket with a striped shirt and a paisley tie are just too many clashing patterns! This is the best view of the car, which isn't much, and it shows the luggage rack and the tailgate lift handle. A few other glimpses of the clamshell. One things that gets me in these shows is that they're ALWAYS leaving windows down and cars unlocked. Note that the driver's window is down on this wagon. Doesn't it ever rain there? Doesn't Mannix have someone trying to knock him off in practically every episode, and leaving the windows down (and the top down on his convertible) invites the bad guys to plant a bomb under the hood, rip out his portable phone, or whatever? He even leaves the windows down and the car unlocked when he's parking in dark, deserted alleys late at night, and you just know the place is crawling with bad guys. Mannix never learns from past episodes. Since I had my camera out, I took a couple of shots of this wagon that appeared later in the episode. We have much clearer views of it. Can anyone identify the year, make, and model? I believe it's a Chrysler product. I could track it down, but I figure it's easier to ask on here. Driving the car is Dabney Coleman, who starts out apparently a good guy but who turns out to be a bad guy in the end. Coleman was a star of the movie "Wargames," the TV show "Buffalo Bill," and many other things. This episode precedes all of that by about a decade, and he's so young-looking it takes a minute to realize who he is. He's still alive at age 89.
It’s funny that GM product was the mark of later Mannixx. He drove a Camaro towards the end. In ‘72 it was still pretty much Mopar, but agreed, like Perry Mason using Chevy and Buick’s in almost all season’s Perry for the most part drove Lincoln’s, with some Caddy’s spread in. I’m glad those shows did do cross marketing. The Quinn Martin shows, namely Cannon and Barnaby Jones were almost exclusively FoMoCo products. As far as his outfits Jaunty, that was probably Peggy’s department.
