Name that Car #2: The Big Sleep (1946)

Marlowe's car in the film

Ah, this is a great film. One of the exemplars of the film noir genre. This is one of several high-quality Bogart/Bacall pictures by Warner Bros. in the 1940s. Bogie is at his smoothest and cleverest. I loved the character of Philip Marlowe and the fact that he drove around in the same car throughout the movie meant that it was begging to be named. The car itself was not called upon to do any dangerous chases, and towards the end of the movie he lets air out of one of his own tires as an excuse to request help from the auto shop which is a front for more sinister operations.

Marlowe doesn't ask for any money from the General above his "$25 a day plus expenses". A working man's car suits a working man's wage. It's clearly a 1938 Plymouth coupe. In 1946, most Americans still had prewar cars, and the last ones had been built in very early 1942. By 1949, most of these had been replaced with new cars. Still, the expansion of the market was inexhaustible, and demand kept outpacing supply until about 1954, when the Ford-Chevy price war resulted in record sales for both, and started pushing the independents out of business.

A beautifully preserved '38 Plymouth

An additional fun fact- the car wasn't the only old thing about the movie when it was released. Filming on The Big Sleep was actually completed early in 1945, but it lay on a shelf until Warner Bros. finished releasing its backlog of war-related films, since these were assumed to have a dwindling shelf life, while The Big Sleep was not time-sensitive. The wartime scenery includes a "B" fuel ration window sticker on Marlowe's Plymouth. This entitled him to a whopping eight gallons of gasoline per week!

Spot the sticker