What TV Shows Do You Love Watching For The Background Cars?

Chances are, if you’re making a modern-day television show that isn’t based in a metropolitan area like New York City, cars will be an inevitable part of the casting. Well, if the show is based in the U.S., as you know our country’s relationship with public transit is embarrassing and just plain hot garbage and we depend on cars to get everywhere — even to move the plot forward in our favorite TV shows.

Plenty of shows feature cars as the star: think the General Lee of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” or Kitt in “Knight Rider.” But this week, we’re casting for background actors. These are cars that transport our favorite characters featured in unknown and massive franchises to every place they need to advance the storyline. They’re not the star of the show, but they play an important role as a moving prop. And as car enthusiasts, we’re always delighted to spot them.

So, while mass transit and taxi services have their places in the echelon of character movement, this week, we want to focus on our four-wheeled friends (and even two if you’ve got ’em) that bring characters to and from important scenes. What TV shows do you love watching just for the background cars?

‘The X-Files’ car spotting

Thanks to a somewhat unexpected viewing of “The X-Files” at a friend’s bachelorette party earlier this summer, I’ve waded deep into yet another rewatch of the series and as of this writing am currently at the start of season 7. My favorite part of this round of rewatch is spotting the cars.

Have you ever paid attention to the cars in “The X-Files” outside of that awkward time when the 1998 film was coming out and the franchise was going hard on advertising the Oldsmobile Intrigue? If we forget about that little spell, the series is plentiful in car-spotting fun. A first notable background car mention goes to the white 1958 Cadillac Series 62 convertible featured in one of the most disturbing episodes to ever air: “Home.” Another is the late-’90s Plymouth Voyager minivan Agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder use to go undercover as married couple Laura and Bob Petrie to investigate disappearances in the perfect H.O.A. community in “Arcadia.” If you’ve seen the show and know the characters, Scully and Mulder in a minivan is a choice, and an amusing one at that. Or consider the matching convertibles for Lulu and Betty (both played by Kathy Griffin) in the episode titled “Fight Club.”

These examples are clearly on the more unique end of vehicles caught up in “The X-Files” universe, as episodes typically featured a litany of rental car specials and American-made sedans. There’s so many cars in the series though, it’s hard to list them all — even the X-Files Wiki doesn’t have a complete list.

With that in mind, what TV shows do you love watching for the background cars? Your best mentions will be gathered for a special car-spotting TV guide of sorts later this week.