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Earlier this week, Andy, Dan, and I took a little field trip. We ventured down to Prospect Park, home to one of two Nitehawk Cinemas in Brooklyn, for a very special occasion: A 35mm screening of the 1996 cinematic masterpiece Twister. You see, Andy and I (having been born in ‘96) never had the opportunity to properly experience this film on the big screen. Now, we could finally see the World’s Best Chrysler Ad as it was intended.
Man, what a film. I hadn’t seen Twister in years, but it holds up — the cow, the Dorothies, the rivalry with corporate scumbag Wesley from The Princess Bride, but most importantly the cars. Twister has some of the best car casting in film history, so today we’re playing the hits: The Ram, the J10, the van, even Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Barn Burner. In other words, the 1996 cinematic landscape’s Dopest Cars.
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This is the truck. The singular, the icon, the one we all remember — burned into our collective storm-chasing memories. The truck that made us all want Rams, the truck that made us all want to drive out into the nearest storm just to feel it. You all did that too, right? That wasn’t just me?
Of course, this isn’t exactly Bill’s truck. His was a ‘95, and this is a ‘99 with some slightly different body work. Also, Bill needed a long bed to fit all those Dorothies, while this appears to be the shorter option. Still, it’s the right make, model, color, generation, and — most importantly — engine.
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As is this, an ‘01 Ram with an extended cab and less of the body accentuation that made the ‘99 feel not-quite-Twister. This one even has the bonus of a bed cap, so you can replicate that memorable scene from the intro where Bill drives into the movie.
Oddly, this Ram has a painted front bumper. Nearly every Ram I found while searching for this slideshow (trust me, there were a lot, though few had the V10) had the chrome front end that matched the one in the movie. This one, despite being otherwise great, has color-matched plastics. What gives?
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In the early minutes of our Twister screening, Andy and I were making tough calls. Which truck was better — Bill’s or Jo’s? Both classics in their own way (to our 2023 audience, at least), and both iconic in their shape. I offered a compromise, that Andy could claim the Ram while I got dibs on the Jeep, but then the movie progressed and I was less sure in that call. The Ram is just so good.
Now, this J20 isn’t exactly Jo’s Jeep. Hers was an early-’80s model, very similar to this, but in a shade of yellow. It also had the Honcho appearance package, blue stripes across the sides of the truck — yes, those stickers were factory. I found exactly one Honcho currently listed in the United States, and it was further from screen-accurate than this beige example. It’s kind of yellow, if you squint.
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Perhaps, like Jo’s truck in the film, every genuine Jeep Honcho pickup was tossed aside by a tornado after some careless driving from the owner’s once-and-future partner. All that’s left are beige and tan models, standing in for her bright yellow.
Along with the paint, this example is also an earlier version of the Jeep pickup. This dates back to the ‘70s, when headlights — conveniently covered here by snow — were still round, rather than the square units applied to later Jeeps. Bill’s truck is very difficult to come by, but Jo’s may be near-impossible. Unless, of course, you have Bring a Trailer money (and a bit more set aside to swap the proper front end back on).
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Every hero needs a villain. Batman needs the Joker, Hitori Gotoh needs social interaction, and Jo and Bill need Jonas Miller. His name is two whole letters away from Judas, which is ‘90s movie shorthand for “this is the bad guy for reasons that happened long before the events of the film you are now watching.” Remember when that’s all it took? Not eleven movies of buildup? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Of course, Jonas’s villainy is explained in other ways. He stole Bill and Jo’s design for Dorothy (apparently based on a real-world scientific apparatus that also did not work, and for the same reasons as in the movie), he betrayed them to sell out to one of those big unnamed tornado corporations, and he travels around in a convoy of blacked-out vehicles. All bad signs.
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Honestly, I never thought much about the Suburban from this period. If you ask me about late ‘80s, early ‘90s Chevy SUVs, I’ll jump right to the Blazer. I initially even assumed Jonas rolled around in a Blazer, until realizing that the truck’s body was approximately 35 feet too long for that. These Suburbans just look so incredibly long.
Also, here’s a weird thing about this movie. So, ostensibly, Twister is product placement for Chrysler: the heroes have a Jeep and a Ram, while the villain has a Suburban. But Jonas’s crew, besides this Suburban and the GMC motorhome bringing up the rear, are all in identical Grand Caravans. The heroes, meanwhile, are a hodgepodge of the Big Three — the hero cars are Chrysler, sure, but the rest are Ford and Chevy. Jonas’s crew is arguably more Chrysler than Bill and Jo’s.
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Listen. I need you to know how many hours I spent digging up these cars to even get this close. I’ve been banned from Craigslist three times for sheer search volume in my attempts to put together this slideshow. Workhorse trucks of this age are difficult to find, harder to find with specific model years or trims, and all but impossible to find in the right color. All this to say, I am not finding the fucking camper in the bed of this K10.
But, y’know what? This is the right make and model, and even the right trim for the K10. The color is close, closer than I’ve seen for sale anywhere else — Twister’s K10 is a sort of desaturated gray-brown, not quite monochrome but not quite brown either. This is brown, but it’s closer than gray.
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These help make the case, though, that the Good Guy Crew isn’t as Chrysler-focused as it seems. From here on out, the Dorothy group is largely in Chevy or GMC vehicles — with a Ford here and there for flavor. Is GM really so evil in the Twisterverse? Are these questions that we’ll see answered in Twisters?
I’ve had a love for this particular era of C/K10 for years now, following my assertion that these trucks — and not the Fords so often cited — are the real inspiration for Chloe Price’s ramshackle transportation in Life is Strange. Someday I’m going to have to blog this, so all my hours of research at least have some use.
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Unfortunately, I was unable to find a period-correct Chevy van with Beltzer and Haynes’ sweet sweet tornado graphics painted along the side. This, of course, is an error that you — presumably the next owner of this van — can remedy. There must be production stills of the artwork floating around, you could likely replicate it. You should replicate it.
Beyond having a sick van, I’m not really sure what Beltzer and Haynes actually do while storm chasing. I think they might be collaboratively monitoring Dopppler and other scanners, as well as talking to NSSL, but during the F4 — and for the rest of the film — that seems to be Dustin’s job instead. Do they take shifts?
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At the end of the film, Beltzer and Haynes seem to be monitoring the data output from the Dorothy probes in the F5. Was that their job the whole time? Were they just hanging around, waiting for Dorothy to maybe work, in hopes that they’d have something to do?
Actually, I like this idea. They were sort of backup, on call, and then realized that Dusty was monitoring Doppler. And, y’know, they love the guy, but he’s Dusty. So they say “Hey, man, why don’t we take that off your hands, we’re not doing much anyway,” and he’s all into it because it means he gets to focus on his real passion: DJing the tornadoes.
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Everything I said about tracking down Joey and Laurence’s camper applies here as well. I’m getting you the trucks, in the right colors and generations, and you can adorn them with whatever campers your heart desires. If you want to be truly screen-accurate, you can strip everything out of the camper before mounting it so it wobbles concerningly side to side every time you take a corner.
I wouldn’t have thought red and white would be a good color combo on a truck, but this really works for me for some reason. I don’t think it would hit the same with fresher paint, the fading and patina here really helps blend the colors just a bit. It’s a good truck.
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Rabbit, for his part, has a real job. Rabbit is wise; he navigates the crew using his massive array of paper maps. It’s a genuinely impressive ability — he approaches the level of road knowledge that most people take years of local living to achieve. It’s genuinely impressive.
I realized something about Rabbit, as well, on this most recent viewing: He is the exact center of the Alan Ruck – Edward Norton Venn diagram. At some angles, he’s Alan Ruck; at others, he’s the spitting image of Edward Norton. It’s uncanny. How did Ruck do that?
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The Country Squire is my white whale. I searched Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace through the entire United States, and I could not find a proper early ‘80s Country Squire in green with the wood paneling. This is as close as I could get, and it was promising in the little Facebook Marketplace thumbnail — until I opened the listing, and realized the car was blue rather than green.
Sill, it’s close. It needs a respray anyway, so you could always bring it into full alignment with the Country Squire from Twister. Should you? I dunno, it’s your money. I would maybe pick a more movie-distinctive car as my base, but I’m not you. You’re you. Don’t ever forget that.
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Of course, maybe you just want a cool old green-and-wood wagon. In that case, you could maybe get away with one a little older. Sure, the front end doesn’t match Twister, but is anyone really going to notice that you don’t precisely have That One Car Driven By That Guy?
Just enjoy the wagon. Green and wood is a classic combo, why worry about having the exact right generation of headlights? See the wagon. Own the wagon. Love the wagon. Embrace your inner #wagonmafia.
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No Twister list is complete without Dustin’s bus, the stereo system for the whole convoy as they travel from tornado to tornado. Incredibly, this one appears to be almost perfect — sure, it isn’t decked out in the school colors of Muskogee State College, but that’s also not a real school that exists. It is, however, a GMC chassis converted into a short school bus, which has then been further modified by later ownership.
This bus may not be outfitted with the latest in ‘90s laptop technology, but it is outfitted for sleeping — that’s right, it’s a skoolie. This, more than perhaps anything else, makes it a perfect Twister replica. You know Dusty was crashing in that bus while out on the Tornado Chasing World Tour, why not have a replica that’s built for the task?
Keyword: Dodge Ram 2500, Jeep J10, GMC Bluebird: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online