What do Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood have in common? Your answer is probably “Quentin Tarantino,” which is not wrong. But there’s something else you probably missed from the two and it involves a car.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 starred Tarantino's muse, Uma Thurman, and was released in 2004. A decade and a half later, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had an A-list cast, and Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie were among them. Besides its two-time Academy Award-winning director, there was something else Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had in common: a Volkswagen.
While the former did not include a multitude of vehicles on screen, the latter, set in Hollywood in the late 1960s, surely had an abundance of them.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood centers around film star Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth (Pitt), and how Hollywood’s golden age comes to an end. As you might expect from a movie set in 1969 in Los Angeles, CA, it features a lot of cars.
Photo: Prop Store
The one we’ll focus on is a blue 1960s Volkswagen Karman Ghia. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Pitt drives around in the blue Ghia, which is the reference you might’ve missed. Because it’s the exact same make, model, and color as the one Uma Thurman drives in Kill Bill 2.
This is where the comparisons stop because Uma famously crashed the Karmann Ghia into a tree during the filming of the movie. At the moment, the director instructed Thurman to drive the Ghia down a sandy road. Thurman refused, saying that she was warned the car was not operating correctly after having been fitted with an automatic transmission instead of its stock manual gearbox. She wanted a stunt driver to do the shot, but Tarantino denied it. The result was a crash that nearly killed her.
Later on, Tarantino referred to the crash as “heartbreaking," adding that it’s “beyond one of the biggest regrets of my career, it is one of the biggest regrets of my life.”
Photo: Instagram / Uma Thurman
The blue car used in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was not the same and was far from stock. Car lovers could’ve noticed that in the scene where Booth drives it at high speed, fishtailing a Cielo Drive.
The Volkswagen Karmann Ghia was a four-seater, introduced as a 2+2 coupe in 1955 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The first model rolled off the production line in Osnabruck, Germany, the same year. It received a convertible counterpart just two years later.
It used the underpinnings of the Type 14 Beetle, one of Volkswagen's most iconic and successful models of all time, with a few modifications. For once, it was styled in Italy at the Carrozzeria Ghia and hand-built by German coach builder Karmann for a timeless design.
In 1961, Volkswagen introduced the VW 1500 Karmann Ghia or Type 34, based on its new Type 3 platform. The model had a long production life, stretching from 1955 until 1974. Volkswagen produced over 445,000 units, not including the Type 34 variant, most of them coupes.
Photo: Sony Pictures
The VW Karmann Ghia Type 14 came with a 1,500-cc air-cooled OHV flat-four engine, good for 49 horsepower (50 ps) and 70 lb-ft (94 Nm) of torque.
The 1968 Karmann Ghia convertible used in the Academy-Award nominated film received a 2.5-liter Subaru engine from Jaz Products for more power and was fitted with an automatic transmission just in case Brad Pitt couldn’t drive a manual transmission. As a fun fact, he could.
There were actually two identical Karmann Ghias on set, one with the Subaru power, the other with an upgraded VW flat-four engine. In 2020, the Subaru-enhanced 1968 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia went under the hammer, Prop Store selling it for a whopping $62,500.
The Volkswagen Karmann Ghia was not the only iconic car we see in the movie. There were a lot more vintage cars ready to steal the spotlight, including a 1966 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, which DiCaprio's character, Rick Dalton, drove. There was also a gorgeous 1950s MG TD, a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado, a 1959 Ford Fairlane 500 Galaxie, a 1968 Pontiac Firebird, or a 1973 Porsche 911S that was supposed to be a 1968 911 L Sportomatic.
Photo: Sony Pictures
In fact, Steven Butcher, the Picture Car Coordinator on set, revealed he recruited close to 2,000 cars to appear in the background of the critically acclaimed movie.
In comparison, Kill Bill Vol. 2 only features a handful of other cars besides the Ghia, like a BAW BJ 212, a 1965 Chevrolet C-Series, and a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.
Many directors plant Easter Eggs for their fans to notice, but the 1964 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was merely a coincidence. It was not intended as a reference to Tarantino’s older movie but was used for personal reasons. The director revealed his father used to drive him around Los Angeles, CA, in one, during his childhood, around the same time the action in the movie takes place.
Imagine a Wenn diagram for cars and celebrities. At the intersection you'll find Monica, putting her passion for these fields and English-Spanish double major to work. She's been doing for the past seven years, most recently at autoevolution. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News