For \"Lawless\" Car Wrangler, a Potent Fidelity to the Ford V-8

By PHIL PATTON

My father grew up during the Depression in a mountain valley in North Carolina. The only person in the valley who owned a car in those days, he was fond of saying, was the moonshiner's wife. The moonshiner himself was in prison, leaving his wife to quite literally run the business from a battered Model T Ford.

Cars were critical to the operation of the moonshiners in Appalachia. And whether it was Robert Mitchum in “Thunder Road” or Burt Reynolds in “White Lightning,” cars have played critical roles in films about moonshining. Joining that tradition is “Lawless,” starring Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman, which is set mostly in 1931 in Franklin County, Va. The film enters nationwide release on Aug. 29.

Keeping the cars in running order on set was the job of Gary Duncan, the film's chief car specialist. Most of the vehicles are Ford trucks and cars, Mr. Duncan said in an interview, though th e rich town lawyer owns a Pierce-Arrow.

Mr. Duncan located roughly a dozen period-specific vehicles for the production. A veteran of the film industry who lives near Atlanta, Mr. Duncan traces his car-wrangling days to “Smokey and the Bandit,” the 1977 film starring Burt Reynolds. “Lawless” was shot in Peachtree City, near Mr. Duncan's home. “There are still an abundance of unrestored Model T and Model A Fords in this area,” he said.

The three brothers who anchor the film load their battered Ford trucks with wooden boxes filled with Mason jars of moonshine that are cushioned with straw for delivery to the city. Cricket, the character who plumbs the moonshine stills, slaps a supercharger onto a Ford 4-cylinder engine for extra power, an accurate upgrade, Mr. Duncan said.

When the money starts to roll in from the brothers' operation, Shia LaBeouf's character buys a 1932 Ford V-8. It was the first year of the Ford V-8 engine, the presence of which is indicated on an arc of metal across the car's grille.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the introduction of the Ford V-8. The flat-head Ford functioned as the automotive equivalent of the Thompson submachine gun, powering getaway cars for outlaws and gangsters escaping underpowered police cars.

“Clyde Barrow always used to try to steal Ford V-8's, and I've heard that John Dillinger liked the Ford Whippet,” Mr. Duncan said.

He also noted the authenticity of the radio in the character's car: a very early Galvin, which was a factory option, Mr. Duncan said. “I've got a big library and a network of experts,” he noted.

The combination of moonshine and automobiles, of course, gave rise to Nascar, a progression also mentioned by Mr. Duncan. “The moonshiners would get to the city and deliver their loads and want to see who was fastest. They would put together a pot and go to a cow pasture or a horse track some place and race.”

The c ars play into the film's overall production design, which was inspired by period photographs from the Workers' Progress Administration and William Eggleston. The producers discovered a book of rare color W.P.A. shots, the subject of a show at the Library of Congress, and a book, called “Bound for Glory.”

In addition to sourcing the cars, Mr. Duncan was responsible for preparing them for shoot ‘em up sequences, for which he used small explosives known as squibs. “We drill holes, insert explosive, cover it with Bondo and paint over it. Then everything is wired up,” he said. Headlights have to be set to shatter, bloody webs to appear in windshield glass. There's a lot of work to do, judging from a press screening: a Ford engine block apparently can absorb a lot of slugs from a Tommy gun before the vehicle ceases to move.

For all the effort expended to ensure authenticity, some of the older vehicles were upgraded to ensure filming would go smoothly, Mr. Dun can said. “We put the engine from a Ford Ranger with an automatic and hydraulic brakes in the 1925 Model TT truck,” he said. “But Shia LaBeouf liked to drive the original 4-cylinder himself.”

The rusty cars fit the look of the film, whose palette recalls films of Depression-era violence as Arthur Penn's “Bonnie and Clyde” or Robert Altman‘s “Thieves Like Us.” The screenplay is based on “The Wettest County in the World,” the historical novel by Matt Bondurant.