Cars and trucks are no strangers to the big and small screens. Every genre has its heroes dating back to the earliest days of film. Many of these iconic vehicles are recognizable even if you haven’t seen the movie or television show in which they starred; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Beverly Hillbillies’ Oldsmobile truck, the Woodhill Wildfire from Written on the Wind (maybe), the Peterbilt 281 from Duel, Greased Lightning, the General Lee, K.I.T.T., and innumerable others.

But what about the stage? Stages are smaller than any movie set. Is it harder to shuffle around a stage a car, or even part of a car? Maybe not: Compared to a large bucolic mountain, a nostalgic Main Street, or Kanye West’s ego, even a full-sized car doesn’t really take up a lot of room. Sure, a car is heavy, but generally it’s on rollers or a dolly. You’re not trying to deadlift it.

Stage productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch have featured a real car. Neil Patrick Harris has danced lasciviously on both an AMC Gremlin (Broadway) and an early 1980s Nissan Sentra (the Tony Awards).

Broadway has more recently managed to get a slightly scaled-down DeLorean to fly on stage and over the audience in Back To The Future. It’s a hell of a thing, even if the show itself looks like hot trash on a skillet. Various iterations of Hands on a Hard Body – co-composed by Phish’s Trey Anastasio – have used an actual Nissan Hardbody pickup (nice job work), a Nissan Frontier pickup (close enough), and a Ford Ranger (just no).

Incidentally, there was even a show in Baltimore, Maryland – Miss You Like Hell – that used the front half of a vintage Datsun 521 pickup. I hope it was a truck otherwise destined for the crusher.

Many theaters will use an approximation of a car, some more realistic than others. In Evanston, Illinois, you can rent a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that looks like a soapbox derby car with a thyroid problem. In England, you can hire what may have originally been an Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite painted to look like Greased Lightning.

Of course, other Grease productions have used poorly rendered stage versions of a 1957 Chevy or a 1955 Ford Thunderbird among many, many others, though none as cool as the original 1948 Ford Deluxe convertible.

Then there’s whatever this is supposed to be – a mashup of a Hudson station wagon with some sort of cabover truck, perhaps? – from the Rocky Horror Show in London.

But more recently, I’ve noticed by complete accident two instances of cut-down BMW E30 3 Series being used as stage props. Then, while doing my usual diligent research for this piece, I came across a third. At the risk of a terrible Jerry Seinfeld impression, I found myself asking, “What’s the deal with all these E30s treading the proverbial boards?”

Somewhat recently on Saturday Night Live, Colombian singer Karol G performed “Tus Gafitas” – a single off her album Mañana Será Bonito –while dancing on and around a cut-down aluminum-bumper 325iC. It’s clearly mounted on a platform, one partially concealed by fake smoke.

PEDANT ALERT:

Noted around the exterior are incorrectly wired headlights (for a U.S. car), a later-style lower front valance, and dents everywhere. That front bumper with that front valance would be correct for a 1988 coupe or sedan, but not a convertible. Inside, there are coupe comfort seats in place of the iC’s sport chairs. The cavernous dashboard crack over the gauge cluster reminds me of my own E30.

Regardless, cool stage piece. Wonder if she regularly travels with it.

Shortly thereafter, I noticed a headline and photo in The New York Times, while eating my cake. The show is called White Girl in Danger, a three-hour fictional soap opera set in a land called Allwhite. There’s more, but none of it is the important part.

What is the important part is clearly the nose of another E30. Don’t be fooled by that plastic front bumper and chin spoiler, however – that’s not an M3. The lack of boxed fender flares are the giveaway. It’s also, oddly, right-hand drive*. The windshield surround appears to be made from cardboard. The whole mess is mounted on a platform for easy relocation. I’m guessing since the only image of the E30 I could find is from that NYT piece, this prop isn’t the primary focus of the show.

*Are they suggesting that Allwhite is a (possibly former) British colony?

Speaking of Britain, while researching this article, I came across a third stage-bound E30 from close to ten years ago. Back in 2014, Autobahn used this cut-down 3 Series to talk through a series of seven vignettes set – despite the title – on the highways of America. From the website: “Autobahn is an entertaining play that investigates the complex and often dark layers of human relationships; the lies that we tell to our loved ones, as well as to ourselves.”

There’s not much E30 here, just a hood, bumper, fenders, and a couple of sadly broken Euro grilles. No headlights, air dam, or any other identifying features other than an upside-down hood badge. Still, B- for effort, I suppose.

Are more E30s lurking backstage? What other vehicles are out there? Did you have a hand in building any of these types of set pieces? Let us know!