Laurie Clark

Movie Car Expert

By Laurie Clark

Published July 2009

Albuquerque the Magazine, Albuquerque, NM

abqthemag.com

 

     Years ago, on a deserted, dusty road, a car broke down.  Using his knowledge of cars and a piece cut from his leather belt, Al Reynolds fixed the fuel pump and got the car running again.  In his auto shop, opened in 1958, Reynolds continued to be creative and innovative—inventing his own tools and methods of car repair as he needed them.

 

     Fifty years later, Reynolds Auto is still in the same place, the South Valley of Albuquerque.  It became a family business, as Al and his son, Pat Reynolds, worked together in the shop for years.  Al passed away in 2007, but the younger Reynolds has carried on the family tradition of innovation.  Reynolds Auto Salvage has blossomed into PAR IV Specialty Equipment, and the business invents, renovates, and adapts anything with wheels that you could ever need on a movie set.

 

     Just as his father did, Pat can create what is needed from scratch.  When The Milagro Beanfield War needed a wind machine for a scene when fliers were blown up into the sky, Pat used his knowledge of airboats to piece one together.  When a prank show wanted to fool Dennis Weaver into thinking a car wash was peeling the paint off of his car, Reynolds figured that trick out, too (“I was really embarrassed buying 20 jars of Vaseline for that one,” says Mary Ann, Reynolds’ wife and business partner).  Camera trucks, darkrooms built into trucks, water trucks, “honey wagons” (bathrooms, to us laymen), and trailers for the stars are some of the behind-the-scenes items that Reynolds has rented out to production companies.  As for in front of the camera, Mexican taxis, vans painted to look like they are from some invented TV news show, pink Cadilacs that were rushed to be restored for a movie about Elvis, a horse trailer built to pull a fake horse’s rear end—Reynolds and his team have done it all, and then some.

 

     Reynolds loves keeping busy.  There is no such thing as a typical day.  “It doesn’t always go as planned. ”  Like his father, he can think on his feet and create what is needed on the spot, which is important when you are out on location in the middle of nowhere.  “You try to have the worst-case scenario on board, so if you have to make some sort of change you have that equipment.  Sometimes you have to make do with what you have, and it takes some engineering.  The whole thing about the film industry is that things can change so fast you have to be prepared to make those changes with them, to support them.  Your main purpose for being there is to support the combined effort for whatever they’re trying to do that day and so that they can finish the film.  You have to be able to look at the overall situation and make changes, but by the same token everything has to be safe because you’re responsible for all the people on the car or on you trailer.”

 

     According to Reynolds, the movie business is “much more profitable than running an auto shop”.  And all this from a business that didn’t even exist in Albuquerque 30 years ago.  His dad would be proud.