Columbo’s car!

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The 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible Peter Falk used to drive in Columbo is pretty much left to rot on a Universal parking lot.

This is just a shame.
This car is part of TV history and should be treated as such.

I took this picture last night. The canvas from the top is now almost all gone.

Conversation 12 comments

  1. that's terrible. maybe Leno will hear about it and restore. it's a great little car and was featured on an epic TV series.

  2. Is there anymore old classic cars that are sitting in the universal parking lot??
    There could actually be a gold mine sitting there.

  3. "It's just TV"?? No, it's a classic car, and a pretty rare one too. That alone would be a good enough reason to treasure it. To boot, it's a car that's famous the world over for its appearance on the show. It has enormous value and it's just incredible that it is treated with such carelessness. I agree with casey, I'm sure Leno would be disgusted if he knew about this.

  4. Very practical way of reducing the huge blind spot though. Would work great on the mini convertible also.

  5. Not the same car… Front bumper is smaller on newer picture… Rear damage on quarter panel isn't on new picture… Door damage is different… Not sure but it looks like the front light flows onto the front quarter panel better in Columbo's car… The paint isn’t as shiny as Columbo’s car but that could be due to age… I think the car you photographed is a year older because of the bumper difference and the light thing… That's my take… Bye

  6. I would doubt Universal would leave a car just sit out, taking up a space. Their appear to be numbers assigned to the other spots, but we can't see if the space for this car has a number. Nor can we see if there's a California plate on the back. I'd bet it's someone's car(whether it's Columbo's actual car or not).

  7. There were 3 403 convertibles used in columbo. One of them resides in Florida having being purchased after the final episode of the series. The car in the parking lot is another of the 3 cars used.

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