The Wizard of Wheels

It’s basically a garage, a four-story, concrete parking lot with just enough spaces for the hundreds of vehicles housed there. Tucked into a nondescript, industrial section of Queens, it’s next door to a police precinct and a couple of auto-body repair shops. And it’s noisy, with detailers scraping off coats of paint and a car washer seemingly on nonstop auto-spray and a freight elevator clanking and clanking as massive SUVs get loaded and unloaded.

Shangri-La? Hardly. But for Bob Schweitzer ’90, it’s where magic happens.

Since 2017, Schweitzer has been president of Picture Car Services, a 40-year-old business that gives new life to virtually anything on wheels, making them camera ready for film, TV series and even red-carpet events. So, when prop masters from The Equalizer or Law & Order: SVU or any upcoming movie are casting for a scene-fitting vehicle, they often turn to Schweitzer for just the right one. He was ready, for instance, with enough Mercedes Maybachs (retail value: $200,000 each) to meet the Roys’ ostentatious tastes in Succession. And when the producers of Godfather of Harlem were looking to recreate the streets of 1960s New York City, Schweitzer handed over the keys to a 1963 Oldsmobile 98 with its unmistakable sleek fins and die-cast grille.

As Schweitzer puts it, “Cars tell a story.”

On a recent afternoon, he tells lots of stories during a tour of his emporium. To stock Picture Car’s garage, Schweitzer hunts auctions, online marketplaces, out-of-the way European dealerships and even the garages of rabbis (more on that later). The company has 600 vehicles, including a dozen or so NYPD patrol cars from the ’70s through modern day. Each cruiser comes with a slightly different departmental insignia — the blocky, upright logo of the late ’70s, distinct from today’s italic design. “We have to stay current,” Schweitzer says, “but we always keep the cars we have for a show that’s doing a flashback scene.”

And when he doesn’t have the right model, he improvises. Case in point: Only Murders in the Building needed a cop car from the 1950s. Schweitzer had his crew take a 1952 Chevrolet 150, paint it a rich green with black and white accents (the color scheme of patrol cars back then), affix a single flashing light — and it was ready for action.

On the other side of the floor he walks up to a monstrous, black passenger car from 1973. It’s a British Leyland cab, its hefty frame resting easily on whitewall tires. Schweitzer opens the front passenger-seat door, revealing that the steering wheel is, of course, on the right side. The Leyland is a handy option for when a director wants to film a London scene but doesn’t want to cross the Atlantic. “Movie magic,” as Schweitzer puts it. For more of the same, he heads to an outdoor lot and points to a mud-drenched pickup truck that got frequent play in The Walking Dead. Turns out the crusty exterior is really just a smartly done paint job.

There’s nothing bogus about another car he shows: a stick-shift, purple MGB GT. “It’s in great condition,” he says admiringly of the ’73 model, a matchbox compared to others in his fleet. It has just 70,000 miles, plus a good story. “I bought it from a family friend,” he says, starting to chuckle. “My mother-in-law has a rabbi and the rabbi’s wife had this car, which was in her garage in Arizona. And she said to this woman, ‘Rob’s looking for a sports car.’” A few phone calls later, the MGB was in Queens, forever known among Schweitzer’s 35 employees as “the rabbi’s wife’s car.” Its movie debut came in The Holdovers, the 2023 Best Picture nominee, set in 1970 New England.

Is it glamorous supplying cars for productions starring the likes of Paul Giamatti and Queen Latifah? One imagines the boss’ office decked out like a Greek diner, adorned with black-and-white headshots autographed “To Bob…” Fact is, the office, feet from his fleet, is nearly as barren as when Schweitzer moved in. He says he’s nonplussed by celebrity and rarely visits a set. “To be honest, it’s really boring. There’s a lot of practice and a lot of setting up and a lot of standing around.” He prefers walking the garage floor, checking on vehicles due on set by 6 the next morning, or troubleshooting with a prop master who needs a couple of Alfa Romeos in a couple of days. “It’s a super-stressful business,” he says. “If [a production] got a permit for Madison and 57th Street and they have the actors — Mariska Hargitay, Ice-T — and the cop car doesn’t show up ... forget about it,” Schweitzer says. “Game over.”

He never intended to go into either the TV or car business, although he recalls ripping pages out of Car & Driver as a kid and tacking them to the walls in his Scarsdale, N.Y., bedroom. The third generation of his family to attend Columbia, Schweitzer studied political science before heading to Vermont Law School. “I didn’t get a car until I was in law school,” he notes.

With his degree, Schweitzer went on to hold a series of in-house legal positions, although he always found more to do than contract work. He got involved in sales, customer relations, human resources and even building design. At one stop, a New Jersey-based manufacturer of plastics and rubber materials, he helped lead the construction of a new headquarters. So, despite his lack of direct experience, Schweitzer had many of the credentials to run Picture Car. “It was a nice evolution in my career,” he says. And what he didn’t know he soon learned.

During his first six months or so on the job, Schweitzer would hang for hours with the mechanics and paint detailers. He learned what it took to replace an engine or to apply a logo or decal to a bus or taxi. Eventually, he began growing the fleet, checking out police auctions and connecting with car collectors. He also orchestrated the company’s move from its longtime headquarters in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where cars were stored outdoors and unprotected from the elements, to an indoor facility he had constructed in Queens. The new digs allowed room for more cars, trucks and buses. The fleet has grown 30 percent since Schweitzer took over.

“We went to computers basically overnight,” says Mark Probanski, the operations manager and a 37-year Picture Car employee. He’s been involved in more than 2,000 productions, from Goodfellas to Batman Forever to Transformers. Beyond his boss getting him an air-conditioned office after all these years, Probanski credits Schweitzer for keeping him and his coworkers on payroll during the Covid-19 pandemic and last year’s writers’ strike, both cases where filming shut down for months — and picture cars stayed sidelined. “He managed to keep it together,” Probanski says, “and everybody came back.”

Clients share similar Houdini stories. Ryan Gargiulo, a veteran New York prop master, was recently working on a film directed by Justin Lin, of Fast & Furious fame. He needed a set of matching AROs, off-road, Jeep-like vehicles from Romania. They’re hard to find; production of the ARO ceased in 2003. Schweitzer had one, but Gargiulo needed two more. No worries. “[Schweitzer] can source anything,” Gargiulo says, “and he’s never said no.” Schweitzer tracked down a pair in Romania and had them shipped to Queens, where they got new coats of paint to look like the other. A lot of time and effort and cost, and for what? “They get blown up in the film,” Gargiulo says, laughing.

Such challenges come up regularly. The planners for the Met Gala in 2022 called Schweitzer requesting a 1970 Dodge Challenger convertible to chauffeur designer Donatella Versace and rapper Cardi B to the event. The hitch: It had to be decked out in Versace’s iconic black and gold baroque pattern. Schweitzer and his crew did just that, then had one of his men pick up the celebrities and drop them off at the Met. “It was pretty cool,” Schweitzer says.

Few people at the event knew the done-up Dodge came from a garage in Queens. For that matter, the name Picture Car Services rarely appears in the credits of a TV series or film. That’s OK with Schweitzer. He’ll leave the buzz to the stars, and the glitzy premieres as well. He prefers his living room, watching TV beside his wife, Shari, and daughter, Lilah, where he’s happy to spot one of his rides on screen. And speaking of rides: “I drive a Mercedes,” he admits, “but it’s a 2016 with 100,000 miles. My wife is praying for something new.”

She knows where to go for inspiration.

Charles Butler ’85, JRN’99 is a journalism professor at the University of Oregon. He is researching a book on Lou Little.