Is Gus Fring’s Volvo from Breaking Bad the deal you need?
As drug kingpin, Giancarlo Esposito’s Gustavo Fring somehow manages to combine extreme menace with the appearance of a suburban small-business owner. It’s a fantastic piece of casting, but perhaps even better is the car that the showrunners gave him to commute to Los Pollos Hermanos in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
Fring’s 1998 Volvo V70 is the antithesis of a drug baron’s drive. Boxy and unassuming, nobody would give it a second look—and that’s just the low-key approach that keeps him alive and making millions in the meth business.
“You see that Volvo station wagon over there? The guy drives a 10-year old Volvo. It’s brilliant,” says DEA agent Hank Schrader, commenting on Fring’s strategy of hiding in plain sight.
After shooting wrapped, Esposito was gifted the car and it’s for sale right now at Mecum Auctions in Harrisburg. As it always did on screen, it looks pristine in dark blue paint with a tan leather interior. The V70 is powered by a 2.4-liter five-cylinder engine driving the front wheels via an automatic transmission. It also has air conditioning, which would have been much needed in the heat of New Mexico, and a CD player so you can play Goodbye by Apparat and recreate the tension of Fring’s final scene in Better Call Saul.
How much will the provenance of starring in one of television’s most successful crime franchises add to this Volvo’s value? Judging from previous sales, perhaps not as much as you might expect.
In 2013 Walter White’s infamous Pontiac Aztek sold at a Screenbid auction for just $7800, although it was a stunt car and quite heavily damaged in a crash scene, which could explain the lowballing. Or maybe it’s just that nobody loves an Aztek—the precise reason it was cast as the chemistry teacher’s car in the first place. It didn’t fare as badly as Badger’s Pontiac Fiero, however, which went for just $500.
More successful Breaking Bad–adjacent sales included Jesse Pinkman’s 1986 Toyota Tercel, which achieved $7200, Marie Schrader’s VW Beetle, which netted $10,000, and Skyler White’s Jeep Grand Wagoneer, which climbed to $11,250.
Now that the franchise is finished, what cars would you love a chance to buy? According to the Breaking Bad Wiki 125 vehicles featured in the shows over five seasons of Breaking Bad and six seasons of Better Call Saul. How about Jimmy’s 1998 Suzuki Esteem (“The only way this piece of crap is worth $500 is if there’s a $300 hooker sitting in it”) or the 1997 Cadillac De Ville that replaced it? Maybe you can picture yourself breaking for the border in the 1978 El Camino that Jesse uses to escape his captors or Hank’s Jeep Commander.
In the meantime, you can bid on Gus’s Volvo, but please don’t send the heavies in if you don’t win.
