So I'm sitting watching season 1 of MacGyver episode 3, Thief of Budapest and I see 3 classic MINI's in the background on a trailer. So then he goes and does his super genius thing and saves a bunch of Gypsies and is trying to get out of Budapest. Next thing I know they're all sporting red, white, and blue mechanics outfits, messing with the traffic lights. Then they hop in the Mini's and take off. Sweet, so they stole the idea from IJ right, well that wasn't the end of it. They proceeded to use the ENTIRE chase scene from the original IJ in the episode. They are clearly not even in MK1 Mini's, yet they keep cutting from the IJ chase scene to insert MacGyver here and there. They actually keep the roof of the Fiat factory scene, Mini parking lotscene , and the Brits who drop the gate at the end of the sewer shot. Even the cop cars are the Italian ones! How I did not know about this I don't know, but everyone must see it.

 

I have it in digital format. If you look, however, there are pieces that were NOT used. Like the part on the roof, for example.

 

I posted about this some months ago. MacGyver was filmed in Vancouver, so the classic Minis used are obviously what they could find at the time. The cars are newer, and the racing lights are different. I thought it was pretty silly to use so much of the IJ footage, since Turin is so identifiable, but hey, the show had a miniscule budget.

 

As I recall, wasn't it like the 3rd episode of the first season?

 

Yeah, this is really old news to me. I used to watched MacGyver as a kid and I remembered seeing this in the '80s when I first saw the Italian Job in the '90s, and a quick look at IMDB confirmed my suspision that they "lifted" some scenes from the movie.

 

The 1st season?? Damn....that's going back some time ago. I'll have to check this out now.
Cheers,

 

Yeah in the MacGyver "Thief from Budapest", from 1st Season they got the Cooper Mini Chase Scene from the 1969 rendition of the Italian Job with Michael Caine. A lot of the footage you see in that gambit was taken from the movie.