Patricia Arquette’s car was most disorienting to me. This woman was a high level manager/exec at a very successful company, surely she can afford more than a rabbit.
it's not clear where Severance takes place exactly. But it is wintery and has universities and decrepit fishing towns. So if it's supposed to be New England, i think this makes sense. There are a lot of very successful people in New England who drive old VWs and Subarus.
The office building is a Bell Labs building in Holmdel. The aesthetic of the town feels a bit like upstate New York. But the town of Salt Neck (200m away) was filmed in Newfoundland. So they are going for permanently cold and remote but with familiar elements.
But the cars are not normal for any of those places in the modern era where people own smartphones (as the characters do.) In fact, my parents used to own Ms. Cobel’d exact VW Rabbit in 1983 (in silver) and it was not a great car for snow. They replaced it with multiple successive 4WD Subarus as soon as that was an option. The RWD Volvos are better and kind of timeless New England cars, but I’d imagine those year/models have passed into rust by now except for a few that were exquisitely pampered and kept away from road salt.
But the cars are not normal for any of those places in the modern era where people own smartphones (as the characters do.) In fact, my parents used to own Ms. Cobel’d exact VW Rabbit in 1983 (in silver) and it was not a great car for snow. They replaced it with multiple successive 4WD Subarus as soon as that was an option. The RWD Volvos are better and kind of timeless New England cars, but I’d imagine those year/models have passed into rust by now except for a few that were exquisitely pampered and kept away from road salt.
It’s as striking of a design choice as it is perplexing hah.