Vitals

Josh Holloway as Jim Ellis, getaway driver and Army veteran

American Southwest, Summer 1972

Series: Duster
Episode: “Baltimore Changes Everything” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: May 15, 2025
Director: Steph Green
Created by: J.J. Abrams & LaToya Morgan
Costume Designer: Dayna Pink

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

One of the most fun new shows of 2025 is Duster, a breezy-yet-badass crime thriller that screeched onto HBO Max this spring and just wrapped its first season last week. Despite my current enthusiasm for the series, its initial announcement prompted what can only be described as deeply conflicted car-guy feelings—equal parts excited (a ’70s-set crime series starring my dream car? yes, please) and irrationally anxious (what if this makes Dusters too popular for me to afford one?)

Once I decided that this was a ridiculous basis for resentment, I locked into Duster—and I’m glad I did! Duster delivers plenty of stylish retro fun, complete with a swaggering soundtrack, Dayna Pink’s period-perfect costume design, and a rubber-burning parade of car stunts performed by both veteran stuntman Corey Eubanks and series star Josh Holloway.

Set against the dusty backdrop of the American southwest in 1972, Duster stars Holloway as a talented getaway driver who gets recruited by the FBI’s first Black woman agent Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson) to turn against his employer, Phoenix crime boss Ezra “Sax” Saxton (Keith David)—described by one of Nina’s new colleagues as “the Southwest Al Capone.” (The FBI didn’t actually hire its first Black woman agent until four years later, when 27-year-old Sylvia Mathis graduated from the FBI Academy in June 1976.)

As one of the few who had never seen Lost, I was unfamiliar with Holloway before the series, but he’s terrific as the ruggedly charming Jim Ellis, sharing an easy chemistry with the excellent Rachel Hilson as the two work against a characteristically cool-as-hell Keith David. And of course, we’re treated to plenty of Mopar muscle action, scratching my Vanishing Point-sized itch.

Following the first-season finale last week, let’s wrap up this summer’s Car Week with our introduction to Jim as he tears through Arizona’s desert highways with his precocious niece Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez) in that sharp red-and-black V8-powered ’70 Duster.

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What’d He Wear?

“Jim is like a litle bit country, a little bit rock-and-roll,” Josh Holloway explained of Dayna Pink’s costume design for his character, adding that “it’s the ’70s; he’s not afraid to be dramatic with his wardrobe.”

Jim Ellis first steps out of his Duster wearing a black ribbed short-sleeved polo-style pullover shirt, styled with a then-fashionably wide collar and a quarter-zip top that extends to mid-chest. Jim keeps the silver-toned zipper fully open, working with the ribbed cut and short sleeves to emphasize Josh Holloway’s shredded physique.

Jim tucks the shirt into blue denim Levi’s jeans which follow the brand’s typical design with belt loops and classic arrangement of five pockets, but the orange tab sewn along the back-right pocket—rather than the brand’s signature red tab—was used by Levi’s from the 1960s through the ’80s to indicate non-standard varieties, in this case applying to the boot-cut. Jim keeps his wallet in his back-left pocket, attached to a chain strung around to the front and connected to the foremost belt loop to the left of his fly. He holds the jeans up with a thick dark-brown leather belt, itself layered with narrow leather straps and fastened through a large silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Since the first scenes of the pilot were filmed in late 2021 before the series was retooled to include Nina and Jim’s father, there are some slight differences in the details that change for the second half of the episode through the rest of the season. This includes both his transition to a more conventional brown tooled leather belt with a brass-toned buckle as well as shorter zip-side brown leather boots (and even the King’s own blue suede shoes!)

At the start of the first episode, Jim introduces his cowboy boots with dramatic pointed toes and a rugged tan nubuck leather finish that reflects the desert sand kicked up in the wake of his speeding Duster. These boots reappear in the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth episodes.

On his right hand, Jim wears what a Redditor appears to have correctly estimated to be a vintage Zuni-style sterling silver inlay ring, its face set with a colorful mosaic—likely hand-laid turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and jet—depicting a Southwestern-style rider motif. Each side of the silver band features a blackened-relief eagle, symbolizing strength and freedom, fitting for a lone wheelman like Jim.

The ring’s handcrafted, regionally rooted design reflects both his connection to the Southwest and the era’s affinity for Native American silverwork, particularly among desert dwellers and outlaws alike.

Especially in a warm, sunny climate like the southwest, sunglasses are a must for anyone spending most of their day behind the wheel. Jim rocks a set of vintage square aviators with brushed gold frames and photochromic lenses that tint a darker shade of purple against brighter light. The exact model remains unidentified, but the pros at SunglassesID.com have called out the celeb-favorite Caddis Nola ($230) and affordable Sojo SJ1234 ($15.99) as similar modern alternatives.

Housed in a 36mm yellow-gold case, Jim’s Rolex Datejust has a fluted bezel and matte-black dial, detailed with gold non-numeric hour indices under acrylic crystal with a Cyclops magnifier over the white-wheeled date window at 3 o’clock. When Rolex launched the Datejust in 1945, it was the first self-winding chronometer to feature the now-conventional date window within the dial. If correct for the era, Jim’s Rolex would likely be a ref. 1601 Datejust running a Caliber 1575. However, @telewatches has identified Jim’s Rolex as a replica ref. 16018, slightly anachronistic as these five-digit references were introduced in 1977. (Interestingly, a close-up in the season finale reveals that Saxton also wears a gold Datejust, albeit with a matching gold bracelet and dial.)

Like fellow ’70s BAMF Style heroes from Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor to Barry Newman’s Challenger-driving Kowalski in Vanishing Point, Jim wears his watch on a chunky and worn dark-brown pebbled leather bund strap. Developed in the 1950s by air force of West Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland), these straps are comprised of a standard leather bracelet attached to an extended leather pad under the watch itself, designed to protect the wearer’s wrist from the metal case getting excessively hot or cold in a plane cockpit’s extreme environments while simultaneously protecting the case metal from the inevitable body oils and sweat when strapped to the wrist of a getaway driver gripping the wheel of his Mopar muscle as it speeds through the desert.

Jim wears a pair of layered gold-toned necklaces through the series, consisting of a flat curb-chain link necklace and a longer twisted rope-chain suspending a distinctive open-frame medallion. Somewhere between mail-order masculinity and mystic desert symbolism, this pendant consists of a circular rim encasing a square black inlay, itself overlaid with an angular design of two interlocking “T” shapes—one gold, one brown.

That night for Sax’s reception, Jim pulls on the kind of cool brown leather jacket you’d expect to find hanging in the closet of a hard-driving ’70s hero. Cut from pebbled grain cowhide, the thigh-length coat nods to Western and disco influences alike, with gently pointed front yokes situated between a sharply tapered ulster collar and a column of three dark four-hole buttons. Large squared patch pockets ride at the hips with crisp jetted openings, and the set-in sleeves end in plain cuffs.

The back carries a straight yoke across the shoulders, with three sets of narrow pleats running down to a downward-pointing half-belt that cinches the waist into a lean, athletic silhouette. As revealed more clearly later in the episode when Jim layers it over his black snap-front shirt, the jacket is lined in a white, russet, and orange geometric print that leans Southwestern, adding a flash of personality beneath the rugged exterior.

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The Car

Jim’s eponymous ride is a 1970 Plymouth Duster 340, described as “cherry red” by Nina’s FBI colleague Awan Bitsui (Asivak Koostachin), though the specific color appears to be Plymouth’s factory “Rally Red”, paint code E5, with black accents. The third episode “You’re No Good” establishes that the Duster originally belonged to Jim’s late brother Joey, who likely bought it new in late 1969, only to die months later in a suspicious van explosion. Jim keeps his brother’s memory alive with Joey’s Army dog tags hanging from the rearview mirror.

Plymouth introduced the Duster in 1970 as a sleeker two-door spin on its entry-level Valiant, sharing the A-body platform but reimagined from the cowl back with curvier fastback lines and a more aggressive attitude. It borrowed the mechanical bones of the Valiant—and some of the Barracuda’s swagger—but trimmed the fat for a leaner silhouette that could play nice within muscle car culture. Starting around $2,500, it offered serious bang for the buck; performance-minded young drivers could finally get a factory-built hot rod without mortgaging the farm.

The 1970 Duster carried over the Valiant’s lineup of slant-six and small-block V8 engines but added serious firepower in the form of the high-compression 340-cubic-inch LA-series V8, rated at 275 horsepower—though many believed this was sandbagged for insurance purposes and that real output crept well north of 300. With a Carter AVS 4-barrel carb, dual exhausts, and a free-flowing intake manifold, the 340 was a high-winding small block also found in the ’Cuda, Road Runner, and the also-new Dodge Challenger. A shorter 108-inch wheelbase and lighter curb weight gave the Duster 340 a nimble edge as a sleeper on the street and a headache for heavier muscle at the stoplight.

To set these hot-shot variants apart, Plymouth officially dubbed them the Duster 340 and slapped bold “340” decals on the quarter panels alongside “dust trail” side stripes. All Dusters were offered with either a three-speed manual or Chrysler’s bulletproof TorqueFlite automatic, though the Duster 340 added an optional four-speed manual with a Hurst shifter—the very setup seen in Jim Ellis’ Duster.

1970 Plymouth Duster 340

Body Style: 2-door semi-fastback coupe

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 340 cu. in. (5.6 L) Chrysler LA-series V8 with Carter 4-barrel carburetor

Power: 275 hp (205 kW; 279 PS) @ 5000 RPM

Torque: 340 lb·ft (461 N·m) @ 3200 RPM

Transmission: 4-speed manual

Wheelbase: 108 inches (2743 mm)

Length: 188.4 inches (4785 mm)

Width: 71.6 inches (1819 mm)

Height: 51.9 inches (1318 mm)

“We wanted a car that was iconic,” Duster co-creator LaToya Morgan explained to Eric Francisco for Esquire. “We circled the Duster, which had its heyday for only six years. It was a car that had a reputation for being fast and good, but not a lot of people knew about. We wanted that as our hero car, a car that had personality.”

To bring that personality to life, picture car coordinator Ted Moser sourced four different Dusters to play Jim’s red-and-black ride. Josh Holloway recalled to Bruce R. Miller for the Arizona Daily Star that each car had its own quirks: one with “spongy” brakes, another “very jumpy,” and one that skipped first gear but would go into third. “You have to know the cars and how they have different amounts of power, which means they drive differently.”

One Duster was set up as the “hero car”, complete with a Hurst shifter and Midland CB radio for close-up shots, while the other three were modified as stunt cars with retrofitted automatic transmissions and camera rigging. Behind the wheel, veteran stunt driver Corey Eubanks handles much of the action as well as series star Josh Holloway, who trained at Rick Seaman’s Motion Picture Driving Clinic (MPDC) to sell his role as a top-tier wheelman.

As Morgan shared with Esquire, the original Duster run was only six bright years through the 1970s. In 1971, the Valiant’s sister car—the Dodge Dart—launched a Duster-style clone, initially named the Demon before pearl-clutchers prompted a rebrand as the more conventionally named “Dart Sport” for ’73. As the oil crisis loomed and emissions rules tightened, muscle cars across the board saw their bite softened. By 1976, the final-year Dusters and Dart Sports came with a 225 slant-six, a 318 V8, or a neutered 360 V8 making just 225 horsepower—five fewer than the base 318 of 1970.

It may have marked an ignominious end for a one-time muscle contender, but the Duster is finally getting its long-overdue spotlight a half-century later—roaring back into pop culture with a show that knows exactly how to let it shine.

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How to Get the Look

The first episode of Duster firmly established Jim’s signature look: a super-’70s shirt, rugged jeans with a wallet chain clipped to his belt loop, hardy boots, and a well-worn mix of jewelry from a pair of gold necklaces to his bund-strapped Rolex.

• Black ribbed short-sleeved quarter-zip pullover shirt
• Brown pebbled grain cowhide leather 3-button jacket with sharp lapels, patch hip pockets with jetted entries, western front yokes, plain cuffs, and half-belted back
• Blue denim Levi’s “orange tab” jeans
• Dark-brown leather belt with overlaid leather straps and large silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Tan nubuck leather cowboy boots with pointed toes
• Brushed gold square-framed aviator-style sunglasses with photochromatic tinted lenses
• Gold curb-chain link necklace
• Gold twisted rope-chain necklace and open-framed circular pendant with black-inlaid inverted square center
• Sterling silver Zuni-style inlay ring with eagle side reliefs
• Rolex Datejust with yellow-gold 36mm case, fluted bezel, black dial with gold non-numeric hour indices and 3:00 date window, and dark-brown pebbled leather bund strap

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, currently streaming on The Platform Formerly Known as HBO Max Which Will Be Known As HBO Max Again In a Few Weeks, I Think. (Great job, McKinsey.)