During the second season of The Americans, we've been looking at the show's use of espionage tactics and getting behind-the-scenes accounts from the creators, directors, make-up artists, actors and even former spies to help analyze what's under the covers. This week, we spoke to prop master Duke Scoppa, who is responsible for every single thing the characters touch on screen. It's an especially important job in this show, as Philip (Matthew Rhys) becomes increasingly obsessed with American commercialism. "Things" are important to him, and Scoppa played a particularly important role in creating last night's episode, "New Car," in which Philip impulse-buys a Chevy Camaro, a prime status symbol of the early '80s.

ESQUIRE.COM: So tell me about the Camaro.

DUKE SCOPPA: One of the biggest challenges on the show is that we need to find vehicles that are appropriate for the time, but they also have to be in the proper condition. In a scene that takes place in a showroom from 1982, that showroom has to have cars in near-mint condition. Ideally, they're in mint condition. That's a huge challenge. Lots of time on the show, they want to find cars that are non-descript. Spies want to not be seen. So nothing flashy. The problem is, a lot of these cars are not collectors items, so nobody has these cars. Nobody cares about saving a 1980 Buick Skylark.

ESQ: The Camaro was the focal point of the episode. How was that found?

DS: You usually get the scripts a couple of weeks ahead of time, but I was told about [this episode] two months in advance, because they knew how tricky it would be to find the new car for the scene. I have a few companies that I work with. I called all of them, and I said, "We need to find a 1982 mint-condition Camaro Z28 in two months." I had my people looking for a while. We ended up finding this car in Rhode Island. When we got the car, it was in very good condition. It wasn't really mint. We would go out and buy brand new, vintage tires to fit the time period.

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ESQ: How much does something like this cost?

DS: It was tricky. It could be anywhere between 18 to 25 thousand dollars. One guy had a car who basically said there's no price.

ESQ: There's a fight scene in this episode that features an old-school dart gun. How are weapons sourced?

DS: That's a tranquilizer gun. The company that I work with, The Specialists, they basically deal with all the weapons. They happened to have this vintage tranquilizer gun in their shop. They also had the darts. I actually got very lucky. We also work with this man, Keith Melton — he's at the Spy Museum. He's kind of an advisor for the show. He has actual period spyware from the '60s, '70s, '80s — and a lot of Russian stuff. We get a lot of gadgets from him, but also weapons.

ESQ: The classic view of spy stuff is that's it's always futuristic. But this show hones in on the limitations of technology.

DS: It's very analog. A lot of the spyware of the Russians, the idea is that they didn't really have such advanced technology themselves at the time. They might have a spy camera that's actually from the '50s even though it's the '80s.

ESQ: Over the series, Philip's weakness has been his enjoyment of Western things. What are the more interesting props that you've provided to hone in on this?

DS: That's a good question. I know that's a lot of the subtext and that's a struggle between Philip and Elizabeth. Philip definitely has a thing where he's taken in. There's always these concepts that we're trying to think of in the back of our head. We see him reading magazines that are American and have products. We've never made a big deal about his commercialism until "New Car". There's a character in one episode where Philip's fascinated that he has a brand new Sony Walkman that just came out.

ESQ: Video games have been introduced, too, in a small, strange way. Are those vintage game systems easy to find?

DS: It's easy these days. I find so much stuff on eBay. It's crazy. You have to be very aggressive on eBay, because we're always so pressed for time. We're fabricating and eBaying constantly.