Movie motors – the car’s the star
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Although films are mostly about people, cars have featured prominently in several. Their roles vary. Sometimes they are simply tools for a particular job, but they can also have their own personalities. In those cases they may be the stars of the show, perhaps making more of an impact than any of the actors.
By not listing every car ever to feature in a movie we run the risk of missing your favourite, but we hope you’ll enjoy this selection all the same.
Alfa Romeo Spider - The Graduate
The Spider was launched in 1966 and became famous the following year when it was driven in The Graduate by Dustin Hoffman, whose character has an affair with an older woman (Anne Bancroft, actually only six years older than Hoffman) before running off with her daughter (Katharine Ross).
In some scenes the car sounded as if it had a large V8 under the bonnet, though in fact Spiders only ever had four-cylinder engines of up to two litres.
The Spider remained in production for over a quarter of a century. Its role in the film remained so important that Alfa developed a Graduate special edition in the mid 1980s.
AMC Pacer - Wayne's World
American Motors Corporation manufactured the controversial Pacer between 1975 and 1979, and briefly sold it in the UK before withdrawing it in the face of hostile press coverage.
Not an immediately obvious candidate for movie stardom, the Pacer appeared in both the 1992 film Wayne’s World and its 1993 sequel. Modifications included a liquorice dispenser.
Aston Martin DB5 - Goldfinger
The best-known film car of all time may well be the DB5, which featured in heavily modified form in the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger.
Several other Astons have appeared in Bond films since then, but the DB5 is arguably the most famous.
Buick Roadmaster - Rain Man
Much of the 1988 film Rain Man concerns a road trip from Cincinnati to Los Angeles undertaken by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman (playing Cruise’s autistic older brother) in a 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible.
Rain Man was directed by Barry Levinson, who bought the Buick and had it restored in 2015 by Wayne Carini. Carini has said that the film means a lot to him because it was released at about the time his autistic daughter was born.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Several versions of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang exist, having been built either for the 1968 film or for later publicity work. None of them is based on an existing production model, but like the movie and the Ian Fleming novel from which it was loosely adapted they do have a connection, in name if nothing else, with a series of real racing cars.
Called Chitty Bang Bang (an extra ‘chitty’ was added for the story) and fitted with enormous aeroplane engines, all four were designed and built in the early 1920s by Count Louis Zborowski, who despite his name was British and had American parents. As a boy, Fleming saw at least one of them race at Brooklands. The fourth, renamed Babs, raised the Land Speed Record to over 170mph in 1926 in the hands of its new owner, John Parry-Thomas.
There is some disagreement about the name. Chitty Bang Bang may have been the sound made by those huge engines at idle, as suggested in the film, but some suggest it was also the title of a very naughty song popular during World War I.
Citroen 2CV - The Return of the Pink Panther
Possibly the most unlikely of all James Bond’s cars was a Citroen 2CV which Roger Moore borrows from a nearby attractive young lady after his Lotus Esprit explodes in For Your Eyes Only. Despite rolling over at one point, it emerges relatively unscathed from a surprisingly effective car chase also involving two Peugeot 504s.
As Inspector Clouseau, Peter Sellers drives a 2CV van in The Return Of The Pink Panther. Its brakes fail completely and it crashes into a swimming pool. Later, Clouseau also loses the brakes in a tiny Piaggio pickup and crashes into the same pool just as the 2CV is being retrieved from it.
Darracq - Genevieve
Genevieve is the name of both a 1904 Darracq and the 1953 British comedy in which it played a major role. It takes part in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run and then (very much against the spirit of the Run) beats a 1905 Spyker in a race back to Westminster Bridge the following day.
Variously referred to as ‘the most famous car in the world’ and ‘the world’s first automotive star’, the Darracq is still in working order, and continues to take part in the real London to Brighton run.
DeLorean DMC-12 - Back To The Future
If you travel into the past and fiddle around with history, the Northern Ireland-built DMC-12 is remembered now only as the unsuccessful product of the spectacularly controversial DeLorean company.
That’s because Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale don’t write the script of a film called Back To The Future and don’t create a character called Doc Brown, who doesn’t invent a time machine.
The DeLorean isn’t used as a basis for the time machine and doesn’t become one of the most famous movie cars ever.
Ford Mustang - Bullitt
The Mustang’s most famous film role is probably in Bullitt, where in Steve McQueen’s hands it vies with a Dodge Charger in a fantastic car chase through the streets of San Francisco.
Another Mustang appears in the 1966 French film Un homme et une femme, or A Man And A Woman. Jean-Louis Trintignant leaves a dinner at the end of the Monte Carlo Rally, in which he has been competing, and drives the car more than 700 miles to meet up with his lover, played by Anouk Aimée.
Trintignant was an appropriate choice for a motorsport role: two of his uncles were racing drivers. One of them, Maurice Trintingnant, won the Monaco Grand Prix twice and the Le Mans 24 Hours once.
Lotus Esprit - For Your Eyes Only
The best-known Esprit of all time is surely the one driven by Roger Moore in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
Its fame rests on the fact that it was amphibious. Perry Oceanographic converted one of the two cars Lotus supplied into a submarine for the underwater sequence.
This was all very glamorous, and a big contrast to the car’s nickname of Wet Nellie.
Mini - The Italian Job
Despite a cast which included Michael Caine, Noel Coward and Benny Hill, and the presence of a Lamborghini Miura, the stars of the 1969 film The Italian Job were undoubtedly the red, white and blue Minis involved in the lengthy car chase sequence.
Many Minis were used and several were destroyed. The British Motor Corporation offered only a few cars and insisted on being paid for the others, but the Mini was so right for the film that this arrangement was considered preferable to Fiat’s offer of as many cars as were needed plus a large amount of cash.
A 2003 ‘homage’ to the original film starring Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron featured three modern, BMW-era MINIs.
Plymouth Fury - Christine
The title character of the 1983 film Christine, based on a Stephen King novel, is a classic car which murders several people and survives repeated attempts to destroy it before finally being crushed into a cube. In the closing shot, it starts to regenerate itself yet again, presumably as a prelude to further mayhem.
The car King chose for his novel was an aptly named 1958 Plymouth Fury. This was a rare variant of the Plymouth Belvedere, and it’s believed that Belvederes were used for the film despite billing to the contrary.
Pontiac Firebird Trans Am - Smokey And The Bandit
Trans Ams were uprated high-performance versions of Pontiac Firebirds built for over 30 years across four generations. The second, on sale throughout the 1970s, was a popular choice for film makers, and appeared in successive years from 1977 in Smokey And The Bandit, Hooper, Rocky II and Smokey And The Bandit II.
It was replaced in 1982 by the third-generation car. This soon established a film career of its own, with appearances in Smokey And The Bandit Part 3 and Alphabet City. Modified versions also appeared as KITT (the goodie) and KARR (the baddie) in the TV series Knight Rider.
Tucker 48 - Tucker: The Man And His Dream
The Tucker 48 was the result of Preston Tucker’s extraordinary plan to create a new car company from scratch. It was an ingenious piece of work, but only around 50 were built before the company collapsed as a result of enormous though largely undeserved negative publicity.
Francis Ford Coppola spent years planning to make a film about this project, and Tucker: The Man And His Dream was finally released in 1988. Many of the remaining cars appeared in the movie, which got good reviews but, like the company itself, was not a financial success.
The film was partly a labour of love for two of its creators. Director Coppola and executive producer George Lucas have both owned Tuckers.
Volkswagen Beetle - Herbie
In sharp contrast to the evil Christine, Herbie, a 1963 Beetle, has a cheeky personality, doesn’t kill anyone and is capable of falling in love with other cars (including, slightly worryingly, a second-generation Beetle)..
He is also astonishingly versatile, being able to win both a NASCAR race and a destruction derby even though these are not events a Beetle would be expected to do well in.
Herbie was a popular character for many years, appearing in six films and a short TV series from 1968 to 2005.