A British Survey Says British Cars Are the Greatest Movie Cars Ever

[GTPNewsWire]

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

A British Survey Says British Cars Are the Greatest Movie Cars Ever

This article was published by Andrew Evans (@Famine) on August 2nd, 2018 in the Car Culture category.

 

[Famine]

I don't know what films my countrymen are watching, but Tony Stark's R8 is literally just a product placement car in a movie for all of about ten seconds. The Acura NSX is the same, but for less time and doesn't exist.

No Black Beauty from Green Hornet (cack film, but even so), Blade's Charger is absent, the Transporter's Audis aren't there, none of the cars from Ronin, and why not any of the cars from Cars? Or the Wraith's Dodge Turbo Interceptor?

Meanwhile, Phil Coulson's Corvette isn't even in the films, it's in the Agents of SHIELD TV series...

 

[lbpomg95]

I'm really surprised Bullitt's Mustang and the Vanishing Point Challenger aren't both higher on the list.

 

[Robin]

How is Chitty 2nd on that list!

 

[MSiAventador]

HAMMER - Deja Vu (2006)

 

[TenEightyOne]

I guess if Northern Ireland is British for the purposes of national classification then #4 (the MkI Beetle) is too.

 

[-Fred-]

I'd replace the R8 and NSX with those two here:

And the '55 Chevy from Two Lane Blacktop definitely deserves a place on that list. As does the Ambulance from Cannonball Run.

 

[TexRex]

Speaking of ambulances...

...and you can't forget...

 

[GT5 Level 41]

So really it’s just a list of movies people like. Thanks for the clickbait.

 

[Famine]

So really it’s just a list of movies people like.

Might be. Might not be. That's not what the survey asked. It asked what the greatest movie cars were.

Incidentally the survey also asked about car chases.

"Number one was the sequence from The Italian Job, second place went to the chase in Bullitt and third spot went to the scene from 1971’s The French Connection.

Amid this, 55 per cent agree the ideal car chase should feature near misses, 32 per cent want to see motors driving into oncoming traffic and 29 per cent want crashes.

Twenty-eight per cent think the perfect chase needs police cars, a quarter want to see pedestrians jumping out the way and a fifth want wheelies.

And it should last four minutes, 23 seconds on average."

Thanks for the clickbait.

Yeah, no. Clickbait isn't "articles I didn't like reading". Clickbait is "headlines that obscure the contents in order to make you click to find out what's in the article".

Clickbait would be "Here are the X greatest movie cars of all time, you won't believe #X", not telling you the results of the survey in the title and posting the top car as the featured image...

Speaking of ambulances...

...and you can't forget...

They're both in there

 

[TexRex]

They're both in there

 

[Famine]

We should do our own survey. With Blackjack. And hookers.

 

[Auditore]

.....

Everytime that thing made a turn i thought it was going to turn over it's so top heavy and beautiful.

 

[Volksauto]

Glad to see the Volkswagen Type 1 4th on the list. Volkswagen used the car's success in Hollywood as a way to advertise:

 

[Auditore]

Glad to see the Volkswagen Type 1 4th on the list. Volkswagen used the car's success in Hollywood as a way to advertise:

"Why would a big film studio want to make a movie star out of the bug?" It surprises me how VW bad mouthed their own car back then,i don't think something like that would happen nowadays

 

[TexRex]

It surprises me how VW bad mouthed their own car back then

It strikes me as self-deprecating more than anything else.

 

[-Fred-]

We should do our own survey. With Blackjack. And hookers.

I'd be down for that.

 

[JacoJa]

Sooo... A car from The Muppets Movie is in front of the iconic Falcon XB GT coupe from Mad Max. Did these voters just look through their dvd collection and pick out their favourite movies?

 

[Volksauto]

"Why would a big film studio want to make a movie star out of the bug?"

Watch for about 1 minute. It will answer your question about why a VW was chosen to be Herbie:

 

[Famine]

Sooo... A car from The Muppets Movie is in front of the iconic Falcon XB GT coupe from Mad Max. Did these voters just look through their dvd collection and picked out their favourite movies?

And the Mad Max car itself is beaten by a fairly cool but one-and-done car from Mad Max: Fury Road...

Also, I never thought I'd write an article with "Shaggin", "Pussy" and "Gigahorse" in it.

 

[-Fred-]

I'd also nominate the bus that travelled at speed from that movie "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down".

 

[Vekta]

No Brian's R34?!

 

[Famine]

Right, so our combined lists of positively mentioned cars so far, plus the best from this survey, plus the editorial team's suggestions are:

2Fast 2Furious - Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R
American Graffiti - Chevrolet One-Fifty
American Graffiti - Ford Deuce Coupe
Back to the Future trilogy - DeLorean DMC-12
Bad Boys - Porsche 964 Turbo II
Batman, Batman Returns - Batmobile
Batman: The Movie - Lincoln Futura “Batmobile”
Blade Runner - Spinner
Blade trilogy - Dodge Charger
Bullitt - Ford Mustang
Cannonball Run - Lamborghini Countach
Cars - Chevrolet Impala Lowrider "Ramone"
Cars - Chevrolet Task-Force 3800 "Mater"
Cars - Lightning McQueen
Cars - Plymouth Road Runner Superbird "The King"
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Christine - Plymouth Belvedere
Days of Thunder - Chevrolet Lumina NASCAR "Mellow Yellow"
Death Race 2000 - Shala-Vette "Frankenstein's Monster"
Die Another Day - Aston Martin Vanquish
Dukes of Hazzard - Dodge Charger “General Lee”
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off - Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB
Ghostbusters - Cadillac Miller-Meteor “ECTO-1”
Gone in 60 Seconds - Ford Mustang Mach 1 "Eleanor"
Gone in Sixty Seconds - Shelby Mustang GT500 "Eleanor"
Grease - Ford De Luxe “Greased Lightning”
Green Hornet - Imperial Crown "Black Beauty"
Harold and Maude - Jaguar E-Type Hearse
Herbie series - Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle
James Bond series - Aston Martin DB5
James Bond: SPECTRE - Jaguar C-X75
James Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me - Lotus Esprit S1 "Wet Nellie"
Johnny English Reborn - Rolls-Royce 101EX
Jurassic Park - Ford Explorer
Mad Max - Ford Falcon XB GT "Pursuit Special"
Mad Max: Fury Road - Cadillac Coupe deVille “The Gigahorse”
Minority Report - Lexus 2054
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - BMW Vision Effficient Dynamics
Need for Speed - Ford Mustang
Pixar universe - Gyoza Mark VII Lite Hauler "Pizza Planet"
Robocop - Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme "6000 SUX"
Ronin - BMW 535i
Smokey and the Bandit - Pontiac Firebird Trans Am
Spaceballs - Winnebago Chieftain "Eagle 5"
Speed Racer - Mach 5
Taxi Driver - Checker Taxicab
Taxi series - Peugeot 406
The Blues Brothers - Dodge Monaco “Bluesmobile”
The Cannonball Run - Dodge Sportsman Ambulance
The Dark Knight - Lamborghini Murcielago
The Dark Knight trilogy - Tumbler
The Fast and The Furious - Dodge Charger
The Fast and The Furious - Toyota Supra MkIV
The Italian Job - Austin Mini Cooper S
The Wraith - Dodge Turbo Interceptor
Thelma & Louise - Ford Thunderbird
THX 1138 - Lola T70
Total Recall - Johnnycab
Transformers - Chevrolet Camaro 1977/2009 “Bumblebee”
Transporter series - Audi A8
Two Lane Blacktop - Chevrolet One-Fifty
Vanishing Point - Dodge Challenger
xXx: The Next Level - Shelby Cobra Concept

We'll come up with some way to pare the list down for some fun later on. Any more for any more?

 

[TexRex]

"Christine" has to be worthy of a transfer, and a couple obscure ones from me are Frankenstein's (David Carradine) "Monster" from Death Race 2000:

As well as Harold's E-Type hearse from Harold & Maude:

 

[Auditore]

Any more for any more?

This

aaand this

 

[Robin]

This got me thinking, what would constitute being a 'movie car'? Does it have to have be heavily featured, integral to the plot or significantly memorable to a scene?

What if it was on-screen for like a minute taking a character from one place to another, does that make it a movie car?

Some that are certainly memorable to me yet weren't integral per se are the Porsche 964 Turbo II from Bad Boys, the Rolls Royce 101EX from Johnny English Reborn and the Lexus 2054 from Minority Report.

 

[Nismonath5]

The Mach 1 in GI60S was nice, but gotta say, the GT500 in the Nicholas Cage remake was pure lust on wheels!!!


Forget women, I would date Eleanor.

(Also kinda interesting that the General Lee doesn't show up at all. I'd have thought itd be more popular than Smokey and the Bandit.)

 

[05XR8]

What about BAN-ONE?

OUTATIME?

 

[Auditore]

OUTATIME?

Oh the disappointment i had when i realized the real life Delorean didn't sound like the movie delorean.

 

[05XR8]

So, that list with near misses should include Jason Bourne in the Mini, Blues brothers in Chicago, Ronin BMW M5 CHASE scene, Risky Business 928, Ferrari Mondial in Weird Science.

The Challenger in Vanishing Point should be in that list over something like the NSX.
I might suggest the Gran Torino from said movie and Fast and Faurious.