The Most Iconic Cars in Movies

Few cars have captured the movie-going public’s imagination like the Aston Martin DB5 in the James Bond film “Goldfinger.” It was equipped with machine guns, an ejector seat, revolving license plates, and a smokescreen generator. A model of the gold-colored car became a must-have among collectors of the Matchbox cars of the 1960s.

Tom Cruise drove the Chevrolet Lumina Stock Car in the film “Days of Thunder” and helped propel NASCAR to greater popularity in the 1990s.

The cars that makes skipping school worth it in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” are a Ferrari and a Modena, although the vehicle meets a cringeworthy fate during the movie. Car enthusiasts breathed a sigh of relief when it was noted that the vehicle destroyed was a replica of the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT, which cost $300,000 at the time.

The Wagon Queen Family Truckster in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” is a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire that was modified for the film. The pea-green conveyance that featured in the misadventures of the Griswold family also served as a hearse at one point during the movie, which was shot in 15 locations in four states.

Audiences couldn’t get enough of the sleek driving machine piloted by Burt Reynolds as he evaded a good ole sheriff played by Jackie Gleason in the film. After the movie opened, sales for the Trans Am shot up by about 30,000 cars from 1977 to 1978.

The futuristic Lotus Esprit Series I that appeared in the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” left mouths agape when it plunged into the ocean, sprouted fins, and turned into a submarine. Bond then drove back onto the beach and hopped out of it dry as a bone, of course.

“Back to the Future” is remembered for the DeLorean DMC-12, a stainless steel attention-grabber designed by iconic car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro that was a disappointment commercially. Through certain modifications by eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), the car had enough juice to transport Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) back to 1955.

A gold heist follows three Mini Coopers pursued by the police through traffic in Turin, Italy, a chase that takes them past some of Turin’s famous buildings and landmarks, through sidewalk cafes and down subway tunnels.

If you need to call experts in expelling malevolent spirits from your house, you call the Ghostbusters in their modified 1959 Miller-Meteor Futura ambulance, also known as Ecto-1. Not too many cars have sliding proton pack storage. Sightings of the tricked-out ambulance reportedly caused accidents in New York City during promotion for the film’s initial release.

Though the 2000 remake of the film utilized a 1967 Shelby GT500 instead of a 1973 Mustang like in the original, it kept the same iconic name for the vehicle — Eleanor. The car’s power originates from a 351 Ford V-8 engine.

One of the most famous car chases in movie history involves a growling Ford Mustang GT, driven by the ultracool Steve McQueen. The epic chase through and outside of San Francisco ends in a spectacular crack-up that kills the mob’s assassins in the Dodge Charger. How cool was the Mustang GT? Ford made a limited edition of this version twice.

“Vanishing Point” is about a Medal of Honor winner and former police officer dishonorably discharged from the force who bets he can drive from Denver to San Francisco in less than 15 hours. To do that would mean he would have to average speeds of over 80 miles an hour, and that runs him afoul with the police. Many of the stunts in the film involved the folks who worked on “Bullitt” with Steve McQueen.

No high tech or slick lines with the VW Beetle, known as Herbie, a car with a mind of its own that turns a down-on-his luck race-car driver (Dean Jones) into a winner. Walt Disney Studios constructed 11 cars for the original film, and just three exist today. To give one of the VW’s extra oomph, a Porsche Super 90 engine was installed.

George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame made “American Graffiti,” a nostalgic look at California car culture. The souped-up canary yellow 1932 Ford Coupe driven by John Milner (Paul Le Mat) outduels a 1955 Chevy helmed by Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford). Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Cindy Williams, and MacKenzie Phillips would all go on to become film stars.

The futuristic dystopian classic that launched Mel Gibson into stardom also featured a third-generation Ford Falcon. Already juiced with a V-8 engine, the filmmakers converted the Falcon into an “Interceptor,” affixing a new nose to the front end, adding flares, and attaching a switch-activated supercharger booster on the hood for when Max needs to flee. Of course, that supercharger was not real.

Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” features an almost reptilian-looking tank that is Batman’s car. The caped crusader, played by Christian Bale, tools around in a vehicle packing a Chevy V-8 that boosts it up to 60 mph in about five seconds. The Tumbler is also made of 65 carbon-fiber panels.

The reboot of the Mad Max movie franchise had many outrageous cars and trucks, but the Gigahorse topped them all. The vehicle features two 1959 Cadillac bodies pancaked on top of each other atop a truck chassis that is powered by two Chevy large block V-8 engines. The jacked-up tractor tires in the rear gave the Gigahorse a kind of predatory look.

Wayne and Garth are a couple of a couple of rock and roll-loving suburban kids seeking to be cool who ride around in an AMC Pacer, one of the uncoolest cars of the 1970s. It may have a cassette player, and the custom flame job sets it apart from other Pacers, but it’s still a Pacer — and that made many kids hurl in the 1970s.

American movies in the 1980s had this fixation about female French exchange students, and “Better Off Dead” continued with the theme. This time, a young man played by date-movie mainstay John Cusack is jilted by a local girl. A French exchange student who has a crush on him helps build his confidence by fixing his smoking hot 1967 Camaro.

Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski is a middle-aged guy in Los Angeles going nowhere. He has a fondness for White Russians, bowling, and his 1973 Ford Gran Torino. During the film, the car is stolen, vandalized, and set on fire. Screenwriters Ethan and Joel Coen wanted the Dude to drive a Chrysler LeBaron, but the car wasn’t big enough to handle co-star John Goodman. There were two Gran Torinos used in the movie — one was destroyed in the film and the other appeared in the television show “The X-Files.”

An uncustomized 1966 Ford Thunderbird was chosen for cinema’s most famous female desperados because its openness made it easy to film actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. The vehicle meets its end when the two drive off a cliff into the Grand Canyon rather than be apprehended by police.

The dysfunctional Hoover family unites to get a young girl (Abigail Breslin) to the Little Miss Sunshine Beauty pageant in California. They drive from New Mexico in an equally dysfunctional yellow VW microbus, whose clutch is broken, the horn sticks, and a door comes off. One of the movie’s enduring scenes is the family pushing a disabled microbus while various family members try to put it in gear. The filmmakers used five VW vans for the movie.

The Aston Martin returned to the Bond movie franchise in “Spectre” — this time the 2014 Aston Martin DB10. Ten DB10s, outfitted with 4.7-liter V-8 engines, were made for the movie, which starred Daniel Craig as 007. One of the cars was sold at auction at Christie’s in 2016 for $3.5 million. Aston Martins have been featured in 12 of the 24 Bond films.

“Two-Lane Blacktop” stars singer James Taylor, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and a 1955 Chevrolet 150. Taylor and Wilson are aimless street racers in the Southwest. They say very little during the film while looking for competition to race against. Universal Studios constructed three 1955 Chevys for filming.

Quentin Tarantino’s salute to martial arts and spaghetti Westerns rests heavily on the revenge theme. The avenger is a character called The Bride (Uma Thurman), who rides around in a canary-yellow truck. After filming the movie, Tarantino kept the truck for himself and used it to promote the subsequent Kill Bill movies.

Francis Ford Coppola directed this little-heralded story about entrepreneur Preston Tucker, who takes on the big automobile makers with an innovative vehicle called the “Car of Tomorrow.” It had four-speed manual, electronic pre-select transmission, pop-out safety glass windshield, and padded dashboard and doors, among other features. The company was sunk by allegations of fraud, and only 51 cars were ever made. Coppola used 21 of them during the film.

The 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible stars in “Rain Man” along with A-list actors Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, the latter of whom won an Oscar as the austistic savant brother of Cruise.

This is the car that helped launch one of cinema’s most successful franchises. This beast was so powerful that Vin Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto was intimidated by it. Diesel duels Paul Walker (driving a Supra) in the movie’s climactic race scene. Another Charger appeared in the 1970s cult favorite “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.”

The 1992 Ford Explorer XLT UN46 that tooled around Jurassic Park with Richard Atttenborough’s screen grandkids featured panorama glass roofs and high-tech information systems. Six cars were beaten up in the film and filled three dumpsters with parts. The Tyrannosaurus rex came fully loaded, too.

Martin Lawrence and Will Smith play two narcotics detectives on the job in Miami. The Porsche 911, lent by director Michael Bay, was used in the opening scene of the film. Fewer than 1,500 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6’s were ever built.