Lights, Cameras, Cars! Our Favorite Wheels on Reels

By Paul Stabin

Paul Stabin

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1 1,789 views Nov 22, 2009

Cars have played a key part in cinema as far back as the classic silent films your grandparents watched almost a hundred years ago. But it wasnt until the 1960s that individual cars would get top billing.

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Most of you will certainly think of Eleanor, the 1967 Mustang Shelby GT 500 driven first through the streets, make that hills, of San Franciso by Steve McQueen in the 1968 movie Bullitt.

Later she appears as a 1973 Mustang Mach I driven in the classic Gone In 60 Seconds, and then as a Mustang GT 500 again in the remake with Nicholas Cage.

Now that is star power.

But there are other greats from the sixties we should not overlook.

Four years before Steve McQueen, himself a phenomenal driver, flew his car up and down the streets of San Francisco, perhaps the all time favorite movie car made its first appearance. I am talking of course about the Aston Martin DB5 appearing in the 1964 Bond thriller Goldfinger.

Perhaps it was the front mounted machine guns, the spinning tire slashers in the wheel hubs, the bullet proof shield that shot up from the trunk, or the passenger ejector seat. Nope, for me it was the revolving license plate. Now that is something we could all use. Speed cameras, feh!

It does not hurt that the Aston Martin itself is the best looking export out of the UK,   Elizabeth Hurley notwithstanding.

The 1960s Batman used a George Barris customized Lincoln Futura to whisk the masked crusader around. This is the last Batmobile that you can recognize as based on an actual car, albeit a concept car. Later, the 1989 Batman with Tim Burton would create an art deco body on top of a Chevy Impala undercarriage. Gorgeous, but dont go looking for it at your local dealer. 

1971 gives us a couple of gems:

Two Lane Blacktop, a cult film featuring a 1955 Chevy 150 racing against an orbit orange 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge. It serves as a great documentary for Route 66 before the wide open spaces closed in. It served as inspiration for Cannonball Run.

Vanishing Point, which stars a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T equipped with a 440 engine strong enough to make it rear up in first. A must see for any Mopar fan.

Later Bond films would feature a white 1977 Lotus Esprit S1 in The Spy Who Loved Me, a timeless silhouette that managed to double as a submarine with surface to air missiles.

Definitely off the scale on the cool factor.

In the 1995 Bond film Golden Eye, the BMW Z3 appeared in a custom blue shade that is not on the factory option list, disappointing many fans of both Bond and BMW. Very few new car models get an introduction like that. It is still better looking than the Z4s that followed, none of which will be appearing on film any time soon.

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Then we have the 12-cylinder fire breathing Aston Martin Vanquish from Die Another Day in 2002.  Brosnan as Bond gets to drive that beast around the ice, warm up HalleBerry, and get paid for it. The Aston came complete with an invisibility cloak, and a sonic digital agitator useful for freeing costars from ice prisons.

But we were talking about the sixties originally, werent we?  That means we must pay homage to Ian Flemings Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a car that could fly, turn into a boat, just for starters. Inspired by a series of actual racing cars driven by Count Zborowski,

the film car took seven months to build, and used a Ford 3000 V-6 engine to power the custom chassis, dubbed Gen II.

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I would be remiss if I left out the fabulous MINIs that stole our hearts in 2003 in The Italian Job, where over 32 MINIs were used, three of them converted to electric for the subway scenes, as combustion engines were not allowed in the subway.

So what is my favorite?  The movie car that stands above all others for me is