What Are Your Favorite Movie, TV, and Anime Cars That Aren’t The Usual Suspects?

Movie Cars Aa Ts
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Make no mistake, we absolutely love Back to the Future‘s DeLorean time machine, KITT from Knight Rider, The Munsters‘ Koach and Dragula, and all the Batmobiles minus the Joel Schumacher ones. But for this round of cool-cars from the screens both small and silver, we want to hear about your favorites that aren’t the all-time greats. Not the usual suspects, as beloved as they may be. Give us your deep pulls. You know, stuff like this:

Hollywood Cars Collage

From the top, that’s the AMC Hornet James Bond corkscrew-jumps in To Live and Let Die, the Porsche 911 from Death Race (2008), Jim Rockford’s Firebird (performer of TV’s finest J-turns), and the hot-rod Fiat 500 from Lupin III–the directorial debut of Hayao Miyazaki. He’s done a few things.

So watcha got? Whether your picks are over the top (like the Damnation Alley Landmaster included in the top shot), super obscure (like the Italdesign Aztec from Frankenstein Unbound, also in the top shot) or just regular cars that are well-cast, we want to hear about ’em. And throw in some stinkers too, why not. There’s no rules.

See you in the comments!

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312 thoughts on “What Are Your Favorite Movie, TV, and Anime Cars That Aren’t The Usual Suspects?”

  1. Anime: Gunsmith Cats’ Mustang. Amazing level of detail. Including the correct indents in the interior.

    Big Screen: Blade’s Charger

    Small Screen: Archer’s spy cars. ‘Press that red button…” Along with Krieger’s Van.

  3. I’ll go there…the SuperCycle.

    B/c there were at least two times when Ponch and Jon’s Kawasaki street bikes just couldn’t get the job done, so damn orders from the Sergeant about it being just too dangerous for public roads, they needed something something capable of ’70s-tastic jumps in order to stop the cattle rustlers or monkey diamond thieves or whatever.

    And no, Ponch was never allowed to ride it, only Jon.

    • Sarah Connor’s Honda Elite scooter with pop-up headlight!
    • John Baker’s blue GMC truck with those sweet, sweet graphics.
    • SPEEDBUGGY!!!!

  5. The electrified Citroen DS and Avanti from Gattaca.
    Anything John Wick drives.
    Remington Steele’s Boattail Auburn replica.
    The Alvis TE 21 in the BBC’s Kingdom.

    1. Wow, A Terry Lester show that was on for like 4 seconds. Obscure reference!
      Wasn’t this vehicle also the Rams on the original Battlestar Galactica?

      1. Not sure, but I do know the Ram vehicle did pop up again in Buck Rogers as a Earth defense directorate transport.

        Oh Princess Ardala, you and your schemes to subjugate the earth and/or marry Buck.

  12. “…like the Damnation Alley Landmaster included in the top shot…”

    This is amazing; I always had a memory of this vehicle with the goofy three tires, but had no idea what show or movie it was in. The only thing I knew was that I’d seen it in a trailer or commercial for something when I was a kid long ago. Thanks for this!

    2. As I’ve been watching some of Ficarra’s stories on VinWiki about the movie car business, it gives me a whole new appreciation for the stair car in AD. Someone had to track down and cast that vehicle for the show – I love the entire crazy idea of it and how they just kept that joke going for so long.

      1. Not only that, there were three of them in the original Fox run alone! The first was built on a 1978-9 Ford, the second on an early/mid ’80s one and the third a ’67-72 mocked up with a ’78-79 grille.

      1. Agreed, clinically disturbed, and required viewing when i was in high school for some B.S. reason. But that car!!, what is that car!!

        1. When I saw part of the movie, I seriously thought it was a Lola T70, the same car showcased in THX1138. But I never saw the complete car. Now I know, and boy is she a looker.

  15. The battle van (and Corvette limo) in Mystery Men.

    The Audi A4 in the beginning of Spirited Away.

    Cruella DeVille’s car in 101 Dalmations.

    And I actually really liked the SHO Taurus in The Santa Clause.

    2. Great call. My favorite part of the latest Ford Bullitt Mustang ad (the one with Steve McQueen’s granddaughter) is the blink and you’ll miss it referential Beetle that slides into the penultimate parking spot in the garage.

  17. Every car in the movie Go. There’s a Datsun Honeybee decked out in Xmas lights, a yellow Miata, a Ferrari F355 spider, a chase scene between a boat-tail Riviera and a Dodge Ramcharger (both get wrecked, sadly) and a squarebody Caprice cop car. Perfect car casting in that movie.

    And I’d like to acknowledge a great bit in Alexander Payne’s film Election where Matthew Broderick’s character is driving back from a lunchtime quickie with a woman he’s having an affair with, and it appears he’s in an Alfa Spider with the top down, sunglasses, driving gloves, the whole bit, and then he parks and they cut to an exterior shot and it’s just him in the same blue Ford Festiva he’s been driving all along.

  18. Over here in the UK the Ford Cortina in period police drama Ashes to Ashes (set in the 70s), and The Quattro in its sequel Life on Mars (set in the early mid 80s) were particularly good. They were essentially key supporting actors. I remember the general attention to detail with cars in the background being pretty good too.

        1. While I’m failing to successfully edit my first post, I will also give an honourable mention to the interesting bright yellow Saab 900 convertible with hand controls in the French police show Cain

  19. The yellow Fiat Cinquecento from The Inbetweeners. It is the ultimate automotive representation of teenage boys going through post-puberty adolescence: discombobulated appearance (due to the mismatched door panels), uncool, unloved, and awkward in every sense of the word.

    The nicest thing said about it in the entire show? “It’s the color of my Nan’s piss.” Ouch.

  21. The GM Ultralite cop cars from Demolition Man. In spite of only having 111 horsepower, performance holds up well by today’s standards. 0-60 mph in 7.5 seconds, a top speed of 135 mph, AND they could still get somewhere around 90 mpg. In 1989! Drag coefficient was 0.19, and they weighed around 1,400 lbs.

      1. True ‘dat.

        If someone made a car with the Ultralite’s low mass and superb aero efficiency, but had that 442 shoehorned into it, it would probably get better fuel economy than most new cars sold today, but would have a nice big block V8 with which to haul ass with! It would probably drive like a 90s-era TVR, and it would be wonderful.

  23. What if you took James Bond’s Aston Martin but made it incredibly pedestrian from the outside, even so far as to make it the service vehicle for Best Buy, but kept all the gadgets? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Nerd Herder. It walked so the GR Yaris could run.

  24. The Dakar-spec Pajero we see Jackie Chan pilot in “Who Am I?” (1998). Him and Mitsubishi were inseparable. Such a cool livery too

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