The car has been a main star like in Fast and the Furious, or played a minor role in almost every movie. The car enthusiast’s passion generally isn’t founded in any single experience. It is a result of many influences, coming from places like our parents, our surrounding area’s culture and, almost always, the media.
The automobile plays both major and minor roles in nearly every movie and TV show known to mankind. Today the editors at Autoblog, Autoblog Canada and AOL Autos are paying homage to a few of these, acknowledging the ones that stand out in our minds as having played a profound part in forming our ardor for all things automotive.
Head on past the jump to see the cars from the big and small screen for which our staff still pines. And make sure to tell us about your favorite movie/TV cars, in Comments.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out a few years before I learned to drive, and I was enchanted. Not just by the car, but by Ferris’ seize-the-day attitude. As a fairly rule-bound kid who did most of her rebelling in secret, I was amazed to see how someone could flaunt expectations so bravely and with a giant smile on his face.
After Ferris talks Cameron into joyriding around in his father’s perfectly pristine 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, something clicked inside my brain. Rebelling might not be a totally scary thing – it looked like it might actually be fun. Ferris & Co. may or may not have inspired me to perhaps take a couple of joyrides of my own, albeit in my parents’ 1988 Honda Accord, which was admittedly a wee bit less entertaining than the Ferrari. Still, I felt like I was behind the wheel of that little red sexy machine, and with the Accord’s windows rolled down I could even for a minute imagine it was a convertible.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one relying on imagination and movie magic when it came to Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari. The car used in the driving scenes in the movie wasn’t actually a Ferrari, but a kit car built on a similarly sized wheelbase and a tube frame by Modena Design and Development in El Cajon, CA. Its engine was a 500-horsepower, 7.0-litre Ford V8, which is cool, but is certainly not a Ferrari. A real California was used for the still shots of the car (although, naturally, when Cameron kicks the heck out of the Ferrari, that one was a replica, too).
I fell in love with cars, and with the idea of skipping class, from watching that movie. I was craving freedom, and being behind the wheel of a car gave me exactly what I desired. Even if my reality was a boring old sedan. Many of us have felt the same way and this just might be due to the movies we watch, and the ideas that get trapped in our mind.