Due to a long, convoluted story involving the Dorset Tank Museum, I’m only allowed to drive when there’s an R in the month, but that didn’t stop me falling off my seat when I saw the amazing vehicles in Mad Max: Fury Road recently.
So much so that I went and watched a whole load of movies with cool cars in them. Then halfway through I realised something. Films are full of bloody idiotic modes of transport. And because I love you, I’ve put my favourites in a list.
Six stupidest cars in movie history
Hop in baby, let’s go for a ride…
The RV (Tango and Cash)
Traditionally the van isn’t a cool car. Girls don’t dig it, and even if it’s got a werewolf doing a handstand on the roof, it’s a very tricky vehicle to avenge crime in, Would Batman be as cool if he had a BatWinnebago?
Luckily Lieutenants Ray Tango and Gabe Cash are here to redress the balance, taking a vehicle that people are normally forced to buy when they have 14 kids, and instead strapping enough bulletproof armour and howitzers to it to take on a legion of exploding JCBs.
Why the villain would own one of these isn’t really explored. Perhaps he was impressed by a trip to DiggerLand. Either way, it certainly provides a showcase for the ‘RV from hell’.
The Gilamonster (O.C & Stiggs)
I’ve covered O.C & Stiggs before, but whatevs. This tale of teens annoying their neighbour Mr.Schwabb and floating to Mexico has two redeeming features. Firstly, there’s Dennis Hopper as a crazed Vietnam Vet with ‘Reefer Madness’ and secondly, there’s the Gilamonster.
If you’re ever buying a car, it’s a pretty good idea to bring along ‘a list of places I want this car to be totally unwelcome’…
Number one: funerals. Number two: affairs of state, you know, real formal ones… ones with… chamber music. Number three: wet golf greens. Number four: the acropolis.
It also generates a “terrifyingly seismic field of noise”. Our two heroes are looking to combine really loud noise with the ugliness of poverty and boy does the dealer step up to the challenge.
A 1950s rust bucket, handily monstertruckerized, cinema boasts no finer method for “picking up these girls, we call them the sluts.”
Stupid and ugly. What more do you want?
The Jawamobile (STAR WARS)
If you’re a dealer in second hand goods that you’ve ‘liberated’ from a huge space fleet, you’re going to need something slightly tougher than a Reliant Robin to haul your wares down to the lockup.
The Jawas from Star Wars cope admirably with their reduced circumstances by tooling out what appears to be an enormous rusty doorstop with the type of tank-tracks not usually seen outside a NASA rocket-carrier.
Imperial Stormtroopers are known for not being able to hit the side of a barn, so it’s unfortunate for the little guys that they own the only car on the planet bigger than a barn… with tragic consequences.
AT-AT (The Empire Strikes Back)
This is Darth Vader’s car and it’s a giant dog that steps on people.
Roaming around the galaxy like a pack of atomic-powered, badly behaved Great Danes, the AT-AT from Empire Strikes Back is a pretty bad design. You can trip them up, you can blow the legs off. But imagine you’re a tank commander, a legion of Chieftains at your beck and call, and the enemy turns up driving these buggers. That’s why AT-ATs are badass.
Dodge Charger (The Fast and the Furious)
The Fast & The Furious. A never ending franchise that gives license to the kind of moron who honestly thinks it’s worth buying a 2K car and putting a 5K exhaust on it. Plastic Mazdas tripped out with nitro and underlighting, and generally parked up in a seafront carpark on a wet Wednesday night.
Now combine this with Vin Diesel. It’s so uncool it goes out the other side into cool, then out the other side of that into anti-cool. Watching these movies you can practically feel your trousers becoming half-mast, that’s how stupidly uncool it is.
Except for one thing. Three tonnes of Detroit muscle.
Other movies have had a Dodge Charger in them – the Dukes of Hazard even had Jessica Simpson in a bikini cleaning theirs – but none of the others had a blown Hemi stack sticking through the bonnet transforming them into a beast that absolutely terrified the erstwhile Riddick man-mountain.
So awesome it almost (almost) redeems the first movie. Get one from eBay’s ‘classic cars’ listings now. Your inner Viking demands it!
BONUS: Flying Motorcycle (Megaforce)
Poor old Barry Bostwick.
Rightfully he should be king of the action men, rivaling Arnie as the governor of a mighty state, or at least still wobbling around in a popular sitcom with Charlie Sheen. But no, instead he’ll be forever remembered as a bargain bin, unthinking man’s Chuck Norris thanks to 80s turd-a-thon Megaforce. Quite possibly the stupidest movie ever to come out of the Philippines.
Luckily Barry has a sweet deuce to bail him out of trouble: Firstly, there’s his ridiculous bit-partery in the likes of Hannah Montana The Movie, but far more importantly: his Flying Motorbike!
We’ve all seen flying cars, but even if the car in question is a time-traveling DeLorean, there’s always a chance it’ll be borrowed by the wife for taking the dog to the vets and doing the shopping.
But a flying bike? There’s no denying this would only be useful for drag racing, picking up ‘chicks’ and possibly pursuing criminals/escaping the law.
Oh, and this one is owned by a man called Commander Ace Hunter. How cool is too cool?
There’s plenty more stupid claptrap on the site, for instance this guide to the blackest albums in the world.
