Actually, since Dominic Toretto was king of the road, this '93 MazdaRX-7 was probably the fastest tuner car at the time. It was heavily modded. In a classic scene, Toretto showed how he outmatched the competition by flipping the car's passenger seat up and revealing a four-tank NOS system.
The car was equipped with a stock 255 hp twin-turbocharged rotary engine. The exterior was modified with a Veilside body kit, Lexan headlight covers, and aluminum struts. The tires were Toyo ZR18s and the wheels were 18" Veilsides. Also, because of Vin Diesel's bulk, the interior roll cage was removed.
"Sunday, Monday, Happy Days..." -- Happy Days theme song
A very big TV hit in the 70's. A show about high school teenagers growing up in the 50's. A time when kids were growing drag racing their hot rods. The cars seen in Happy Days were really old school. Ralph Malph, one of the main characters, had a yellow 1929 Ford Model A Roadster that he modded for street racing, though he didn't really race much. Still the car was very well designed and looked really cool. It was yellow with spitfires on the engine hood.
FordModel A's began rolling out of the factory in 1903. The early Model A had an open-air cab and resembled a horse-drawn buggy. It was powered by a 2 cylinder 100 cid engine with 8 horsepower.
By the late 20's, there were considerable improvements. The 1929 Ford Model A was equipped with a battery-and-coil ignition, nickel-plated headlamps, 4-wheel mechanical brakes, and double action shock absorbers. It was powered by an inline L-head 4-cylinder 200.5 cid engine with 40 horsepower.
By the time Ralph Malph was driving around in his yellow hot rod, his car would have been 20+ years old. That would be the equivalent of a high school teenager today modding a car built in 1989. Wow!
Of course, there's a car involved. Al Bundy, the loveable loser shoe salesman who peaked in life way back when he was a high school football player, drove a Dodge -- a brown, dusty Dodge that had been stolen in one of the episodes and Al went nuts to get it back.
Though the show often dismissed the Dodge as a loser's car, fit for a guy who's way past his prime, in reality, the car that was referred to as the Dodge was 1) not a real Dodge but a 1971 Plymouth-made Duster 340, and 2) a popular entry level muscle car in its heyday.
National Lampoon's Vacation had been an old school road trip movie. It was directed by Harold Ramis (star of Ghosbusters), written by John Hughes (director of Sixteen Candles, RIP), and starred Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, John Candy, Randy Quaid, and Eugene Levy.
Out of all of them, my single best memory from the movie was the scene with Christie Brinkley driving a Ferrari as she flirted with Chevy Chase in an open highway. Can anything be more apropos than a red hot car being driven by a super hot blond?
Sleek and aerodynamic, the Ferrari 308 GTS joined the Ferrari roster in 1977. It had a targa top that could be stored away behind the seats for open air riding. Despite being a 2-seater and rear-engine powered, it had a luggage compartment! Yep, at the rear of the car right next to the engine bay. I suppose that if you're going away for the weekend, you'll need those luggage spaces. The Ferrari 308 GTS was a really sleek car, even by today's standard. In my mind, I can only picture them in red. They were produced until 1980.
When The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift came out, one of the cooler car in the movie was Neela's black and blue 2006 Mazda RX-8. It was beautifully painted with a blue front fading to black rear. It was shot mostly at night and it looked like the car was coming out of darkness every time.
Neela's 2006 Mazda RX-8 was a great performance car. Too bad we did not see it in real action. It was equipped with a Renesis 1.3 liter 13B rotary engine with GReddy turbo kit and Tanabe exhaust system. It was modded with Veilside body kit, Toyo Proxes 19 inch tires, and Volk Racing GT-AV wheels.
Here's a video clip talking about the modification and the roadtest of the RX-8 used in Tokyo Drift. Video is low quality, but still watchable. This car is truly a great addition to The Fast and The Furious series. Enjoy.
The General Lee is one of the most well-known cars on films. Single orange tone with the badge "01" on the doors and the southern flag on the roof, it's up there with the Batmobile and Herbie the Love Bug. How can you not like it? It's a muscle car that saw plenty of action.
As a young kid in the late 70's, I saw The Dukes of Hazzard on Channel 2 (CBS) every Friday night. Bo and Luke always got away from Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe with the General Lee kicking off dirt as it sped away. It's appropriate that in the movie remake released in 2005 that the General Lee was also played by a 1969 Dodge Charger RT. By then, it was obviously more difficult to gather enough of these beastly beauties since it has not been made in 36 years. Luckily, 89,704 '69 Chargers were built. Although by the time the TV show and, many years later, the movie, they were difficult to get.
The 1969 Dodge Charger RT had been a favorite among movie makers. This particular year and model had been in some of my cult favorites, such as Death Proof, Blade, and The Fast and The Furious.
And for good reason. It's a beautiful car to appreciate. The slim and rounded profile often drew comparison with the Coke bottle design. The standard model came with a 225 cid Slant Six engine. The more popular option was the 318 cid V-8.
Here's a short video clip of a General Lee replica complete with the horns and all.
One of the funniest classic movies is Animal House with John Belushi. It is one of the first or, perhaps, the first teen / college romp film. Great thing is, Animal House has a scene that used a classic car. In the parade scene, the brothers of Delta Tau Chi rigged a black 1964 Lincoln Continental and rechristened as the Deathmobile to carry a float that hid them and their true intention. "Eat Me" was inscripted on the float as a message of defiance to the school authorities. The whole thing was funny.
Youtube has a clip of the Deathmobile scene, though not in the best quality.
The scene has clearly become entrenched in our pop culture. There are several people out there mimicking the "Eat Me" float in various events such as soapbox racing. Here's a video clip of one for a Red Bull event:
As for the car of choice, well, it was a good one. The 1964 Lincoln Continental was what we refer to as "boats". Big, elegant family cars that can fit you and all your friends with a quiet and comfortable ride. Great for cruising and road trips, which was what the Delta brothers did.
I'm gonna include in this blog entries from music videos as well as movies and TV shows. This first one will be on the 1960 Buick LeSabre Convertible that's seen in the Gogo's music video for their 80's hit song, "Our Lips are Sealed."
This is a perfect car for cruising. You should be able to pack in a lot of your friends for cruise on the beach. At least that's how I'd use it. Of course, they can't be sitting on the edge of the car. But back in the days, it was ok.
One fun thing about playing a lead character in The Fast and the Furious movies is that you get to drive several cars. In Tokyo Drift, Sean Boswell (played by Lucas Black had began the movie racing in a white 1970 Chevy Monte Carlo. He then trashed a 2001 Nissan Silvia S-15 owned by Han. Then to get ready for street car racing, he had to learn how to drift using a 2006 Mitsubishi Evo IX. The Evo IX was one of the car owned by Han who wanted his lackey, Boswell, to get around in style.
A few days before the release of the Transformers 2 DVD, Revenge of the Fallen, I figure it's time to post about them. From the first movie, Ironhide, the weapons specialist for the Autobots, is one of my favorites. He did some really cool somersaults evading incoming missiles from the Decepticons during the battle in Mission City.
In the theatrical movies, Transformers and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Ironhide's alternate mode is a black 2006 GMC TopKick C4500. More accurately, Ultimate Class IV Topkick Pickup (C4500 medium-duty truck). TopKicks, aka Chevrolet Kodiak, are typically commercial class utility vehicles used for high-power towing such as dump trucks, moving trucks, and cargo hauls. The Ultimate Class IV TopKick Pickup is a converted version for use by regular folks for more than regular hauling. So we're talking strong enough to haul boats, RVs, trailers,...the works.
In the movie, 2 Fast 2 Furious, the second of the series, Brian O'Conner was the only guy who came back from the original movie. This time around, he had a buddy named Roman Pearce, played by Tyrese Gibson. O'Conner needed a partner whom he could trust to work an assignment that was forced on him by the police. Of course, there were conditions. Pearce was serving a prison sentence, but he can be pardoned if he successfully assisted O'Conner in infiltrating a drug trafficking ring in Miami, where the stage was set for dangerous street racing.
Roman Pearce drove a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder Convertible. The metallic silver and purple tuner car was powered by a stock 200-hp 3 L V6 engine. The body was modded for street racing with a Shine Street wide body kit and rear wing.
The second movie in the Fast and the Furious movie series is not well received by fans. I, however, do not think it was all that bad. It wasn't the best, but it was not as bad as many fans would put it. Maybe because Vin Diesel was not in the movie. Still, 2 Fast 2 Furious was great for the cars and the filmmakers pretty much stayed true to the tuner street scene.
In 2 Fast 2 Furious, the story was all about O'Conner who was on the lam when we caught up to him. Apparently, he's been trying to stay away from the law since he let Toretto get away in the first film. In the meantime, O'Conner had been street racing in order to make a living. Plus, I thought he's really into it, not just because street racing was part of his previous assignment.
This time around, Brian O'Conner was driving around in a Nissan 1999 Skyline GTR R34. This car posed some obstacles for the filmmakers because it was not available for sale in the US. For many, including me, the first time I saw a Nissan Skyline GTR was in the movie. So in order to include the Skyline in the movie, they had to be imported from Japan.
Funny thing was that they went through all the trouble bringing the Nissan Skyline GTRs to the US for filming, but it had a short-lived role in the movie.
O'Conner only drove it in the beginning. After the first street race, the police who were trying to catch O'Conner shot a special high-voltage dart at the car shutting down its electrical system. They caught O'Conner and we never saw the car again. Oh well, at least, it wasn't destroyed.
With the death of Patrick Swayze (1952-2009), I thought that it would be a good idea to post about one of his movies and see if there are any cool classic car in them.
The one that stood out in my mind was Road House where Patrick Swayze played a bouncer named Dalton in a small town bar that's overrun with corruption. Alas, Dalton was no ordinary bouncer. He had a philosophy degree and a practiced tai chi. He used his expertise in both discipline to clean up the dirty bar. You should be able to catch Road House on cable TV every once in awhile. It's always shown on the Spike Channel and TNN.
Deeply entrenched in the thoughts of many movie fans as a romantic icon from his blockbuster hits Dirty Dancing and Ghost, Patrick Swayze's Road House has a special place in the hearts among his fans for being a movie so bad that it's good. It's also a guy movie with lots of hot girls with big hair, bar fights with guys in mullets, monster trucks, and, of course, sweet cars. Dalton drove a nice sky blue 1986 Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC. Too bad it was destroyed.
In the Transformers, I'm sure that you've noticed that the Autobots were mostly GM cars. No other Big 3 cars were represented. I was always curious why. Perhaps Ford didn't want to be associated with the bad guys? We know for sure that Barricade was based on the 2007 Saleen Mustang S281 Extreme, a variant of Ford Mustangs.
In the movie, Barricade was tasked to find Sam Witwicky and he was doing this as a police car. He was involved in high speed chases, mostly going mano-a-mano with Bumblebee's Camaro. Together, those two cars provided for some really fun thrills.
Back when I was growing up, The A-Team was my favorite TV show. I tuned in every week to see Hannibal (George Peppard), BA Baracus (Mr. T), Face (Dirk Benedict), and Murdock (Dwight Schulz) shoot it out with bad guys. I suppose since the show centered around an elite-former-military-unit-now-mercenaries, shoot outs were inevitable and expected. But what I liked best about the show were not the shoot outs themselves, since no one really died. More than the shoot outs, I've enjoyed the preparations for pending confrontations with the villain of the week. I liked watching the A-Team lay out traps, set up barricades, and manufacture a contraption while their theme song played. Despite the "set up" scenes being played over and over again every week, I thought they were entertaining and I looked forward to seeing them every time.
The A-Team Van
The A-Team would not have been complete without a dependable, kick ass transportation. That's where the black hot rod-like 1983 GMC Vandura with a distinctive red slash, rear spoiler, and mag wheels came in. Many fans at the time, and today as well, coveted the A-Team van. It was appropriately driven by BA Baracus, the muscle of the group who also served as a mechanic while in the military.
The modded GMC Vandura was always involved in car chases or getaways that seemed to be appropriate for race cars. Often there were screen shots of it peeling off, making tight turns, and, many times, jumping. It went off-road in a few episodes as well. And still, it came back week after week as fifth member of the A-Team. Very dependable! And very cool.
When we first met Brian O'Conner in The Fast & The Furious, he was a young detective with the mission of infiltrating the illegal street racing gangs in LA. In order for him to do so, he had to gain some cred as a street racer. It wasn't enough that he was slinging parts for the auto part store, The Racer's Edge, where he drove a nice red Ford SVT Lightning. The first car he used to practice and race with was a light green 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse.
In the movie, Sex Drive, there was a few scenes of the orange Pontiac Judge driven by Ian racing on the highway against a light green Mitsubishi Eclipse. I'm not sure if that movie was referencing O'Conner's Eclipse.
I saw an intruiging picture of Anthony Hopkins standing next to a yellow 1970 Corvette Stingray that is used by his character Felix Bonhoeffer in a movie called Slipstream. Hopkins also wrote and directed the movie.
While I haven't seen the movie and can't say much about it, the 1970 Corvette Stingray is a fantastic car. Muscle it is, but in my opinion the Corvette Stingray is more elegant than it is brute. I like it more than I like the 1967 Stingray from Conair. It is perhaps the best known model of all the Corvettes. And the 'vettes have been around since 1953. The 1970 Corvette Stingrays come in two body styles - sports coupe and convertibles.
The basic shape is essentially from the 1968 release which persisted until 1983, but some refinements were made in 1970. The cars are distinguished with the ice cube tray grille at the radiator intake and side fender louvres.
The street version of the 1970 Corvette Stingray came with the LT-1 engine option, a small block engine package that can produce 370 horsepower. The LT-1 engine also had with sharper valve timing and a bigger bore exhaust. GM could only advertise 350 horsepower due to federal emissions regulations. The 1970 Corvette LT1 Stingrays could do the quarter mile in 14.17 seconds at 102.15 mph (Corvette history 1970).
Two exotic vehicles running around in the streets of San Francisco. That's one of the more memorable scenes in Michael Bay's The Rock. I posted on this chase before with the yellow '96 Ferrari F355 driven by Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage). He was chasing John Mason (Sean Connery), the highly-trained British agent who's been incarcerated for political reasons without trial for 30 years or so.
Upon the first chance to do so, Mason tried to escape, presumably to gain freedom. But knowing that he's being pursued by much younger and more numerous FBI agents, the best he's able to do was attempt to contact his only daughter, Jade (Claire Forlani). She's the fruit of a one night stand he had years ago after a rock concert and the only proof that he's ever existed.
The car chase is considered by many, including me, as one of the best in cinema. It is after all, made by Michael Bay when he was making great action movies and when Nicholas Cage suited action roles.
Despite the notoriety of American muscle cars driven by Vin Diese (Dodge Charger, Chevy Chevelle SS), the movie series, The Fast & The Furious, is very much about imports street racing in the US. Imports street racing has been very popular around the US for close to 20 years now, maybe more. "Racer X", the Vibe Magazine article that inspired the movie was printed in 1998. The guy nicknamed Racer X had been racing in the streets illegally far longer than that. The backdrop for import street racing is part of the featurettes in the DVD.
Johnny Tran's Black Honda s2000
In the movie The Fast & The Furious (2001), one of the street racers, Johnny Tran, drove a black 2000 Honda s2000 with Asian graphics. In Race Wars, he beat Jesse for pink slips. Jesse drove a white 1995 Volkswagen Jetta GLX.
Honda s2000 is a roadster, a little 2-door with tiny high revving engine that goes fast. Its debut in the US market is the year 2000, which was the model of Johnny Tran's Honda s2000. The 2000 Honda s2000 has a feisty 2.0-liter 4 cylinder inline engine that redlines at 9,000 rpm. It could put out 240 hp which is a lot for an engine that small (Edmunds.com).
What car can credibly adorn the plate "AZZ KIKR"? And just as curiously, what profession should a guy have to even want a vanity plate that says "AZZ KIKR"?
From the testorone-filled Jerry Bruckheimer movie Con Air with action stars Nicholas Cage (Gone in 60 Seconds), John Cusack (Runaway Jury), John Malkovich (The Killing Fields), Ving Rhames (Mission Impossible), Danny Trejo (Heat), Steve Buscemi (The Island), and Colm Meaney (The Rock), we know the car to be a 1967 Sting Ray Corvette and the owner as a brash and arrogant DEA agent. Agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney) is the AZZ KIKR!
Other professions that I deem worthy of the vanity plate are pro wrestlers like Razor Ramon, gangsta rappers, and 80s hairband rockers. That name plate would just be too much for everybody else.
As for the car, AZZ KIKR might be a little misplaced because the 1967 Sting Ray Corvette is an elegant automobile and considered to be one of the most beautiful cars. Sports Car International Magazine lists it as one of the Top Sports Cars of the 1960s. Too bad it was destroyed completely in the movie.
I'm not so sure that the Corvette in the movie was indeed a 1967. And I hope it wasn't since it was totalled.
At the very end of the first movie, The Fast and The Furious, we saw Dom cruisin' down Mexico as he got away from the police with O'Conner's help. He was riding a red 1970 Chevy Chevelle LS-6 SS 454 with black racing stripes. Presumably, that's what he rode around personally while he was on the lam. There's no doubt that the Chevy Chevelle '70 was a really nice muscle car. Too bad they don't make 'em anymore. The last one was built in 1977.
In the 2008 sequel, Fast & Furious, Dom beefed up the Chevelle to win a street race so that he may infiltrate the drug dealers who killed Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). In the street race, the Chevelle looked different. It was ominous, especially under the street lights of night time Los Angeles. It was all in primer, not sure why, but perhaps to avoid being identified. Remember that he had to sneak back in to America for Letty's funeral. Maybe he thought that the red Chevelle would give him away to the authority. In any case, I had to watch the movie twice and read some articles online to get some understanding on Dom's transformed Chevy Chevelle '70.
To some, the Chevy Chevelle is already the ultimate muscle car. It has one of the biggest stock engines 454 cubic inch. Now, in the Fast & Furious street race, according to an article in Edmunds, the engine in the Dom's car is a GM Performance 502 big-block V8. That's not the stock LS-6 V8 engine that comes as the top of the line option for Chevy Chevelle SS sold in 1970. The primered Chevelle is customed to do perform tricks, specifically, the wheelie at the start of the race.
I'm a Beatles fan and I just saw the movie, Across the Universe, on dvd rental. It's a fantastic film though I'm not much into musicals. But it's the Beatles, so I enjoyed the movie and recommend it to other Beatles fans.
The Across the Universe used the turmoil of the late '60's - early 70's as the backdrop while the storyline was written around various Beatles songs. Some of the characters were homages to rock n roll artists who lived at the time, namely Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. In fact, what got me excited to write this post was a small shot of a 356C Porsche Cabriolet at the end of the movie that was decorated to look like the one owned by Janis Joplin. Funny thing is in one of her hits, Janis asked the Lord to buy her a Mercedes Benz because all her friends drove Porsches. In the meantime, she owned a Porsche in real life.
Janis Joplin's 1965 Porsche 356C Cabriolet is now a rock n roll artifact and has been on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. From the painting there is no doubt that the Porsche is owned by someone who embraced the psychedelic times.
Purchased from Beverly Hills in 1968, it went through quite a bit of history before it's current resting place. It was stolen and retrieved while used by Janis Joplin. It was then used as a loaner car by Janis Joplin's manager after her death. It was returned to the Joplins for personal use. And eventually restored as close to original to its current state.
It has been awhile since I saw this classic 80's gem. But one thing I did remember about Breathless was the nice rotation of cars that Richard Gere drove. He stole them, for the most part. Towards the end of the movie, he was riding around in a red Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, a very rare car. Before that, he stole a sky blue 1957 Ford Thunderbird from some poor woman.
Both cars were great and I'll likely post about the Cadillac sometime in the future. But the '57 T-Bird was rich in history. First of all, it was a very popular, two seater 'personal' car that was introduced by Ford to counter the Corvettes. 21,380 Thunderbirds were made in 1957 to the Corvette's 9,168. More than a 2:1 ratio. However, this was the last year 2-seater Thunderbirds were made despite its popularity. It wasn't until 2002 when 2-seater models came back as part of Ford's attempt to revive their Thunderbird brand.
From the shelf of a local rental store, the poster for the 2007 movie, The Hitcher, looks tempting. It's stars Sean Bean who most remember as Boromir from Lords of the Ring: The Fellowship of the Ring. Sean Bean also stars in The Island. I posted on the truck that Steve Buscemi drove in the movie, a Chevy SSR.
In any case, Sean Bean stars as John Ryder, the main nemesis. This movie is a remake of an 80's film that starred Rutger Hauer as John Ryder. The 80's movie is a classic, so Mr. Bean had big shoes to fill.
I rented the DVD for Sex Drive and it was hilarious. A teen movie about a guy, barely out of high school, who went for a long drive to hook up with a girl he met online to lose his virginity. It's a road trip movie! And Ian (Josh Zuckerman) took two of his buddies along with him, Felicia (Amanda Crew) and Lance (Clark Duke). Of course, they had plenty of mishaps along the way and one of their rescuers was Ezekiel, an Amish mechanic played by Seth Green. Yes, that's an Amish who can fix cars. The small scenes with Ezekiel were worth watching alone. Seth Green's sardonic delivery of a perceived somber and serious character really made me chuckle.
A road trip movie is not complete without a car. In Sex Drive, the car was an orange 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge. In fact, the car was constantly referred to simply as "The Judge" by it's owner Rex (James Mardsen), Ian's bullying older brother. There were quite a lot of scenes with the GTO in action. It raced a green Mitsubishi Eclipse in an open stretch of highway. Drove through a patch of corn field as the three teenagers were trying to escape from a vengeful boyfriend. It ended up jumping onto a highway from the cornfield. It received a large dent as the vengeful boyfriend eventually caught up to Ian, Lance, and Felicia towards the end of the movie and rammed The Judge with his Ford F-150. Here's a movie review by UltimateGTO.com.
I referred to the Pontiac GTO Judge in a previous post. My best friend's father was a mechanic and Shell station owner while we were growing up. He fixed cars and sold them, but sometimes used them first. I thought one of the cars was GTO but I couldn't remember the year and model. But it was blue and could have been a Judge.
What other car can hold candle to the 1969 Dodge Charger? Another Dodge. A 1970 Dodge Challenger RT, at least that's according to Quentin Tarantino when he shot the car chase in Death Proof.
The scene is famous because of 3 things
It was a long chase, close to 20 minutes, I believe.
Incredible stunts by the co-star and professional stunt woman, Zoe Bell. She practically made love to the Challenger as she rolled around on the hood.
White Dodge Challenger vs. Black Dodge Charger -- two HEMI cars with nothing but raw power at their disposal.
The Dodge Challenger is an homage from the movie Vanishing Point, which I still yet have to see. But it is clearly referenced by Zoe and Tracie Thom.
In The Lost Boys, one of the cookier moments was when Sam (Corey Haim) went with Grandpa (Barnard Hughes) for a short "ride" in Grandpa's car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane Convertible 500 Skyliner with Retractable Hardtop. If I remember correctly, Grandpa fired up the car only to have it backdown the driveway, idle it for a few minutes, and back into the garage. That was Grandpa's secret in maintaining the car in tip top shape all those years. Eventually, the car was put to use by Sam when he and the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) rescued Michael (Jason Patric) from the vampires. Other than that, I don't remember the car being any other scene.
The Skyliner model was introduced by Ford in 1957 as a full-size family car. It was part of the Ford Fairlane 500 series and absorbed into the Ford Galaxie series in 1959. At the time, Skyliners were equipped with a 292 cubic inch V-8 rated 145 hp at 4000 rpm. They also had Holley two-barrel carburetors.
What made the Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner unique was the retractable hardtop metal roof. Automatic mechanism brought the roof up and folded it neatly within a space in the trunk area. Sadly, the complex mechanism was susceptible to failure and limited the usable trunk space. Still, the Skyliner was very popular in its first year, selling 20,766 units. Ateupwithmotor.com has a great historical look on the Ford Skyliner.
In the 2007 Transformers movie, Jazz was ripped in two by Megatron. He didn't make it to the end of the movie. Ratchet couldn't save him. Which was too bad. He seemed like a pretty cool character to have around. It's surprising that he had a short-lived role in the Transformers series because I thought he was pretty popular in the cartoons where he transformed into a Porsche 935 Turbo.
In the movie, he had a different alter-ego. Jazz turned into a silver 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP. A two seater roadster, making him one of the smaller Autobots. So of course, he didn't stand a chance against a much bigger Megatron.
Another interesting thing about Jazz's demise is that the 2009 Solstice is going to be the last of the Pontiacs to be built, as reported by The New York Times. GM's decision to phase out the Pontiac brand is well-known by now. They are only sticking with Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac brands. So perhaps Jazz's death in 2007 was foretelling the things to come because he's not continuing with the movie series. Additionally, the NYTimes review is not kind to the Solstice.
3000 Miles to Graceland is an underrated movie. It's great action / comedy film pulled off by two of the most fun actors to watch, Kevin Costner (Murphy) and Kurt Russell (Michael Zane). In Murphy, Costner has created an enigmatic character that is both loved and hated by fans of the movie. Courtney Cox (Cybil) is at her best as a super hot, charming and conniving single mother.
There are two great shoot out scenes. One in the casino. The other in the warehouse.
Cars play minor parts. But two stand out immediately: Murphy's black Lincoln Continental and the subject of this post, Michael's red 1959 Cadillac Coupe Deville with white top.
The Caddy is one nice car. You'll remember it just from the trailer. Michael keeps it clean. He even has silver skull-shaped tire caps that's begging to be stolen. In the movie, the car goes through some tough times, but none of them are car chases and shoot outs. It falls in a ditch, after running over a coyote. It has been towed, presumably, to an impound with Courtney Cox inside. And eventually, Michael ditches it to sink in a river.
Only in a handful of very short scenes, the 1974 Rollsy Royce Corniche that Jake loaned Farmer Ted (geek) to drive Caroline (hot drunk blond) home really gave a lasting impression. I mean, back in high school, how'd you like to wake up in a parking with a hot blond in an expensive luxury car? To top it off, no one remembered what happened, but someone had birth control pills.
Rolls Royces are really sweet. Maybe the top of the pyramid for luxury cars. But what else can you expect from a car maker who also made airplanes and jet engines. In 1973, the car division was split off on its own as Rolls Royce Motors.
I find it interesting that in a movie about warring vampires and werewolves, there are some kick ass cars to ogle. Perhaps maybe because in the same movie about warring vampires and werewolves, they also have guns to ogle.
I'm a sucker for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror flicks. In Underworld, modern day vampires and werewolves continue their centuries long blood feud using human technology. So they play with guns and cars, just the way we humans do.
The vampires have particularly great taste in cars. They drive around in Jaguars and Maseratis. The one that caught my eye is the silver Maserati 3200 GT that Selene (played by Kate Beckinsale) drove in the second half of the movie.
The luxury coupe looks sleek and sounds great. Too bad it's not being made anymore. It has been in production from 1998 until 2001. And it has never been sold in the US, just largely Europe. It does have an American successor, the Maserati Coupe, which has been introduced in the US in 2002 as Maseratis returned to North America after an 11 year absence.
In a movie about parties and drug abuse by Beverly Hills rich kids, there has to be something in there about a nice car or two. In Less Than Zero, starring Robert Downey Jr, Andrew McCarthy, and Jamie Gertz, a classic 1959 Chevrolet Corvette made an appearance. And for many, it was the best thing about the movie.
I only recall two scenes involving the red classic Corvette -- when Andrew was kissing Jamie after going through the tunnel with a bunch of motorcycle riding past them and when Robert Downey Jr. died on the passenger side at the end of the movie. For the most part, that's all I remember about the movie.
I'm unsure whether or not the Corvette was a '58, '59, or '60. All three years had the same body, including the distinctive front grille, kind of a toothy smile. Sweet car. Powered by a 283 cubic inch V8 rated at 230 horsepower. Options included a detachable hardtop. And it came with eight color choices: black, white, turquoise, blue, silver, green, red, and maroon.
If you're trying to get away from a someone named Guido the killer pimp, don't you think that it's a good idea to do it in a fast, sleek Porsche? Luckily for Joel Goodsen (played by Tom Cruise) and his friend Miles (played by Curtis Armstrong aka Booger from Revenge of the Nerds) they had one during the car chase scene in the movie Risky Business.
Joel borrowed his dad's Porsche 928 for the night. That's a really sweet car. Too bad it ended up in the river. I admired the car when I first saw the movie, not in the theaters but on cable. It sounded so powerful. According to IMDB, though,
"The exhaust and engine sounds were dubbed from another Porsche 928 that had a hole in its rear muffler, therefore created much louder sound that a stock 928."
Still, it's a nice car. In fact, several Porsche 928s were used in the movie. And they were not all the same year. Mainly '79s and '81s were used. The '79 version was used for most of the wide shots where the entire car was scene including the car chase.
Jason Statham, who is a staple of today's action movies, will be in this blog quite a bit. He's already in 3 other posts, driving 3 other cars: MINI Cooper S in The Italian Job, Audi A8L in Transporter 3, and a Ford Mustang GT in Death Race.
In Cellular, it wasn't any car that Jason Statham drove that caught my attention. It was the Bronco that Chris Evan drove in the beginning. A 1969 Ford Bronco Sport. The SUV stood out because it reminded me of an afternoon ride, along time ago, up and down PCH with a friend's older cousin. We were still too young to drive, so we had a blast. His cousin took us to Venice Beach and it was all a good time. I don't know exactly what year Bronco it was, but the color was similar and the build (half-cab configuration?).
I got a chance to watch a 2005 Michael Bay movie that I had not seen in the big screen. It's called The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansen. An interesting sci-fi film. With Michael Bay at the helm, there were plenty of things blowing up and, of course, car chases (see Transformers and The Rock). This time around, the car that caught my attention was the one owned by Steve Buscemi's character, a Chevrolet SSR. I've been seeing these sporty trucks all around Southern California and glad that I'm getting the chance to write a post in this blog about them.
Earlier in the decade (2000-04'ish), I began noticing cars with retro designs. Specifically, the PT Cruiser, the Chevrolet HHR, and the Ford Thunderbird. By retro, I mean these styles go back to the early 50's and before. I'm talking during the days when Kaiser Dragons were still being made and De Sotos were all over the place. The idea to revive the classic designs were great. It certainly rekindled the interest in T-birds, which was a waning brand for Ford.
High-tech car chases often involve fast moving stunts made possible with the use of CGI and special effects. In the movie, Wanted, the assassin Fox (played by Angelina Jolie), had to save Wesley (played by James McAvoy) from getting killed by another assassin in the middle of a busy street. To do so, Fox executed a perfectly clean sweep by skidding sideways on the asphalt with the passenger door open and catching Wesley gently onto the passenger seat. Can't miss the scene, it's in the movie trailer.
What I like about the scene though is the car the she used...a sleek, red Dodge Viper SRT-10. Not sure what year, but it was one hell of a nice car driven by gorgeous woman. What happened after the rescue is a fast pace shoot out in the evening city streets with the viper jumping off a bus that it had just knocked down for a landing. A really neat car chase.
Dodge Vipers are fantastic looking sports car. Truly modern and sleek. Yet, retaining the American muscle vibe that's missing in most modern day sports car design. Built to compete with Corvettes, Porsche 911, and Ferrari 550's, Chrysler heavily marketed the Viper in the racing circuits and even served as a pace car a handful of times for the Indianapolis 500.
If you're gonna hunt a hunter, doing it in style is a must. Going after a maniac who uses a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado to kill his victims requires an equally compelling car to hunt him down.
That's what Jim Caviezel did in the movie Highwaymen, co-starring the super babe Rhona Mitra (who drove a 2008 Bentley Continental GT Speed in Doomsday). Caviezel drove a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda Super Stock Hemi to hunt the man who killed his wife.
I never heard of the movie, Highwaymen, until I saw it on the shelf of a local DVD rental store by my house and I had to see it. Turned out to be pretty good.
Seinfeld is my favorite comedy show in the 90's and I still watch it on reruns today. Although a sitcom largely in and around the city of New York where there are plenty of public mass transport available, Jerry and his friends use their automobiles from time to time.
One funny episode involves Kramer's green 1973 Chevy Impala as he was mistakenly given the vanity plate, "ASS MAN". Actually the official episode name is "The Fusilli". I like the scene where Kramer parked in a doctor's parking spot and pointed to the license plate as a garage attendant was about to ask him to leave. "Kosmo Kramer, proctologist," he said to the attendant and everything was cool. Subsequent scene in the streets had people hooting and hollering at him, "Hey Ass Man!"
The movie is a remake of a 1975 film called Death Race 2000 starring David Carradine (RIP, 1936-2009). In the movie, prisoners are used as entertainment contestants in a no holds barred automobile race. Contestants can outfit their cars with weapons, armors, and any other gadgets that will allow them to win races. The prize? Freedom. But there's always a catch...
Thin on plot and character, Death Race excels in pure metal to metal action. Cars are beefed up to look more like war wagons than race cars. It's videogame-like in the way cars are driven in and around the race track. And there's no shortage of bullets hailing death to the unlucky.
Jason Statham in the lead role pretty much delivers his standard tough guy character. Death Race is Jason's 3rd movie car entry in this blog by the way. He drove an Audi A8L in Transporter 3 and a MINI Cooper S in The Italian Job.
In Death Race he's driving the Frankenstein Monster, a 2006 Ford Mustang GT, "outfitted with a Roush supercharged 5.4L 3V Ford V8 Engine. 'Frankenstein's Monster' is armed with 2 mounted mini-guns that shoot 3,000 rounds (of real bullets) per minute, flamethrowers and napalm." (source: IMDB)
Hunting vampires in the modern day Southwest can be tough work. Naturally, one needed a rugged car to do what needs to get done. In a rough desert terrain, Jeep Wranglers would do. A well outfitted Jeep can make a great reliable workhorse. At least that's what Jack Crow (played by James Woods) and his team of vampire hunters preferred.
The Jeep Wrangler TJ used in the movie, Vampires, was not involved in anything spectacular. There were no highspeed highway chases. No jumps. No crashes. But it was heavily used in a lot of scenes, basically highlighting it's reliability and durability, whether the filmmakers intended to do so or not.
What I liked in particular was how the team used the Jeep to pull vampires from their nest and out to sunlight where they exploded in bright colors. That was an unusual piece of vampire hunting. Vampires who have superhuman strength were out muscled by Jeeps. Who'd have thought that American brawn can be so effective.
In Sin City, Dwight (played by Clive Owen) took to the task of hiding Jack Rafferty's (played by Benicio Del Toro) body before the mob and police find out that the hero cop, also known as Iron Jack, was killed by the "girls". It will be very bad for the "girls" if the police discovered what happened. So Dwight planned to hide Jack's body in the tar pits.
"Get me a hardtop with a decent engine and make sure it's got a big trunk," said Dwight so that he may leave immediately with Jack's body. Perhaps he should have asked for a full tank of gas as well because he ended up pushing the car to the pits when it ran out of gas early.
I'm a sucker for good car chase scenes. The faster, the better. The more violent, ... Well, not necessarily better, but if done right, then it is spectacular. Right off the bat, the most memorable car chase scene I can think off and the most badass of them all is the big finale in The Road Warrior. Mel Gibson in a rig getting chased by the Humungus and his gang of desert marauders.
That car chase has not been repeated in cinema until the movie Doomsday, starring Rona Mitra as the tough as nails heroine, Eden Sinclair. To make her escape from the quarantined zone, Sinclair and two of her companions had to drive through a long stretch of Scottish highway back to Britain while being chased by homicidal post-punk maniacs. This chase scene was reminiscent of The Road Warrior, complete with guys in leather and mohawks. The car that Sinclair drove was a Bentley Continental GT Speed.
Ever ponder what car you'd drive if money was not a problem? Well, in the movie, I Am Legend, we learn that Dr. Robert Neville picked a Ford Expedition and, sometimes, perhaps his weekend car, a 2007 Ford Shelby GT 500 SVT.
For those who haven't seen the movie, I say that money was no problem because there was a virus that wiped out practically all human lives in Manhattan, New York with the exception of Dr. Neville, played by Will Smith, and his dog. He was the last man on earth and, in the beginning of the movie, he was driving around town in a Ford Shelby GT500. He could have driven a Ferrari. He could have been behind the wheels of a Jaguar. Yet, he was hunting deer in a sleek red and white Mustang Shelby GT 500.
There was something special about how the car was really shiny and glistening among the dilapidated streets of New York. Makes you wonder if he washed and waxed the car or did he just pick it up as the film began.
Speed and power does not always have to come in the shape of muscle. The Transporter 3 starring Jason Statham as Frank Martin proves that with a 2003 Audi A8 D3. Trekking from Marseille to the Black Sea in a black Audi luxury sedan with a gorgeous red head (Natalya Rudakova) can't be all that bad, unless you have a wireless triggered bomb strapped on to your wrist.
Also, this is the second movie with Jason Statham. He's also in The Italian Job as Handsome Rob who drove around in a white Mini Cooper S in a gold heist. Jason Statham is in a bunch more movies with cool cars. He'll have several entries in this blog.
In the 3rd installment of the Transporter series, Frank Martin drives essentially the same car that he drove in the second movie. Both cars are Audi A8 L W12. The top of the line 12 cylinder, 450 hp full-sized sedan. These cars retail for $110,000 and up. He drove a different car in the first Transporter, a nice BMW.
Interestingly enough, the W12 engine that runs the Audi A8L is made by Volkswagen and powers many other high end luxury sedans, namely Bentley Continental GT, Bentley Continental Flying Spur, Spyker C12 LaTurbie, Spyker C12 Zagato, Spyker D12 Peking-to-Paris, Volkswagen Phaeton, and Volkswagen Touareg W12.
Fifth place is not bad, though I think more people, who are not car buffs, would recognize the KITT car over the Shelby Mustang. In my youth, this car was all over the place and my neighbor had one. Looking back, I believe that the contemporary sports car back then were the Camaro IROC Z, Mustang 5.0 (Vanilla Ice video), Toyota Supra, and the Mazda RX-7. Out of all of them, I've always preferred the Mustang 5.0. And then, the Mazda RX-7 because of the rotary engine.
