1) The Fujiwara Tofu delivery AE86
Look if you’re going to give us grief for putting a hand drawn car into this list then I’m afraid we must school you in the importance of the Hachi-Roku! Come on, this is Takumi’s downhill drift car, a 4AGE powered machine that represented the Akina Speed Stars for goodness sake! Still not convinced? It’s beloved among Japanese car enthusiasts the world over, and is pretty much Toyota’s finest hour. Not bad for a Corolla.
2) Bullitt’s Stang
Forget what you heard, this is the definitive movie Mustang. Prowling the hills of San Francisco in pursuit of the ultimate Camaro villain car, Steve McQueen’s bottle-green Ford Mustang in what is often claimed to be the greatest car chase of all time. It gets an automatic entry.
3) The Fast and Furious Supra
Let’s be real, trying to nail down a single car from the Furious saga is near impossible, and I DID feel the need to just limit it to one. So here’s the one that started it all, and still a firm favourite for many. Yep, Paul Walker’s ten second car, the Mk4 aka JZ80 Toyota Supra blessed with 2JZ turbo power and overnight parts shipped from Japan.
4) The Batmobile (no not that one, this one!)
No, not the admittedly wicked Tumbler, or the Tim Burton era stealth-bomber looking thing. We have to throw kudos right back to George Barris and his black and red ‘mobile of the 60s. It was based on a ten year old Lincoln Futura and fettled by Barris, the king of movie cars and you can just imagine how much whiplash it would given onlooker five decades ago. And it had a jet bloody engine, right? Well it did in the movie.
5) The Death Proof Chevy Nova
Do you have any idea how hard the lowly Nova has to work in order to be noticed above the Chevelle, Camaro and Corvette siblings? Adorned with little more than a duck ornament and a skull and cross-bolt sticker job on its hood, Kurt Russell’s bad to the bone Nova had us swooning for all the wrong reasons.
6) The Bond Lotus Espirit
Yes, that sleek submersible from the Spy Who Loved Me was iconic enough before it slipped into the ocean, but when the transformation was complete it became celluloid lore forever more. Honestly, who didn’t fall in love with the Lotus Espirit S1?
7) The Time Machine
Based on the DeLorean DMC12, a car built amidst the most exotic kinds of controversy – words such as cocaine, scandal and FBI come to mind. But never all mind that, Marty McFly’s time travelling device isn’t just an iconic movie car, but is also the retro cherry on the nostalgia cake that is the 1980s. If you don’t love the DeLorean, then there is probably something wrong with you.
8) Eleanor the Shelby Mustang GT500 from Gone in 60 Seconds
I’ve deliberately placed the old girl at the bottom because while this gorgeous movie creation deserves to be here, I’m not proud of the way we all idolised her for a while then promptly moved on. But not before grafting similar front ends onto everything from Ford Escorts to Ranchero utes, completely forgetting that old adage, beauty is on the inside. We mean under the bonnet.
Bonus Car!
The Devil Z aka Nissan 240Z
We’re going to have to throw it back to Japanese cartoons once again here with this, a mean-spirited Datsun Fairlady Z, specifically a S30Z powered by a highly modified L28 motor and ungodly evil spirit. Where the Initial D camp drifted on fictitious mountain passes of Japan the Z spent its time top-end racing on real Tokyo highways in the dead of the night. A cult following comes standard.
Over to you, what do you think, did we get it right? We’re going to assume we didn’t! Please feel free to give us your own top ten lists to argue over.
