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Star vehicles: wheels that made it big on the big screen -- Page 2

The 2001 movie "The Fast and the Furious," along with its 2003 sequel "2 Fast 2 Furious," are notable for their portrayal of the urban street-racing phenomenon. In this growing modern subculture, the wheels of desire are "rice rockets" -- small, agile Asian imports such as Honda Civics and Mitsubishi Eclipses that are tricked out to be as eye-catching on the outside as they are awesome on the inside.

Great escapes
Movie history is filled with memorable car chases, from the slapstick climax of the 1940 W.C. Fields classic "The Bank Dick" to the bizarre convoy running down a gas tanker at the end of Mel Gibson's 1981 "The Road Warrior." The best of the bunch, however, broke new ground as well as they covered it.

"Bullitt" made an icon out of the 1968 Mustang GT Fastback with McQueen once again in the driver's seat, this time as an unconventional San Francisco detective. The star and his pony car provided an unprecedented number of squeals on wheels in a high-speed game of cat-and-mouse with a menacing 1968 Dodge Charger in the first great movie car chase.

The 1975 police action film "The French Connection" ranks as an American classic -- it won five Oscars, including one for Best Picture -- as well as a great car movie. The original script called for the chase scene to include a "wild demonstration of pursuit driving," and director William Friedkin delivered one of the most ingenuous pursuits ever filmed. To follow an assassin who boarded an elevated train, Gene Hackman (as New York detective Popeye Doyle) commandeers a nondescript car from an unsuspecting civilian and roars through the busy, claustrophobic streets while trying to keep pace with the overhead train.

Stylin'
Many cars that become big stars are sleek and sexy, but not all. Even the mangiest of motorized vehicles can sometimes make a movie, proving that beauty is in the headlights of the beholder.

In 1980's "The Blues Brothers," even Joliet Jake Blues is appalled by the well-worn 1974 Dodge Monaco ex-police car in which his brother Elwood arrives at the gates of the Illinois state pen. But Jake comes around after the Bluesmobile jumps a canal in the first of many outrageous stunts that pass as plot in both this film and its sequel, "Blues Brothers 2000."

"Christine," the supernatural 1958 Plymouth Fury in Stephen King's thriller and 1983 movie of the same title, lives up to her model name, spending the movie driving around town with mayhem on her mind. King focused on the Fury because he thought that Plymouths of that vintage were the most mundane vehicles on the road and he wanted to give this wallflower on wheels its own star turn.

To die for
The heroes die in some of our greatest movies, and sometimes they take their autos with them.

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis spend much of the 1991 female-buddy flick "Thelma and Louise" giddily galloping across the Southwest in a 1966 Thunderbird convertible. The fun stops in jaw-dropping fashion, as the gal pals end the chase, and the film, by joining hands and driving off a cliff.

One of the most shocking and violent automotive endings comes in "Bonnie and Clyde," the groundbreaking 1967 telling of the outsized tale of two Texas outlaws. The movie opens with Faye Dunaway catching Warren Beatty attempting to steal her mother's car and proceeds with the two uniting in a crime spree in which they live, love and eventually die in their bullet-riddled 1934 Ford.

Bond, James Bond
There is perhaps no stronger or more long-lasting connection between car and character than that in the James Bond movies. For more than 40 years, portrayers of the suave secret agent have piloted an amazing variety of vehicles, from tanker trucks to speedboats to moon buggies.

Some of 007's wildest rides are the most easily recognized movie cars of all time: the Aston Martin DB5, complete with ejection seat, in "Goldfinger" or the Lotus Esprit that morphed into a submarine in "The Spy Who Loved Me."

But to true car lovers, the Bond movies are equally enjoyable for their automotive sense of humor. In film after film, Bond finds himself separated from his elegant auto, forced to make do with a motoring mongrel.

Remember his 360-degree barrel-roll leap across a canal in an AMC Hornet in the "Man with the Golden Gun?" Then there was "For Your Eyes Only" with a drive straight down a mountainside in a tiny Citroen CV 2. None, however, can match the spunk of the Renault taxi from "A View To A Kill," which Bond manages to keep rolling even after it is cut in half.

John P. Holmes is a freelance writer based in Florida

-- Posted: Feb. 15, 2005