Some cars are just useful, they get us from Point A to Point B and back again. Others are special, we care for them and show them to all of our friends. But some cars are larger than life…literally. They are the cars that have appeared on the silver screen. Movie cars. Here are some of the most famous ones that appeared in films between 1950 and 2000.
Herbie from The Love Bug
We’ve all heard the expression “the car is the star,” but in the case of Herbie, it’s really true. The star of the 1969 Disney film The Love Bug is an anthropomorphic 1963 Volkswagen Beetle race car. Herbie outshines some of his human co-stars and has gone on to appear in several films including a 2005 re-boot and a TV series.
See Herbie in action in this trailer for the original film:
The Aston Martin from Goldfinger (007)
How can you have a list of famous film cars without including a James Bond car or two? The most iconic Bond vehicle has to be the 1963 Aston Martin DB5, which first made its appearance in Goldfinger (1964). It has appeared with 007 behind the wheel many times since and even made it into a handful of Bond video games.
The DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future Parts 1-3
You’d probably have to take supernatural mechanic courses to work on the 1982 DeLorean DMC-12. That’s because in the Back to the Future trilogy of the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Dr. Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd) turned it into a time machine to travel throughout various decades (which it kind of looks like anyway, given its gull-wing doors).
You’d also need a time machine to buy an original DeLorean new, because the company went out of business before the first film of the series even went into production. These days, the car is known primarily for its former movie glory.
Check out this trailer for Back to the Future part II, where you get to see the car fly:
Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters
Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) is a 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance with a funky bit of automotive painting on the doors and sides (the Ghostbusters logo and an ad for their paranormal services). The car used in the second film is currently in bad shape and Sony Pictures is considering sending it to the scrapyard. Fortunately, fans have started a petition to save it. If that doesn’t work, who you gonna call?
KITT from Knight Rider
Whomever worked on KITT (an abbreviation for Knight Industries Two Thousand) must be one skilled automotive service technician. Customizing a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am is pretty standard fare, but customizing it to talk? Now that’s another story.
KITT co-starred with David Hasselhoff in the TV series Knight Rider (1982-1986), so he may not technically be a movie car…yet. There are rumors that a major motion picture re-boot of Knight Rider is in the works for next year.
Here is KITT in all of his 80s glory: