Heroes are built of good intentions, brave decisions, selfless sacrifices, and deeds undertaken against fearsome odds. Filter those characteristics through philosopher Joseph Campbell’s definition of the hero, and you wind up with Star Wars. Filter that definition through an automotive lens, however, and you wind up with this list of the greatest automotive heroes. Well, you might not wind up with this list, but we did.
This list would be simple if it were limited solely to fictional vehicles in films and TV shows. But the most heroic vehicles of all did great deeds in real life. So this is a mix of both fictional and factual, although we excised all vehicles that exist only in animation. So if you’re Speed Racer’s mother and feel like the Mach 5 was left off unjustly, well, you’re a badly animated, fictional Japanese cartoon character, so who cares what you think?
16) 1996 Dodge Ram 2500, Twister (1996)
Warner Bros.
It survives several tornadoes, passes through a fireball made by a tanker truck, drives through a house, and then sacrifices itself in the name of science. It’s the pickup truck equivalent of Madame Curie.
15) 1921 Chitty Bang Bang, English Race Car
National Motor Museum/Getty Images
The 1968 movie musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has confused the issue, but the original—and real—Chitty Bang Bang was one of the great early race cars. Built by amateur racer Count Louis Vorrow Zborowksi, it featured a 23.0-liter six-cylinder Maybach airplane engine and won its first two races at Brooklands, hitting speeds of more than 100 mph in the process. It was an instant celebrity at the time and was followed up by two more Chitty Bang Bangs.
In the early ’60s, Ian Fleming (yeah, the guy who created James Bond) would exaggerate the legend of Chitty Bang Bang into his children’s novel Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. That novel would become the basis for the largely insufferable movie, which in turn led to a totally insufferable stage musical in 2002.
The real Chittys were, however, awesome.
14) 1932 Ford Five-Window, American Graffiti (1973)
Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
John Milner never quite confronts growing up in 1962 California, but his ’32 will always be the bitchin’-est car in the valley. After all, as Toad says: “You’ll always be number one John. You’re the greatest.”
13) Unseen Car, C’était un Rendez-vous (1976)
nash6676/StreetFire.net
It’s a sub-10-minute blast through Paris strictly from the point of view of the car making the daredevil drive. As it bravely skates through the City of Lights, the car hits insane velocities and sounds totally wicked. Yes, the car that was actually making the run was director Claude Lelouch’s Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 sedan with a large camera mounted on its nose, and the sound is (at least according to legend) a Ferrari 275GTB, but the illusion is about perfect. For a car that’s never seen, it’s amazing.
12) 1949 Mercury Coupe, Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
Warner Bros.
By custom-car standards, it’s pretty mild: a ’49 Merc coupe with whitewalls. But it has a style that sets James Dean’s character Jim Stark apart from the other kids at Dawson High School. It’s a car that defined the character.
1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 Driven by Parnelli Jones at Riverside International Raceway on October 4, 1970
Interlink Media/Getty Images
Early in the final race of the 1970 SCCA Trans-Am season, Parnelli Jones, driving Bud Moore’s #15 Boss 302, was in the lead and lapping backmarkers. All of a sudden, one hit him in the right side door and sent the Mustang flying and off into the dust of the California desert. Somehow Jones got the severely damaged car back on track, but he now sat in ninth place.
Despite the twisted hulk vibrating viciously and resisting all steering inputs, Jones proceeded to drive through the pack and reel in competitor after competitor. Using the rumble strips and curbing as launch pads, he’d shoot the orange Boss into the air, hoping the car would come down in the direction he was supposed to be heading. During this banzai run, Jones somehow managed to set a new lap record at Riverside. Finally, he passed teammate George Follmer’s #16 Boss to take the victory.
This remains the single most heroic and legendary drive in the history of the American sedan road racing.
10) 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am Special Edition, Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Universal Pictures
For three generations of Americans, the definition of cool is Burt Reynolds driving this car with its T-tops and screaming chicken on the hood. The film itself, with a great performance from Jackie Gleason, plus Sally Field at her most adorable, remains on constant loop on cable and never fades from our collective consciousness.
What we’re dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law.
9) The Tumbler, Batman Begins (2005)
Warner Bros
Batmobiles grew ever more cartoonish between the first Michael Keaton Batman movie in 1989 and the horrifying awful George Clooney Batman and Robin in 1997. It would have been difficult for the Batmobile to get any stupider than that mega-finned atrocity.
But when Batman returned in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne’s new Tumbler brought a new seriousness to the role of the Batmobile. Built with sprint-car tires up front, dual mudders in the back, and lots of flaps that move to manage air, the Tumbler looks as if it were built to leap across cities. Up close, the hero Tumblers built for the film are among the most impressive movie props ever built. This is what a 21st-century superhero should drive.
8) 1955 Lincoln Futura Batmobile, Batman (1966)
20th Century Fox Television
In a rush to throw together a Batmobile for the upcoming 20th Century Fox Batman TV series in 1966, George Barris pulled Ford’s old Lincoln Futura show car out of his junk pile and set his crew to bat-modifying it. The result is the Batmobile against which all other Batmobiles—and all other superhero cars—must be judged.
7) 1963 Volkswagen Beetle, The Love Bug (1969)
Walt Disney Productions
The original Herbie movie, The Love Bug, doesn’t get the respect it deserves. It’s well written, surprisingly adult, beautifully shot by director Robert Stevenson (who also directed Mary Poppins), features gorgeous matte paintings of San Francisco, the music is solid, and it’s hilarious with great comic performances from Buddy Hackett, Joe Flynn, and David Tomlinson. And when Dean Jones contends with the anthropomorphized VW, he sells the conceit perfectly.
Beyond all that, the driving is great, with solid action from California tracks like Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and Riverside. Almost every great Hollywood stunt driver—and a few dozen West Coast road racers—worked on the film.
But it’s Herbie’s personality in this first film that’s ultimately engaging. He’s loyal, eager to please, brave, romantic, and willing to risk everything to win. All the sequels that followed would lose the essence of Herbie’s character and degenerate into immature antics.
Yes, we wrote three paragraphs extolling The Love Bug as a better movie than you remember and promoting Herbie as a great hero. And we’re proud of it.
6) Dodge Charger, The Dukes of Hazzard (1979)
Warner Bros. Television
The General Lee doesn’t seem to be able to get around a corner without radical oversteer, can survive massive jumps undamaged, and somehow gets away with having a Confederate flag on its roof. More than 320 1968, 1969, and 1970 Chargers were destroyed over the course of Dukes’ seven-season run to make the General Lee a legend. It worked.
5) 1974 Dodge Monaco, The Blues Brothers (1980)
Universal Pictures
“It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch ’plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters, so it’ll run good on regular gas. What do you say, is it the new Bluesmobile or what?”
4) 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 2.8 Driven by Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood at the 24 Hours of Daytona, February 2–3, 1973
ISC Archives/Getty Images
There wasn’t much that this car didn’t hit on its way to an overall win in the first 24 Hours of Daytona. (That includes a bird that took out the windshield.) Competing in Group 5 and driven by two of the most beloved American road racers ever, this was the Brumos Porsche that started the Brumos Porsche legend.
With every body panel dented, duct tape holding much of the car together, and two great drivers behind the wheel, this RSR can stake a claim to being the greatest Porsche 911 ever built.
3) 1969 Porsche 917K, Le Mans (1971) and the 1970 and 1971 24 Hours of Le Mans
20th Century Fox and National General Pictures
Yeah, Steve McQueen looked great piloting the Gulf Porsche 917K in the fictional 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. But in the real world of Le Mans, the 917 was even more incredible, winning handily in both 1970 and 1971. So dominant was the 917 during its short life that the rules were rewritten to outlaw it, and generations of racing fans have used the car as their benchmark for what a brutish, brilliant race car should be.
2) 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390, Bullitt (1968)
Warner Bros./Seven Arts
Frank Bullitt’s Mustang was already dented before the car chase with a Dodge Charger through San Francisco. Pieces are blacked out, the grille trim has been ripped off and a set of Torq-Thrust wheels set the car apart from other Mustangs. It would have been cool even if Frank Bullitt weren’t played by Steve McQueen, and the fact that McQueen drove this car only makes it cooler.
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1) Jeep, World War II (1941–1945)
DeAgostini/Getty Images
When World War II started, horses were still important military assets. In fact, the Polish Army attacked a German infantry regiment on the first day of the war with horse-mounted cavalry, and, according to some historians, up to 80 percent of the German Wehrmacht’s transportation was horse-drawn. In contrast, the Allies had the Jeep.
The Jeep was a mechanized replacement for the horse. Rugged, reliable, and almost infinitely capable, the four-wheel-drive Jeep represented a major strategic advantage for the Allied forces. General Dwight Eisenhower famously asserted that “the Jeep, the Dakota airplane, and the landing craft were the three tools that won the war.”
It doesn’t get more heroic than that.