Sometimes, it’s better not to know. Not to know that a grey-haired grumpy TV detective in his fifties trumps one of the greatest American cop shows of all time. No Gran Torino on this list. Not to know that one of the coolest cars ever built languishes at the bottom of this top ten. Not to know that the second most expensive car of all-time featured in a children’s film that had a subtext about paedophilia.
It’s difficult to keep these things in perspective when so many screen cars are avatars for childhood memories of amazingness. Still, there are some entries on this list that will warm your heart knowing that maybe, just maybe, your most treasured automobile is now living it up in a temperature-controlled garage just outside Beverly Hills.
10. DeLorean DMC-12, Back to the Future III; £24,150
‘Marty!’ Perhaps the best way to illustrate the appeal of the DeLorean in the Back to the Future series is to simply list its optional extras: plutonium-driven nuclear reactor; time-travel enabled flux capacitor; biofuel conversion system; hovercar conversion. Plus the most impressive feature of all, the ability to do 88 miles an hour, an utter impossibility in a real DeLorean, most of which had the build quality of a Beaver dam. Maybe because of this, the car used in the third film of the series only managed to raise an auction price equivalent to a standard-spec BMW.
9. Dodge Charger, The Dukes of Hazzard; £34,500
Anyone outside of America will shrug their shoulders. Anyone living in America will throw their arms up in the air at the idea that one of the authentic Charges from The Dukes of Hazzard could go at auction for less than one quazillion dollars.
8. Pontiac Firebird (‘K.I.T.T.’), Knightrider; £41,400
The only car ever made that could make David Hasselhoff look cool, one of the Pontiac Firebirds from the original Knightrider TV series went for a cool 40 big ones. Whether the molecular bonded shell, pyroclastic lamination, turbo boost, pursuit mode, super pursuit mode, anamorphic/etymotic/olfactory equalizers/sensors, grappling hook and winch, oil jets, smoke screens, tear gas launcher, ultramagnesium charges, high traction drop-downs, microwave jammer, bomb sniffer, ejection system, two-wheel ski drive and convertible roof were included remains a private arrangement between buyer and seller, though it would be sensible to wager that the ultraphonic chemical analyzer was not part of the deal.
7. Jaguar Mk. II, Inspector Morse; £53,000
Perhaps the most boring car ever to sell for more than half a hundred thousand dollars. Yes, the Jaguar Mk. II is a gorgeous, purring big cat and yes, it was painted a nice colour, but really? More than K.I.T.T. and the DeLorean? It’s unlikely that anyone but the most devout Morse fan would recognise it as the Morse car too, leading to horrifically middle-class conversation such as, ‘See the Mk. II out there, yah? Mine. Used on Inspector Morse I’ll have you know. Yah, I know. Yah, absolutely we can go for a spin in tha Jaag.’
6. 1946 Ford (‘Grease Lightning’), Grease; £53,100
The actual car used at the end of the film where it goes all weird and Travolta flies off with Newton-John and men silently cheer because the bloody thing is finished. Before you get all excited, bear in mind this car is bubblegum pink, sports a transparent bonnet and looks a bit like Miss Marple from the front, if she’d had a stroke.
5. 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor (‘Ecto-1’), Ghostbusters; £90,000
A car so beloved it has its own website (http://www.theecto1.com/) featuring the worst mouse-hover sound effects since talk of the y2k bug fizzled out. The only way to pull off driving such a car would be to deck yourself out in full Ghostbusters regalia plus fully functioning proton pack and hose down the first idiot to laugh at you with some total protonic reversal (note to geeks: no need to correct for accuracy here). Warning: side effects of driving this car include thinking you’re as funny as Bill Murray. You’re not.
4. Lotus Esprit, The Spy Who Loved Me; £115,500
The best Bond car that wasn’t an Aston, the Lotus Esprit submarine regularly tops lists of best Bond gadget ever. Looking like the kind of car you draw when you’re a kid and someone asks you to draw the best car you could ever, ever imagine, the Esprit is the first car on the list to make inroads into the six-figure area, making it an official badass automobile. Plus, even when Roger Moore drove it underwater in a fecal-brown flared suit, he still didn’t look like a total arse.
3. 1954 Lincoln Futura prototype (‘Batmobile’), Batman (original TV series); £139,730
It had a face like Peter Crouch after a heavy night. It was as camp as a row of tents. It moved so slowly the only way to give any appearance of useful speed was to rev the stock footage to Benny Hill levels of high velocity chicanery, robbing it of what little cool it had. Yet, despite all these flaws, it was just the most beautiful comic book drawing come to life that you could forgive it everything. Except Adam West, and the fact that it made a farting sound whenever Batman fired up the afterburner.
2. ‘Chitty’, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; £255,000
You are not reading that figure wrong. Someone paid a cool quarter of a million to take the wheel of a car that never really existed. The only car on the list to not be a variation or model of some type of real car, Chitty recently got into trouble on the streets of Norwich, as the car was not roadworthy, or registered… or insured.
1. Aston Martin DB5, Goldfinger / Thunderball; £1,200,000
One of the most drop-dead gorgeous cars ever put into production, the Aston Martin DB5 is the only car on the list to break the £1 million barrier. It could justifiably lay claim to being the most famous screen car of all-time. Anyone who has seen Sean Connery leaning on the bonnet in a black and white shot, impeccably groomed, will understand why someone forked out Fort Knox to take it home. It’s the best film car. Ever.
Honourable mention:
0. AMC Pacer, Wayne’s World; £4,800
Laugh no more at the mirthmobile. It may have squeezed under five grand, but it still went for more than Scaramanga’s car from The Man With the Golden Gun, and that thing could fly. Re-enact Bohemian Rhapsody to your heart’s content, as long as you make sure to stop, immediately, should anyone pull up next to you.
