The Silver Screen Oasis

Someone posted a column on the 10 Ugliest Cars.

http://comcast.vehix.com/articles/top-1 ... ca?cid=800

And the fact he listed the 1974 AMC Matador used in the Bond film "The Man With The Golden Gun" made me wonder if you had a favorite cool or ugly car in the movies.

I still think the AMC Pacer is the leader in ugliness and was used to great effect in "Oh God."

Chris, I am sure this is no real help as the movie sited is a modern one, and the vehicle in question is a source of extreme bias on my part . . and yet still I cannot restrain myself . . .
The finest vehicle ever to grace pavement is the self-same make & model as driven by the returning-home Canadian farm couple in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, namely a 1959 Chevrolet Apache 31 stepside pick-up {replete with beehive hubcaps and fender-mount spare tire} ..

And the Gods Sigh . . . .

It's fine. Any and all cars welcome. (Frankly it's ok whether it was in a movie or not.) Ugly or beautiful it can go here.

I always thought the 1958 Chevy Impala was a good looking car.

When I was a kid, the coolest car in a movie was "Frankenstein's" Chevy Corvette (with accoutrements) from Death Race 2000. Also loved the 56 T-Bird driven by Suzanne Sommers in American Graffiti.

In Cujo, one of the main character's drives a Ford Pinto, which was my first car. Mine had a quarter-sized hole in the passenger side floorboard, which meant that when I had a friend with me, I'd have to aim for the puddles. Also, the previous owner had rewired all of the electrical components in the car when installing the 8-track. As a result, the speedometer never worked and I had to judge my speed by reading RPMs. (I was in a Pinto, speeding was never an option.) The plus side about the electrical re-wiring--every time I put on my head lights I got a full tank of gas!

My most memorable car in movies would have to be The Flying Wombat, as seen in The Young in Heart (1938), a spritely little movie that features Roland Young and Billie Burke as the heads of a con artist family with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Janet Gaynor as their offspring.

The Wombat was really called the 1938 Phantom Corsair, designed by Rust Heinz, who was a member of the ketchup family, and Maurice Schwartz of the Pasadena, California based Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company. Heinz planned to put the Phantom Corsair, which cost approximately $24,000 to produce in 1938 (about $400,000 now) into limited production at an estimated selling price of $12,500. Heinz died shortly after building the prototype. The images of the car in the movie may have been made of wax, but they sure are cool little buggies.

I love the way the cars were photographed by Leon Shamroy as part of the overall design of the film by William Cameron Menzies.
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The real Corsair is held at the National Automobile Museum as part of The Harrah Collection in Reno, Nevada. My friend, the blogger Laura posted some great contemporary shots of the Wombat/Corsair at that museum which she visited awhile back.

Oh my gosh, I love the car in Young in Heart! I love the test drive sequence, when Roland Young takes the family out. It's a great movie.

I've always loved Volkswagens....and was convinced long before Herbie that ours had a soul of it's own.

I would like to be Maude in Harold and Maude - taking any car that suited my fancy at the moment. I'd like to be a gentle reminder to people, "Don't get too attached to things".

JackFavell wrote:I'd like to be a gentle reminder to people, "Don't get too attached to things".

Confucius say this about that:

"Great philosophy for Gandhi - but if all people never get attached to "things" - then, no old cars get loved or preserved - than everybody drive just anything, and all cars are left to break down and get ugly with wear . . . maybe same with old, neglected theatres, and old reels of disintegrating film . . even Buddha say to hotdog vendor: 'Make Me One with Everything' !!!