Dream Rides and Nightmare Machines
Fiction has given us some of the most compelling vehicles ever conceived, which is saying something considering none of them actually exist. The best ones make you feel something the moment you see them, a pull toward the screen, a quiet wish that someone would just build the thing already. The worst ones are cautionary tales on wheels, the kind of rides that exist specifically to remind you that just because something can move doesn't mean it should. Here's 10 we'd take the keys to without hesitation, and 10 we'd wave off from a safe distance.
1. The DeLorean DMC-12 (Back to the Future)
The time-traveling DeLorean is maybe the most iconic fictional vehicle ever put on screen, and it earns it. Gull-wing doors, a flux capacitor, and the ability to hit 88 miles per hour and land somewhere completely different in history. The fact that the base car was kind of a disaster in real life only makes the fantasy better.
2. The Aston Martin DB5 (James Bond)
Ejector seat aside, this is just a genuinely beautiful car that happens to also be outfitted for combat. It appeared in Goldfinger and never really left, because there was no reason for it to. Driving it without the gadgets would be enough. The gadgets are just gravy.
3. KITT (Knight Rider)
A supercharged black Trans Am that talks back to you and can drive itself out of danger is an objectively excellent vehicle. KITT had opinions, which you could argue made it more annoying than a regular car, but it also had a turbo boost and could scan crime scenes. The trade-off seems worth it.
Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA on Wikimedia
4. The Batmobile (1989 Tim Burton Version)
Every era of Batman comes with its own Batmobile, and most of them are fine. The 1989 version is something else entirely. It looked like it came from a world where cars evolved differently, long and predatory and completely impractical in the best possible way. You wouldn't parallel park it. You'd never need to.
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5. The Mach 5 (Speed Racer)
The Mach 5 had a button for everything, and that should be enough. Rotary saws, underwater capability, a homing robot, and a cockpit that felt genuinely designed rather than assembled. It was a race car that had clearly thought ahead, which is more than you can say for most.
6. The Interceptor (Mad Max)
A supercharged V8 pursuit vehicle from a collapsed Australian civilization sounds like a strange pitch, but it works completely. The Interceptor is raw in a way that most fictional vehicles aren't, no computers, no gadgets, just displacement and noise. It rewards the kind of driving that would get you arrested in the present world.
7. Herbie (The Love Bug)
Herbie is a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with feelings and a racing instinct, and the combination is oddly compelling. It shouldn't work as a premise, but Herbie's personality made it feel like a genuine partner rather than just a prop. Any car that roots for you is a car worth owning.
Mike Kalasnik from Jersey City, USA on Wikimedia
8. The Lightcycle (Tron)
The Lightcycle exists in a digital world where it leaves a wall of light behind it as a weapon, which is not a feature you'd find in any conventional vehicle. It's impossibly sleek, rides like nothing else in fiction, and the updated version from the 2010 sequel looked even better. The catch is you'd need to live inside a computer. Some days that sounds fine.
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9. The Ecto-1 (Ghostbusters)
A converted 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance loaded with proton pack equipment and a siren that sounds like nothing else on the road. The Ecto-1 had a specific kind of charm that came from being both professional and completely absurd at the same time. It looked like a team that had figured something out.
Kevin Durant from Las Vegas on Wikimedia
10. The General Lee (The Dukes of Hazzard)
Setting aside everything else, the General Lee was a 1969 Dodge Charger that jumped things for a living and somehow kept going. It was indestructible in the way that only fictional cars can be, and it moved with a confidence that made you forgive the fact that the doors were welded shut. It was the star of that show more than any person in it.
Here's 10 more, and you can keep them.
The original uploader was Schmendrick at English Wikipedia. on Wikimedia
1. The Wagon Queen Family Truckster (National Lampoon's Vacation)
This car is a punishment dressed as a station wagon. Ford was so embarrassed by it that they refused to put their name on it, which tells you everything. It's avocado green, approximately the size of a city block, and by the end of the movie it has a dead dog tied to the bumper. No.
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2. Christine (Stephen King's Christine)
A 1958 Plymouth Fury that is possessed by genuine evil, repairs itself after being destroyed, and will kill anyone who threatens its owner. Christine is a beautiful car by conventional standards, which somehow makes it worse. You'd spend the whole time wondering whether the car was driving you or the other way around.
Hylnder777 at English Wikipedia on Wikimedia
3. The Mystery Machine (Scooby-Doo)
The Mystery Machine goes everywhere, breaks down constantly, and the people driving it have a supernatural ability to find haunted locations. It smells like Scooby Snacks and low-grade panic, and at some point you have to ask yourself whether the van is attracting trouble or causing it. Hard pass on any road trip in this thing.
The Conmunity - Pop Culture Geek from Los Angeles, CA, USA on Wikimedia
4. The Bus (Speed)
A city bus that can't drop below 50 miles per hour or it explodes is a terrific premise for a movie and an absolutely catastrophic vehicle to actually operate. You're locked in, you can't stop, and the highway eventually runs out. The fact that Keanu Reeves made it look manageable was a triumph of cinema over physics.
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5. The Bluesmobile (The Blues Brothers)
The Bluesmobile is a retired Mount Prospect police car that the movie treats as basically invincible right up until it isn't. It sheds parts as it goes and somehow completes a mission on faith alone. Charming in a film, terrifying as daily transportation, and you'd spend the whole time waiting for something structural to give out.
6. The Flying Ford Anglia (Harry Potter)
A Ford Anglia enchanted to fly and turn invisible sounds wonderful until you remember that it crashed into the Whomping Willow, ejected its passengers, and then ran off to live feral in the Forbidden Forest. It developed abandonment issues and a will of its own, which are not qualities you want in something traveling at altitude.
7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flies, floats, and drives, which sounds like the complete package until you realize it's a barely functional antique that was rebuilt from junk by an inventor who also created candy that explodes. It works on enthusiasm more than engineering, and enthusiasm does not pass a safety inspection.
8. The Spinner (Blade Runner)
A flying car operated by Los Angeles police in a dystopian future rain-soaked city where visibility is approximately zero sounds like a regulatory nightmare. The Spinners look extraordinary, and that's exactly the kind of confidence that gets you killed. You'd need three licenses and nerves that don't exist yet.
DanB Seattle 2012 on Wikimedia
9. The Landmaster (Damnation Alley)
This post-apocalyptic armored vehicle from the 1977 film has twelve wheels, can rotate its cab, and is designed to survive the end of civilization. All of that sounds reasonable until you realize that surviving the end of civilization is an extremely specific use case and the thing handles like a building on wheels. It exists in a category of vehicle where the engineering choices were made by people who had given up on roads entirely.
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10. The Truck (Maximum Overdrive)
Stephen King wrote and directed a film in which trucks gain sentience and try to kill everyone, and the vehicles are terrifying precisely because they're just regular trucks. An 18-wheeler with a Green Goblin hood ornament that has developed a homicidal worldview is not something you can negotiate with. The whole premise is a reminder that some machines are better off staying exactly as dumb as they are.
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