Famous Cars
4 cars
The movie and TV cars people know on sight, and the real cars underneath them.
Some cars are famous for what they did on screen. This collection covers the movie and TV cars people recognize in a second: the 1989 Batmobile, KITT from Knight Rider, the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, and Herbie the Love Bug. Each entry covers what the car really is underneath, who designed and built it, how many were made, and where the screen cars ended up.
Famous Cars we cover
What makes a famous car
A famous car here is a specific vehicle, or a small set of identical vehicles, that became a character in a film or TV show. Most started as ordinary production cars. KITT began as a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, Herbie as a Volkswagen Beetle, and the time machine as a DeLorean DMC-12. The 1989 Batmobile is a custom body on Chevrolet Impala chassis parts.
Frequently asked questions about Famous Cars
Famous Cars on the WhipJury blog
A hashiriya is a Japanese street racer who runs mountain passes or Tokyo's expressways at night. Police class them as an illegal-racing type of bosozoku, mostly solo drivers in cars. Here's how the touge and Wangan scenes work, and the cars that defined them.
The new Tesla Roadster hides its headlights behind a panel that drops down when the lights come on. Tesla's designers call them pop-down headlights. They arrive 22 years after the Corvette C5 and Lotus Esprit, the last mass-produced pop-up cars sold in the US, ended production.
The screen-used Batmobile from 1992's Batman Returns sells on November 23 through Julien's Auctions and Turner Classic Movies. Julien's estimates $5 million to $7 million, which would top the $4.2 million paid for the 1966 TV Batmobile.
The Mid Night Club raced the Wangan from 1987 to 1999, required cars capable of 250 km/h, and made new members serve a year of apprenticeship. When a 1999 crash with a bosozoku gang killed two people and hospitalised eight, they disbanded on the spot.