Every villain is defined by their appetite. They each crave something—world domination, sexual conquest, a pure lust for blood, or revenge on Batman. It’s almost always something personal with a villain, and they’ll pursue that thing relentlessly no matter how hellish the consequences to civilization. And since they’re not the types to deny themselves what they want, they often have fantastic cars.
Most lists like this restrict themselves solely to movie and television villainy. Fiction is, after all, light fare. But there are too many real-life villains to blithely ignore. So there are a few on this list as well. And the real life villains are much scarier than the made-up ones.
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10. The Car – The Car (1977)
The quality of this film, starring James Brolin, cannot be defended. But if you were growing up in 1977, The Car in The Car defined menace by its presence on the poster alone. No one, after all, actually admits to having paid admission to this turkey. Anyhow, the car is the embodiment of the devil or some such silliness.
George Barris gets credit (eh, okay, he can have it) for this mashup of sheet steel and the chopped-up carcass of the 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III coupe. According to Barris’s website, he designed the beast and four were built for the production.
As stupid as the movie was, its marketing still left an impression profound enough that occasionally The Car shows up in pop-culture touchstones such as Futurama. So it’s kind of unavoidable.
9. 2007 Saleen S281 – Transformers (2007)
It’s impossible to keep track of the Transformers mythology without a squadron of nerds manning an infinite number of computers. But Barricade, an evil Decepticon from the first Transformers film, is memorable for both its attitude and for being a Ford amongst many, many GM products.
Well, actually, it wasn’t a Ford. Barricade was a Saleen S281 because Ford wouldn’t license the Mustang as a bad-guy robot. But Saleen, classified as an independent manufacturer, was willing to license the S281 as Barricade so that Hasbro could make all those toys. And the S281 looks good as a cop car that transforms into a giant battling robot. The best thing about Barricade, however, is the motto placed on its rear fender: “To Punish and Enslave.”
8. 1958 Plymouth Fury – Christine (1983)
Most of the other cars on this list were driven by villains—but this one was the villain. Stephen King’s Christine is a ’58 Fury with a jealous, possessive love of its owners. And it is willing to kill to keep that love alive.
While the demonic ’58 in the film is painted red and white, the limited-edition Fury coupe only came in “Buckskin Beige” that year and only 5303 were built. After all, love’s hunger isn’t expressed in Buckskin Beige. It’s reported that 20 vintage Plymouths were used in filming Christine, but most of them were more common Savoy and Belvedere models dressed as the Fury.
7. 1970 Chevrolet Nova – Death Proof (2007)
Director Quentin Tarantino’s homage to great drive-in car movies of the early 1970s such as Vanishing Point includes this malevolent Chevy compact equipped with a roll cage so robust that its driver, mass-murdering Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), can crash it and survive the collision no matter what. And he uses this black Nova to kill four women in a Honda Civic. Later in the film, Stuntman Mike moves over to a ’69 Dodge Charger, which is practically the default car of movie villainy. The car that makes the lasting impression here, though, is the Nova.
6. 2013 Flip Car – Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
Custom-built in California using a tube frame, the front end from a Chevy 3/4-ton pickup truck, and a V-drive that allowed the 6.2-liter LS3 small-block V-8 to be mid-mounted, the flip car’s sole reason for being was to drive straight on at cop cars and other good-guy machines and send them flipping in the air to their doom. Added bonus: The flip cars could crab using four-wheel steering. After all, sometimes a villain needs a specialized weapon—and sometimes that weapon is a car.
5. 1963–1981 Mercedes-Benz 600 Grosser
As magnificent a car as the overbuilt, oversized, overwhelming Mercedes-Benz 600 was—and still is—there seemed to be something in its design and presence that made it a must-have among the world’s worst despots. If you killed more than 100,000 people during a tyrannical reign of terror in the period after World War II, you almost certainly kept a 600 in the garage. (Owners included Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro . . . the list goes on and on.) It’s the sort of car that would crush the souls of your subjects simply by seeing it parade between divisions of military death squads. That noted, the 600 also was bought by people like Jack Nicholson and Elvis. So it had that going for it.
4. 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Sedanca de Ville – Goldfinger (1964)
A full 50 years after its release, the third James Bond movie remains the most indelible. Part of the reason is Sean Connery as James Bond, part is the Aston Martin DB5 that Bond drives, some is Gert Fröbe as the gold-obsessed villain Auric Goldfinger, and some credit goes to the Phantom III Roller that Goldfinger’s mute, hat-throwing chauffeur Odd Job drives. Oh, yeah—everyone still grooves on the naked girl painted gold, too.
In the film, the Phantom III is supposedly made from gold and used for smuggling the metal around the world. Not that Goldfinger is trying too hard to hide the fact by fitting the car with the license plate “AU1.” In real life, this Phantom III is fitted with the Sedanca de Ville body by Barker, powered by a 7.3-liter V-12, and currently is on display at the London Film Museum as part of the Bond In Motion exhibit.
3. 1942 Hydra-Schmidt Coupe – Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Designed by Daniel Simon—who once drew cars for Volkswagen—the Red Skull’s Hydra-Schmidt Coupe is the most beautifully evil movie car of this century. It’s sort of a mashup of Mercedes 540K, halftrack, and steam locomotive. It’s 10 wheels of total awesome. In the unreal Marvel universe, the Hydra-Schmidt has a V-16 and the road presence of an armored column. In reality, it was built over a truck chassis. Still, it’s a stunner.
2. 1969 Dodge Charger – Bullitt (1968)
Yeah, okay, it sheds about a dozen hubcaps during the most famous chase in film history. Even so, it’s undeniable that the Charger driven by professional assassins Mike and Phil in Bullitt remains the single greatest bad-ass bad-guy ride in film history.
The legends that surround this car go on and on, and they’re all easy enough to dig up on the internet. Instead, go through your own mind and count the number of times that the ’68 to ’70 Charger has subsequently shown up as the bad guy’s (or good guy’s) car in movies. Bullitt established that this Dodge—one of the very best-looking classic muscle cars—has an absolutely undeniable on-screen charisma. Almost 50 years after the film was made, the Charger in Bullitt is still absolutely evil and villainous.
- Grosser Gravy: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Mercedes-Benz 600
- Cut to the Chase: The Making of a Fast & Furious 6 Chase Sequence
- Movie-Car Comparo: Batmobile vs. De Lorean, General Lee, Mad Max Falcon
1. 1934–1939 Mercedes-Benz G4
The only remotely good thing about Adolf Hitler is that he’s been dead for nearly 70 years. His atrocities, aggressions, and destructive hatreds have literally filled libraries, and he will be remembered as the most horrific of real-life figures. Among the more enduring images of the terrible man are those of him riding in the six-wheeled Mercedes-Benz G4 parade car.
Originally built as an off-road machine for the German Wehrmacht, the horrendously expensive G4 soon became the iconic Nazi parade car. Only 57 were built, most went to the government, and only three survive today in something close to a recognizably original condition.
Each weighs about 8000 pounds and is powered by a 5.4-liter straight-eight eking out 100 horsepower or so. Top speed—limited, it’s said, by the off-road tires—is restricted to between 40 and 50 mph. Hitler utilized a number of Mercedes over the years—including the 770K limousine—but it’s the six-wheeled G4 that will forever be most closely associated with his overwhelming evil.
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