Geek Syndicate
The Car’s The Star
“It’s the car. Chicks love the car.”
– Batman, Batman Forever (1995)
There can be no doubt that our favourite movies and television shows have included their fair share of personal automotive vehicles. In many of these, the car or speeder or whatever is a simple means by which our heroes and villains get from A to B. In others, they are an expression of the character of their owners. Sometimes though, the vehicle is more than that. Sometimes the car is as big a star as the film or television show’s actors. Rather than producing a top ten list of the most popular cars in the whole genre, what I’ve done here is tried to include some of the less known ones amongst the iconic and rate them by their ingenuity, originality and real-world appeal. So without further ado, let’s vroom on into the list. Oh, by the way, the dates indicate the vehicle’s first appearance. 10) The De Lorean (Back to the Future, 1985) We all know those classic words: “You made a time machine… out of a De Lorean?!?” A time-machine … well that’s just never going to happen! And gullwing doors, they’re just a pain in the rear in a real modern carpark. As for running the car off of a nuclear-fusion based foodprocessor – c’mon?! But… we’ve all sat there sweltering in a traffic jam and thought, wouldn’t it be cool to vertically take off and rise above the masses. GS Rating: For pure implausibility… 4/10 9) Logan’s Solar Powered Car (Logan’s Run, 1976) Long before the world went green, Logan 5, along with Jessica 6 and the android REM took flight from Francis and the Sandmen in a solar-powered car that the script-writers conveniently left abandoned for them to stumble across. It was in truth more of a hovercraft than a car, but it was big, silver and environmentally friendly. GS Rating: Seriously – pollutant free and cheaper than diesel – if we could develop better than forty percent efficient solar panels and halve the size and weight of the batteries, we would indeed find sanctuary … 4/10 8) Luke’s Landspeeder (Star Wars A New Hope, 1977) Never mind that’s it from the greatest movie franchise of all time, Skywalker Junior’s hover-vehicle solved the problem of building an all-terrain off-roader without the need for an expensive suspension system: use expensive anti-gravity technology instead. This eliminates the problems of tyre wear and tear and of running over next door’s cat in one neat solution. GS Rating: If we could just shrink Japanese ‘MagLev’ (magnetic levitation) technology, currently being trialed in hi-speed trains, into a coupe convertible chassis - wow… 5/10
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