The great thing about TV and movie cars is that they’re as famous/infamous as the characters themselves by the time the shows and films reach classic status. At the Car Loan Warehouse, we love a good machine – even when it’s a fictionalised one – so we just couldn’t resist compiling a cheeky top 5.
Feast your eyes on these bad boys – 5 TV cars so iconic, so amazing, so insane that we reckon they deserve full credit for the success of the shows that made them famous.
Kitt: Knight Rider
Kitt, a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am, could be left in the dust by many of today’s supercar standards – but we think it still deserves credit for being one of the most recognised cars ever to speed onto the TV screen, forever burning an image of a young David Hasselhoff and his jet-black AI powered car into the retinas of the show’s viewership.
Although Hasselhoff may have been the “lead actor”, the real star of the show was his talking car that everybody and their grandma tuned in to see, with Kitt showing off his wit and more often than not putting Hasselhoff in his place due to a remarkably high IQ.
Kitt doesn’t just come packed with a start of the art AI and cassette player either – it boasts a Molecular Bonded Shell, which is impenetrable to any conventional firearm or explosive device. And aside from taking the odd hit from a missile launcher, his body often remained completely intact with only damage to the internals.
We’d be sat here all week if we listed every awesome feature Kitt has at its disposal, so here are a couple of its most badass attributes:
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Ability to drive/float underwater
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Bomb Sniffer
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Turbo Boost
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Grappling Hook
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Seat Ejection
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Money Printer
Ford Torino: Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch blasted onto screens in 1975 as a made-for-TV pilot movie, gained a massive following and spawned a further 92 episodes, a video game and a rebooted movie starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller.
hostingThe series is considered very ahead of its time, as it featured two main protagonists who appeared to be very close – and it was a magical take on ‘bromance’ before ‘bromance’ was even a thing.
Nicknamed the ‘striped tomato’, the car was bright red and featured a dashing white strip, a very unique style for its time.
In 1976, Ford actually created approximately 1,300 reproductions of this car to be sold to fans – which has made them a very rare and valuable vehicle to have in your garage.
The General Lee: Dukes of Hazzard
The General Lee, an indestructible flying car from the early 80s that every lad old enough to drive aspired to own – maybe not to run moonshine around their local town, but rather to take it offroad and launch it across some creeks Duke style.
Cousins Bo and Luke Duke were the main protagonists and only added to the overall character of the car, boosting it to cult status as they got into mischief around their small town pulling off cop chases, delivering moonshine and infuriating their boss whilst picking up every pretty girl they came across.
The car, a 1969 Dodge Charger, bore the Battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia on its roof and also played the first 12 notes from the song “Dixie” as its signature horn. Sexy stuff.
The Batmobile: Batman
The Batmobile has seen many – and we mean MANY – iterations, all of which are kitted out with extreme gadgets from the WayneTech labs, ranging from flying technology to missile launchers and ejector seats.
But for now, let’s focus on the live action 1966 Batmobile driven by the actor Adam West.
The Batmobile was designed by the Lincoln division of the Ford Motor Company as a concept car 10 years before Batman made its debut on TV. The car never saw the manufacturing line for mass production – back then it was named the ‘Lincoln Futura’ and had no ties to the Batman franchise.
In 1965, one of the producers of the TV show approached Ford and requested they make the Batmobile for the upcoming TV show – but they had only three weeks to design, assemble and ready it for action.
Ford took the request and thought back to the Lincoln Futura, the concept car they had created 10 years prior, and had handbuilt by a designer names ‘Turin’ – and 21 days later, the Batmobile was born.
The Patty Wagon: Spongebob Squarepants
It may not mean much to our generation, but this underwater octopus magnet means serious business to the children of today.
Spongebob may indeed be an crustaceous sponge that lives in pineapple – but he sure can burn some pickles when the situation requires it. Although he has consecutively failed his driving test over 1,258,123 times, he insists to Patrick – his Starfish lifemate who often confronts him about taking this for a spin – “You don’t need a licence to drive a sandwich”, and we really can’t fault that logic.
Almost every part of the car is designed to be food or food related. The car has:
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Sesame Seed surface finish.
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Grilled Leather Interior
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Fuel-injected deep fryer with dual overhead grease traps.
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Soda-shaped stickshift.
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Fork-shaped throttle.
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Spoon-shaped brakes.
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Spatula-shaped ignition key.
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Krusty Krab Sponsored Flag
- Vehicle Registration Plate that reads, “2-GO”.
