Some Memorable Cars That Have Been Seen in Movies, TV

What are the most famous cars in modern movie and television history? That’s a hard call, subject to endless argument. But here are a few of the best remembered, along with some that made the biggest impact:

- The Chevrolet Corvette on “Route 66,” one of the first major television shows built around an automobile.

- Steve McQueen’s Mustang in “Bullitt.” The classic ‘60s cop movie had little plot, but arguably the best car chase scene ever filmed. The movie helped secure the Mustang’s reputation as a muscle car.

- The Dodge Charger in the cult film “Vanishing Point,” in which Barry Newman displays incredible driving skills as he tries, with the help of a disc jockey, to outrun every cop between Colorado and California for no apparent reason.

- Burt Reynolds’ Firebird Trans Am in “Smokey and the Bandit.” Despite later lawsuits filed against Pontiac from parents of teen-age accident victims who tried to copy Reynolds’ stunts, Pontiac still found that Firebird sales went “vertical” after the movie came out.

- As a group, the countless Ford sedans featured on the long-running television show “The FBI.” Ford locked up the Quinn-Martin production, so every car in every scene was a Ford, even cars parked on the street in background shots. “The FBI” was perhaps the most extreme example of the 1960s practice by the studios and production companies of relying on one car maker for its vehicles. The show thus gave a wildly distorted view of the automotive world--distorted in favor of Ford Motor Co.