Hollywood often takes liberties with its portrayal of law enforcement.
While most of the time that leniency takes the form of ultra-clean, futuristic labs turning over forensic evidence in the space of mere minutes, or court orders that arrive virtually overnight, occasionally it also extends to cop cars.
For every square black-and-white crowding a hostage negotiation or showing up after-the-fact at a bank robbery, there are one or two head-scratching inclusions in the pantheon of police vehicles that have us throwing popcorn at the screen. Here’s our take on the 10 weirdest cop cars we’ve ever seen at the movies.
The X-Files: Fight The Future (1998)
The car: 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue
The driver: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
Why it’s so weird: Most of the cars featured in The X-Files television show were rental-fleet specials or drawn from the local FBI motor pool, which is what makes the Oldsmobile Intrigue featured in the franchise’s first big-screen foray such an outlier. Included as part of a paid promotion from GM that was intended to sell Oldsmobile to aliens (we guess?) the Intrigue didn’t just get to pal around with Mulder and Scully on the set, but it also participated in an supernatural publicity tour (The X-Files Expo Tour 1998).
The latter made sure to incorporate as many symbols of big-government paranoia as possible (including mothballed military installations) all while handing out Olds-branded swag. No word on whether there was a button on the console that transformed the exhaust note into the thunderous chop of black helicopters.
Timecop (1994)
The car: We’re not sure
The driver: Uhhhhhh, no one!
Why it’s so weird: In a cinematic universe where time travel is possible but mullets are still the dominant hairstyle, police cars have apparently evolved beyond the need for drivers, or even windows, according to the ungainly props rolling the streets of Timecop‘s somewhat futuristic Washington, D.C.
We’re not sure why famed designer Syd Mead went full-ugly on these autonomous police pods, but we do know they only built two for the entire production and just mixed them in with normal cars, presumably because the rest of the budget went into designing those virtual reality sex setups that the other cops just wore openly in the office.
Tango & Cash (1989)
The car: The RV from Hell
The driver: Kurt Russell as Gabriel Cash
Why it’s so weird:Tango & Cash is a buddy cop movie starring Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone that is definitely not set in the future. And yet, the final action sequence of the film sees the two detectives borrowing some type of advanced assault vehicle dubbed ‘the RV from Hell’ and then driving it through a very strange flame-drenched construction yard obstacle course while being fired upon with military ordnance.
It’s exactly what you’d expect to have to go through in the last level of a video game just before facing off against the big boss, only in this case it’s Jack Palance standing in for Bowser.
The truck itself was built on top of a heavy-duty GMC truck chassis, complete with a mid-mounted 7.5-liter big-block V8 and a complement of machine guns. It was a fully-functional stunt vehicle that honestly feels like it was designed for an entirely different Tango & Cash movie that we never got to see. We’re perfectly okay with that, by the way. Please, no sequel.
City Hunter (1993)
The car: 1989 Mitsubishi HSX Concept
The driver: Jackie Chan as Ryo Saeba
Why it’s so weird: Jackie Chan had a decades-long sponsorship agreement with Mitsubishi, which explains why there was a special edition Lancer Evo IX built with his name on it in the mid-2000s (and why in one movie, he was contractually obligated to change the on-screen name of the E. Honda character during a weird dream sequence where an electrocuted Chan finds himself trapped inside the Street Fighter video game).
It also sheds light on why so many of his movies featured Mitsubishi cars, whether he was playing a cop, a street racer, or a modernized version of Indiana Jones. Although there are a bunch to pick from, we’re going with his ride in City Hunter, where he played a (private) detective driving what was at the time a prototype version of the Mitsubishi 3000GT (then called the HSX after the show car that had debuted a few years earlier). Here’s how much Mitsubishi liked Jackie: they let him take the car home with him at the end of the shoot.
Robocop (1987)
The car: 1987 Ford Taurus LX
The driver: A bunch of doomed Detroit cops, but also Peter Weller as Officer Alex Murphy
Why it’s so weird: There’s really only one reason why the Taurus, a decidedly ordinary (although critically important to Ford) automobile ended up starring in Robocop: director Paul Verhoeven decided it had the right look for his decaying Detroit after a random encounter with one prior to filming. So determined was the Dutch auteur that he cast it despite Ford’s protests to keep it off the set.
Purchased at retail cost and shot flat black, these cars would form the backbone of the entire Robocop franchise, with even the 2014 reboot returning to the well with a lightly-armoured version of the more modern Taurus. Despite this being perhaps the easiest sci-fi car to cosplay, you can probably count the number of Robocop Taurus tributes out there on a single hand.
Men In Black (1997)
The car: 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victoria
The driver: Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K
Why it’s so weird: Product placement was a big thing in the ’90s but that didn’t seem to stop Columbia Pictures from leaving money on the table by casting a squared-off decade-old LTD Crown Victoria as the hero car for the first M.I.B. movie. Memorable for its radically rocket transformation that saw the big-body Ford go from mild to wild in mere seconds, it was a nod to the all-black, anonymous full-size sedans favoured by both law enforcement types and shady UFO enforcers.
Eventually, Mercedes-Benz would back a truckload of cash up to the Columbia loading dock, leading to Will Smith’s Agent J driving a similarly tricked-out E500 in the sequel.
Starsky & Hutch (2004)
The car: 1976 Ford Gran Torino
The driver: Ben Stiller as David Starsky
Why it’s so weird: The early 2000s were rife with ’70s reboots, including this Owen-Wilson-and-Ben-Stiller-fueled re-telling of a TV show most of its target audience were too young to remember. Given that the pair’s ‘Striped Tomato’ Ford was such a big part of the original show, it only made sense the movie would update that with a modern equivalent, say a bright red Ford Mustang, but no. Instead, they simply time-warped the original ’76 Gran Torino into the script so it could drive through a bunch of boxes in alleys, just like old times.
Although Ford actually built replica Striped Tomatoes when the show was still on the air, the studio didn’t use any of them for the film, opting instead to purchase one to use as a template to put together a total of nine shooting models.
Transformers (2007)
The car: 2007 Ford Mustang Saleen S281 Extreme
The driver: Barricade
Why it’s so weird: The first Transformers movie was a hot mess of sponsored placement and modern cars standing in for their original Autobot and Decepticon classics. One of the strangest decisions was to cast Barricade as a police Mustang, which is not really a thing anymore — especially not a Saleen-tuned S281, one of the more niche tuner muscle cars of the time. Barricade was originally an F1 car back in the original cartoon series, so there’s no continuity there, either. It just kind of happened because Ford wrote a check and said ‘we’ve got your Barricade right here.’
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)
The car: 1983 Dodge Ramcharger
The driver: Chuck Norris as J.J. McQuade
Why it’s so weird: This movie was essentially the precursor to the Walker: Texas Ranger TV series. It’s got all of the elements: Chuck Norris playing a Texas Ranger who’s a bit of a loose cannon, and a strong slate of on-screen Dodges, including the hero’s badass Ramcharger. What makes it worthy of inclusion on our, however, is the truck’s unusual supercharger setup.
This is highlighted in a pivotal scene where Norris, buried alive by a bulldozer in an SUV tomb, pours a full beer on his face before flipping a computerized switch that somehow activates the blower. It then generates enough torque to rend the surface of the Earth itself, launching the Ramcharger out straight of the ground and into the arms of justice. No less than 30 seconds later, Norris asks his deputy for another beer.
Dragnet (1987)
The car: 1987 Yugo GV
The driver: Dan Aykroyd as Sgt. Joe Friday
Why it’s so weird: Keep crashing cop cars, and eventually the motor pool gets pissed enough to teach you a lesson. That’s what happened in Dragnet, where Aykroyd’s Joe Friday is finally assigned that butt of all ’80s car jokes, the Yugo.
In the movie, the car had been donated by Yugoslavia to the police department as a way of showing off the latest in Balkan technology. It also gave us lines like “And since having sex in a Yugo was a logistical impossibility, I came to the conclusion that something must be wrong.” That’s solid police work.
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November 15, 2020 at 07:17PM
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Here are the 10 weirdest movie cop cars - Driving
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