The 10 most featured car brands in horror films revealed
If you love a good gory horror film then you'd know that cars are sometimes just as important to the storyline as the masked figure walking the streets at night in the fog holding a knife.With Halloween upon us, it's a great time to sit down and re-watch your favourite horror films to get into the spooky mood. From Freddy Krueger to Michael Myers, their adrenaline pumping haunts on-screen have us both scared and exhilarated. And occasionally a four-wheeled machine is of the spine-chilling action.
Uswitch has done some digging to discover which car brands and models are most commonly featured in these types of movies. Using IMDB, a final seed list of 152,303 popular horror films was sourced by filtering a series of keywords in the horror genre. For every movie contained within the sample, car usage within each movie was also collected and rated from 1 to 5 stars depending on how often the vehicle was featured. Then a weighted average and percentile score for each car make and model was calculated building a top 10 list.
10 most featured car brands in horror films
Car Brand | Score out of 10 | |
1 | Ford | 10.00 |
2 | Chevrolet | 9.79 |
3 | Dodge | 9.59 |
4 | Toyota | 9.38 |
5 | Mercedes-Benz | 9.18 |
6 | Jeep | 8.97 |
7 | Cadillac | 8.77 |
8 | Volkswagen | 8.57 |
9 | Honda | 8.36 |
10 | GMC | 8.16 |
With the US pumping out a high level of horror flicks over the decades along with their love and celebration of the Halloween traditions, it's not surprising that the top three car brands featured in horror films were American car brands.
Ford is the most popular car brand featured in horror films, scoring a perfect 10 out of 10. From Jennifer’s Body to Jigsaw, the car brand appears in 6,037 scary movies. When it comes to car models, the Ford Crown Vic takes top spot. Best known as the police car of choice, its 757 on-screen appearances across various films are likely on the side of the law. Econoline, Mustang, and F Series claim the following three spots featuring a collective 1,229 times.
In a close second is Chevrolet, with 3,540 film appearances. The Chevrolet Impala is the seventh most popular car model to feature in horror films. Its most notable appearance is in the 2001 film Jeepers Creepers. The Impala appears to be the most favoured car by main characters in gory flicks, making 80 on-screen appearances out of 17,567 – more than 58% of which are by protagonists from decapitation horrors (33 significant appearances).
While Dodge comes in third place and is featured in 1,455 movies. The Dodge Ram pickup made the most number of appearances out of the entire brand (119 times on-screen). With plenty of room in the tray to store chainsaws and hefty horsepower, its heavy-duty body appears in films such as Lights Out, Larva and Maniac Cop.
Related: Top five horror cars for Halloween
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