Top five movie getaway cars

There are a lot of choices in the movie pantheon and we’ve got to give William Friedkin the lifetime achievement award for his getaway work in The French Connection, To Live and Die in LA, Jade and – if you're loose about the definition of 'getaway' – Sorcerer.

With that out of the way, here are five automobiles to get you where you wanna be when the rubber has to hit the road because something's hit the fan.

Winner: Split Honda Z in Malcolm

The 1968 comedy Malcolm, directed by Nadia Tass, is an Australian cult classic starring Colin Friels as a guileless tram enthusiast whose inventors' streak gets him mixed up with no-account bank thieves. His modified Honda Z, designed to split apart and bamboozle pursuing cops, has become such an indelible image in Australian moviemaking that it's stored at the National Film and Sound Archive. Though, unfortunately, that one doesn't split. It's the pre-split version that's used in establishing shots – a fully functional version was never made.

Runner-up: Cadillac Miller-Meteor in Ghostbusters

Winner: BMW E34 in Ronin

If movie car chases were spirits, Ronin's would be vodka: pure, unadulterated and a big kick in the pants. Robert De Niro drives a Peugeot 406, pursuing IRA operative Natascha McElhone, who's in a BMW E34, through the streets of Paris in the film's central, seven-minute chase sequence. Director John Frankenheimer was a former amateur racing car driver and it shows in this chase – one of the most realistic committed to film. People drive like they actually drive (if they're mercenaries caught up in a web of intrigue, of course) and the sound design – devoid of music for large stretches – recreates every gear shift and hand-brake turn with throaty accuracy. The most impressive part? All this white-knuckling is generated by two mid-range family sedans. Take note, Fast and Furious franchise.

Runner-up: Dodge Monaco sedan in The Blues Brothers

Winner: Mini Cooper in The Italian Job

Pretty much every list of this sort tips its hat to 1969's The Italian Job. A dorky of-its-time movie containing one of the most timeless car chases ever. Once the titular job is completed, Michael Caine and his team of thieves have to drive Mini Coopers pretty much every place in Rome they can go without asking someone to dinner. Like Ronin, it proves imaginative filmmaking can trump horsepower when it comes to viewers using less of their couch than they paid for.

Runner-up: Mini Mayfair in The Bourne Identity

Winner: Dodge Charger R/T 440 in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

Muscle cars are a mainstay of the getaway sequence. And because the classic Bullitt chase isn't technically a getaway, we had to choose Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. It's a little-known film starring Peter Fonda as a down-on-his-luck NASCAR driver who, in uneasy partnership with his stoic mechanic, pulls a con on the owner of a northern California supermarket. After things turn sour, they have to get away with Fonda's volatile girlfriend in tow, and try to lose a police dragnet in acres of walnut groves. Its early use of helicopter photography makes this sequence innovative as well as unmissable. You know what? Forget Bullitt. This is the connoisseur's choice. Side note: the same 1969 Charger in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is used as the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard.

Runner-up: Mustang GT 5.0 in Drive

Winner: Ford Model 40 Fordor sedan in Bonnie and Clyde

Not all getaways end well. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow would certainly attest to that if they weren't pumped full of lead in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, in 1934. Arthur Penn's 1967 depiction of their story is one of the early warning shots across the Hollywood establishment's bow that culminated in the '70s golden era of The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver and more. A famous film, but one under-recognised as a great showcase of classic '30s automobiles. If you had to pick one out, it's got to be the Ford sedan in which antiheroes Bonnie and Clyde get ambushed by their police pursuers.

Runner-up: Buick Series 90 Limited 8 passenger touring sedan model 90 in The Godfather

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