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Cool Car

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Only the best for the experienced ghost hunters.

"It's the car, right? Chicks love the car."
— Batman, Batman Forever

Heroes need to be able to get to where the action is. And when they have to get from point "A" to point "B", no ordinary vehicle will do. The hero's ride has to be just as unique and awesome as the hero is. Enter a Cool Car!

It looks cool, it goes fast, it might be modified to go even faster, its engine can be expected to make the Most Wonderful Sound, it may even be bulletproof and contain an assortment of weapons and gadgets. A really Cool Car can fly.

Most Cool Cars, even ones that have no inherent super abilities, will be curiously immune to breakdown, physical damage or a realistic fuel range. No matter what manner it is in which the hero drives, as long as he's determined to stay on the straight and narrow and fight for the forces of good, his car shows an Empathic Weapon's ability to never get scratched, dented or even dirty. It may also be able to outperform similar or even superior vehicles simply by virtue of having the hero behind the wheel. Driving one also seems to ensure you'll have Rock Star Parking privileges. If you're really lucky, you'll have a Cool Garage to park it in.

Sometimes, the car is cool enough that it actually can become a protagonist in the series — e.g. KITT in Knight Rider and the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard are arguably the main protagonists of their respective shows and are as iconic to the audience as the human stars. A Car Song is where a Cool Car is the star of a song instead.

When a car literally becomes a character, see Sentient Vehicle. For a living creature that serves as both a vehicle and a character, see Sapient Steed.

A Super-Trope to Pimped-Out Car, Weaponized Car, Hero's Classic Car (a classic car driven by The Hero). A Theme Mobile is a Cool Car that ties into the character's motif in some way (e.g. the Batmobile.)

Contrast The Alleged Car, as well as Rice Burner — but compare What a Piece of Junk. See Improbably Cool Car for cars that are just too cool for the setting or the characters, and Metallicar Syndrome for eye-catching vehicles driven by people who would be better off picking something less conspicuous.

As any car could be considered this in reality, No Real Life Examples, Please!

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • As a general rule, this trope is the norm in any ad for a luxury or performance vehicle, emphasizing how fast it can go or how cool it will make you. There's a reason why, in many countries, regulators restrict just what automakers can put in car ads, or force them to add disclaimers informing viewers that everything they're seeing was done by professional drivers on closed courses.
  • One McDonald's commercial had Ronald driving an invisible car that could rewind time by driving in reverse.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Anpanman has Uncle Jam's Anpanman Go and Shokupanman's van, both of which can do, well, all sorts of things. Shokupanman's van has wheels that are basically extendable legs, and both vehicles can punch and jump.
  • Roger Smith's Griffon in The Big O definitely qualifies. It has surveillance equipment, machine guns, a big beefy engine, and it can change color.
  • The team's car in Black Lagoon is a 1965 Pontiac GTO, and is one of the most well-known, highly sought-after and collectible classic American muscle cars in the world. Not only is it cringe-inducing to see the kind of abuse it gets, but it's valuable enough to where they could sell it and have more than enough money to buy a brand-new car that's faster, more fuel-efficient and more comfortable, but, well, then they wouldn't be driving around a freakin' 1965 GTO.
    • In the first and second seasons, Benny owns a 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T (fitted with a hood from a 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner). Another very valuable and sought-after piece of muscle-car history that is destroyed by Lagoon Company.
  • The Brave Series are no slouches to the trope too, and they overlap with Transforming Mecha as well. A few to list:
  • Cannon Busters: Philly the Kid's ride, Bessie. A coin-operated land yacht of a convertible with a hot magenta paint job that transforms into a bull-themed mecha. As impossible as it seems, it's actually more awesome than it sounds.
  • Death Note gives us Matt's 1967 Chevy Camaro (or in the anime version, a 1968 Plymouth Road-Runner with a taillight panel from a 1969 Dodge Coronet 440, and in some fanworks a 1970 Chevy Chevelle), which he uses to lead Takada's bodyguards on a Chase Scene through Tokyo. It does not end well.
  • Fire Force: The Special Armoured Fire Engine are custom armored fire trucks used by the Special Fire Brigades.
  • Just about every single race car in Future GPX Cyber Formula in its many iterations. The main car, the Asurada series of racers, is able to shapeshift (especially in its much later versions) has 6WD (except for GSX, which has the standard 4 wheels), rocket boosters, active fans for extra downforce and engine cooling, and needs an AI supercomputer to be driven properly. Its rivals over the years are just as colorful, including, but not limited to:
    1. The HG Series (known as Steel/Stil,) a family of electric-powered super-racers that leans like motorcycles into curves.
    2. The Spiegel Series (from the HG family), a windowless racer that has the driver lie in it like a closed-cockpit luge sled.
    3. The Issuxark Series, which has a rotating roter on it.
    4. The Ogre AN-21, which is the Super Prototype to the Al-Zard.
  • GTO: The Early Years: Since they don't have a car for the Valentines' Day Car Parade, Eikichi and Ryuji steal a König Benz car from a mechanic shop, mistakenly thinking it was the Cedric (also stolen) that they'd asked the mechanic to modify to look like a König. Eikichi then modifies it further by making the doors open vertically and adding teeth and eyes to the front.
  • Rally Vincent's 1967 Shelby /GT500KR/ from Gunsmith Cats. The licence plate number has a Blues Brothers Shout-Out: the car number is BRD 529.
  • An expensive Italian sports car makes an appearance in I Am a Hero, driven by two men with an air soft pistol. The trope ends up subverted when their car is too loud and draws the wrong kind of attention from the living dead.
  • Inazma Delivery: has three.
    • First up is Hemmingway's delivery van LightningInazma. At first glance, it's just a cute little yellow van but when Hemmingway gets serious, it suddenly goes from a delivery van to an electrically-charged high-speed cannonball able to take serious damage, and with Hemmingway's driving skills, can even drive on walls and ceilings!
    • Next up is Blacknoir, Catherine's modified 1960 Rolls-Royce Phantom complete with a number of spy gadgets literally under the hood ranging from a mechanical arm to a machine gun to a laser to rockets!
    • And finally GiantJumbo, Ballow's big red delivery transport armed with four excavator arms perfect for pulverizing anything in his way.
  • The Toyota AE 86 Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX (often called the "8-6" for short) from Initial D is a nice subversion: Takumi, arguably the fastest racer in the series, owns possibly the second-most uncool car in the series while beating an armada of EVOs, RX-7s, and R32s. Granted, it was heavily modified halfway into the series, resulting in larger horsepower and lightened weight. It proved so popular it pushed the AE86 (particularly the Trueno liftback configuration) from "old used car" to "sought-after classic" almost singlehandedly - in Japan, it did this before the newest examples were even 10 years old! As a matter of fact, you can also see the original Hachi-Roku in the PS2 iterations of the Gran Turismo series (labeled as the Sprinter Trueno "Shuichi Shigeno" Edition), as well as in Need for Speed: Underground 2 and Carbon (as the Toyota Corolla GT-S).
    • It's really not a bad car, just considered outdated by the majority of racers in the series. Takumi's character model, the original Drift King Keiichi Tsuchiya, started out with this car, and still considers it his favorite. Heck, its Corolla Levin counterpart took part in touring car races before.
    • The award for most uncool car of the series goes to Itsuki's AE85. Itsuki attempts to buy the Corolla Levin variant of Takumi's AE86 and gets ripped off with an authentic POS.
      • Not necessarily Truth in Television. These now being 20-plus-year old cars and engine swaps being easier than extensive rust repair, condition is more important than original spec.
  • In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, King Dedede starts with Escargon driving him around in a military ATV (complete with BFG), but eventually orders a huge old fashioned limousine loaded with gadgets and weapons (described as a 'Demon Beast On Wheels') for an episode of Wacky Racing (in the same episode, Meta Knight races in an old-fashioned Formula 1 car, and Kirby in his spaceship). They crash spectacularly by the end of the episode, but they are seen driving around in the car for the rest of the series.
  • Iina from Kokoro Library drives what appears to be a Volkswagen Schwimmwagen amphibious car used in the second world war by the German army. Hers is white with cute cat print seat covers. The huge rear propeller isn't only for show though, since it functions perfectly fine as a boat.
    • It could be an Amphicar, an actual 1960s-era German car inspired by the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen. Ampicars are cute, collectible, and handle like dogs both on the road and in the water.
      • It could also be a civilian Schwimmwagen. VW supposedly sold some leftover Schwimmvagens on the civilian market after the war.
  • Cousin Yui's Subaru Vivionote  is supposedly this in the Initial D parody in one episode of Lucky Star. She was able to outdrive a Mazda RX-7 FD while driving at 40 km/h (or roughly 25 mph), which is well under the speed limit! The really funny part? She's supposed to be a traffic officer!
    Kagami: What's with the [bleep] D-like driving?!note 
  • Lupin III has two to his name:
    • A Fiat 500, complete with a turbocharger and practically indestructible. It suffers a grenade hit and the only thing destroyed is the glass.
    • While the Fiat has it's charm, it pales in comparison to his other car: The Mercedes-Benz SSK. That sound you just heard was the collective noise of car enthusiasts jaws dropping in unbridled envy. That said, it often and rather hilariously suffers from being a Chronically Crashed Car.
  • The main point of Machine Hayabusa. The protagonist drives an oddly-shaped car propelled by jet engines (and their number keeps increasing throughout the series); each of the cars of his teammates has some trick or distinguishing feature as well, including a flying car. The opponents use more literal examples of Weaponized Cars.
  • Sheryl Nome's Ferrari California in Macross Frontier Nyan Cli, a cool car by definition. Every detail inside and out was exactly drawn, from the 8000 RPM red line tachometer to the shiny Ferrari badges to the six-speed manual shift column. Yes, that's right, Sheryl Nome drives a stick.
    • Intriguingly, of all the first-gen California roadsters produced, only two of them rolled off the production line with the 6-speed manual (and these two were never sold), while the rest of the examples received the 7-speed automated dual-clutch unit instead. Sheryl probably picked a manual because it's badass (or because she's Playing To The Fetishes again).
    • Ozma Lee is seen driving a Lancia Delta Integrale. It may not look as impressive as a Ferrari, but as one of the most sucessful rally cars ever, it definitely qualifies as a cool car.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Fate owns a car which, due to it having the same color scheme as her Intelligent Device. Unfortunately, it isn't a Ferrari Testarossa.
  • Hinako's car in Murciélago.
  • Misato's Renault Alpine A310 in Neon Genesis Evangelion certainly qualifies, even when it's so badly driven.
  • Mikaze from Occult Academy has a flashy car. When Abe sees it he's surprised that a low-key looking waitress like her owns one. He had wanted one since childhood. Mikaze drives very fast, which freaks out Abe.
  • Panty And Stocking With Garter Belt: Panty and Stocking's Hummer H1 named See-Through and Scanty and Kneesocks's G-Wagen limo named G-string are both capable of some very awesome action.
  • In The Perfect Insider anime, Moe Nishinosono's Alfa Romeo 4C qualifies.
  • All the racers in Takeshi Koike's REDLINE are cool cars and then some, from Sweet JP's yellow TRANSAM, to a pink dragster styled to look like a woman lying on her back with her legs in the air, and a giant montrosity where the driver becomes part of the machine.
  • In Riding Bean, Bean Bandit has a stylish car, called the Roadbuster, that not only has a high performance engine that can match most race cars, but it can orient its wheels to move sideways or extend brake blades for extremely rapid stops.
  • Sailor Moon: Haruka (Sailor Uranus) drives a roofless Toyota 2000GT, only two were ever made, as the Cool Car in You Only Live Twice.
  • The G2 in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman not only transforms from a Nissan Skyliner into an awesome-looking racer, it's equipped in later episodes with a Gatling gun.
  • Speed Racer:
    • The Mach 5 is so goddamn cool it's even listed as a Super Robot.
    • Racer X's car, the Shooting Star, while not explicitly equipped with an arsenal of super gadgets, was shown jumping from one clifftop to another in flagrant violation of the Earth's gravity.
    • The Car Acrobatic Team all sported miniature wings which turned them into gliders.
    • The "evil twin" of the Mach 5 had full-blown airplane wings and a jet engine, in addition to a Death Ray.
    • The Mammoth Car was the size of a passenger train, and made of solid gold.
    • The GRX could go faster than human reflexes could handle, necessitating use of V-Gas which reacts badly with water and simultaneously dehydrates the user.
    • The X3 Melange was driven by remote-control (with a robot dummy driver) by the revenge-fueled son of a dead racer.
    • The "assassins", who were clearly ninjas, drove around in ninja cars.
    • In one episode, Speed even test-drove a supersonic rocket car.
  • In Speed Racer X The Mach 5 is, as always, very cool. It used to belong to Go's older brother Kenichi, until he crashed and was assumed dead. After that, Pops installed the Safety Seven System, seven functions, like deploying wires or cutting blades, each activated by pressing the corresponding letter on the Mach 5's steering wheel. During the second story arc, the Mach 5 becomes capable of traveling through time when its velocity reaches 555 km/hr.
  • Supercar Gattiger is all about its title Cool Car.
  • Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu essentially runs on this trope, with all of the heroes driving various cars, which can become Humongous Mecha.
  • In Wangan Midnight, Akio Asakura drives a heavily-tuned vintage Nissan Fairlady Z (specifically, a model that was sold as the Datsun Z on this side of the Pacific Rim), known widely as the "Devil Z" for a very good reason.
    • Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2 and its sequels let you drive a Toyota HiAce. Which is a van. That, like any other car, can be tuned to upwards of 800 horsepower.
    • The real car is a true two-seater,note  the anime car has conveniently grown spacious back seats.
    • She either has two, one left-hand drive and one right-hand drive, or an animator flipped over the cel.
  • You're Under Arrest! being Kosuke Fujishima's giant love letter to the motoring universe, is chock full of various cool cars and cool bikes:
    • Oshou's E.R.A. Mini Turbo is a fastest original Mini around that was produced serially, and, officially rated at 185 kph, is basically on par with the legendary Mini Cooper of The '60s.
    • Miyuki's extensively modified and tuned Toyota S800.
    • The girls mini-patrol car may look like a stock Honda Today from the outside, but Miyuki has modified it no less than her own S800 — As per the build sheet◊, its 2-cylinder engine had its factory single-cam cylinder head replaced with a custom twin-cam head, and its block bored out from 547cc to 800cc. To help it breathe better, a higher-flow 2-barrel Weber carburetor, as well as a TD025 turbocharger and matching intercooler were installed. Top it off with a nitrous oxide injection system, and all these engine mods combine to boost the engine's power output from 31BHP to more than double that, at EIGHTY BHP. Helping to put all that power to the ground as well as help it turn and stop better are improved brakes, strengthened suspension, and better tires, making it arguably the fastest Today ever existing.
    • Chie Sagamiouno's patrol Carrera, which was actually bought to her by her father.

    Comedy 
  • Bill Cosby talked about the car that Fat Albert had growing up, Erich, started as the hull of a 1941 Mercury. Fat Albert spent all his money on restoring it, but instead of a regular engine, he bought a Cessna Airplane engine. This gave the car a very unique sound, and quite a bit of power, that he and all his friends loved.
    • Cosby also talked about a custom car he had built which went over 200 MPH, with automatic transmission, 900 Horse Power, was 427 cubic inches, and had dual superchargers, horsepower, engines, wheels, steering wheels, glove compartments, dual everything.

    Comic Books 
  • The Batmobile from Batman, in its various incarnations, has come to define this trope to the point where any character's cool car may be dubbed the (Character's Name)-mobile (real-world example: the famous "Popemobile"). Just to let you know, the Batmobile (nicknamed "The Tumbler") in Batman Begins is a Lamborghini Gallardo-Hummer H2 crossover. When Lt. Gordon gets a view of the Batmobile, he says:
    Lt. Gordon: I gotta get me one of those.
    • The Batmobile in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns was a Cool Tank.
    • Various non-comic versions of the Batmobile are in the Film and Western Animation sections.
    • Tim Drake's Robin had the Redbird. An armored sports car designed to shift some panels and blend in with civilian cars at the push of a button that was equipped with some of the same gadgets as the Batmobile.
  • Crossed is a series about "zombies" who are intelligent enough to drive, lack any inhibition, and love theatrical violence. In the webcomic arc "Wish You Were Here", this combination of traits leads a group to acquire some sort of generic European super car which they drive to a hospice to viciously 'buggerkill' the sick and elderly residents.
  • In Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Paperinik (Donald Duck superhero alter ego) started using a modified version of his 313 able to fly. Then when he was upgraded to Paperinik New Adventures he got the Pi-kar which not only can fly, but it's ironclad, can repair itself, change form to be disguised and has too many features to be listed here.
  • Since Green Arrow originally followed in the footsteps of Batman, it's no surprise that he drove around in the Arrowcar. note  After Oliver lost his fortune, the Arrow-Car became too expensive to keep and he decided to destroy it.
  • Especially in the Golden Age, a lot of super-heroes had Cool Cars. Star-Spangled Kid had one in spite of not actually being old enough to drive.
  • During the Silver Age, The Flash had an enemy called the Fiddler who was a lame villain at best, but he's worthy of mention for having the most absurd-looking vehicle in the history of comic books: a car shaped like a giant violin.
  • Jet Dream and her Stunt-Girl Counterspies drive a variety of sports cars laden with all manner of gadgetry, including machine guns, rear-mounted "stench bomb" launchers, and an Awesome, but Impractical (and quite large) TV camera with a zoom lens on a boom extending from the trunk such that Petite can see the faces of the bad guys chasing her on a dashboard-mounted screen.
  • Jen's 1958 Corvette in The Maze Agency.
  • Phantom Lady's Phantom — A car that could shroud itself in dark. Arguably kind of dangerous but....
  • Best of the lot: Vic Sage's red Volkswagen Beetle in Denny O'Neill's run on The Question. It was a bog-standard old-school Beetle, but modified so that, under the bonnet, there was a honking great V-8 engine...
  • Almost every car used in Sin City is a vintage car with many main characters discussing their love for them. Frank Miller has mentioned that Sin City was spawned from an excuse to draw things he considered cool, such as old cars.
  • The Turbotraction Turbot-Rhino I and its successor were the cool cars owned by Spirou and Fantasio. André Franquin's backgrounds were populated by great representations of actual cars of the The '50s and The '60s. The Turbotraction, which was his design, blended in perfectly with the 'real' cars as it was based on rocket car concepts of that era. Part of its coolness was the realism with which it was portrayed (and it was really fast because of some sort of jet engine and had a magic roof, too). After the comic was taken over by other artists, Spirou and Fantasio's rides were 'real' and mundane cars, although very likely chosen for their unique design as well.
  • Diabolik uses a black Jaguar E-Type. Diabolik being Crazy-Prepared he immediately replaced the engine with a more powerful one and added bulletproof armor, and after Ginko hit it with his own Cool Car (a Citroën DS and managed to arrest him (keeping him in for about two days) he started adding gadgets.
  • The black and white 1960 DeSoto Adventurer used by Sam & Max: Freelance Police. It's versatile, practically invincible, and can get literally anywhere in the world in seconds (They got to the moon at one point by stuffing the exhaust pipe with matches). In the Telltale Games, it gets possessed by a demon but is no worse for wear.
  • Spider-Man: This trope was spoofed and subverted in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #126, in which a car company gave Spidey the Spider-Mobile for publicity reasons. It was a dune-buggy that could race up walls and came complete with web-cannons. Since Spidey can webswing and crawl up walls on his own, he saw no reason to take it except for the paycheck the company gave him for their product placement. The vehicle was destroyed in the same story. It's been built, rebuilt, and in Spider-Man/Deadpool got a new paint job courtesy of Deadpool to make it the "Dead-Buggy". During The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott), Peter got himself another Spider-Mobile, this one a little more sleeker and with more toys. He lost this along with the rest of Parker Industries during Secret Empire.
  • In the German comic Werner: The Metülisator, a car with a radial engine from a World War II warbird(!) running on methyl alcohol.
    • And the Regentenschüssel, the heavily customized 1975 Oldsmobile 98 Regency featured in the fourth movie, Gekotzt wird später!
    • Nobelschröder's Bentley Blower counts too. After all, it can keep up with the 1,500hp Metülisator in Wer bremst hat Angst!
  • Jack Tenrec, the protagonist in Xenozoic Tales (later an animated series called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) lived in a post-apocalyptic future and, in his main job as a mechanic, restored late 1940s & early 1950s Cadillacs and converted them to run on methane generated from dinosaur dung. Fortunately there were plenty of dinosaurs roaming around so running out of fuel was not a concern.

    Fan Works 
  • Cycles Upon Cycles: The Piranha. Originally a Hellion chassis, it swaps out the flamethrower for a dual auto-cannon scavenged from a Goliath, has had its frame and engine modified to be whisper-quiet, and has a sensor suite that allows it to detect cloaked enemies. It can hold two normal-sized people, or a single Marine in full armor.
  • Evangelion 303: Shinji owns a 1963 Corvette red convertible. When she sees it, Asuka asks "How much are they paying you?"
  • Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox: The Hyuga family has a white limousine, which Naruto can't help but admire when he sees it for the first time. Also, for his own personal ride Neji has a dark blue two-seat Porsche Boxter.
  • Profesor Layton Vs Jack The Raper gives Watari the Watarimobile, which is compared to a "supper-car", and it cannot be chased due to being "invincibile".
  • Vale's Underground: Mob boss Cinder drives a red Ferrari that she is very proud of having. She even tells Mercury that she'd kill him if he ended up crashing it. (And chances are she's not exaggerating.)
  • Zootopia 2 The Movie: Nick and Judy are given a fresh out of production police vehicle called a Police Truck, which resembles a fire truck only white with red and blue accents, sirens, a large movable claw on top plus a grappling hook in a small port on the front of it.

    Films — Animation 
  • Cruella de Vil's roadster in 101 Dalmatians. It steers like a brick (or Cruella is a terrible driver who bribed her way into getting a driver’s license) and the roof and hood fly off like it's paper near the end, but it still pulls off the oh-so-sinister Rich Bitch look.
  • In The Bad Guys (2022), Mr. Wolf's getaway car is a jet black muscle car that resembles a mix between a Chevy Camaro and a Dodge Challenger. And being a Badass Driver, Mr. Wolf shows just what it's capable of. Its replacement in the mid-credits scene, a convertible version with yellow Crimson Paw stripes, also counts.
  • Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Not only does the Batmobile appear, but so does the Turtles' Party Wagon. Both cars get to show off their awesomeness.
  • The entire cast of Cars.
  • Despicable Me: Gru's giant smoke-spewing and road hogging airship/tank makes Hummers look inconspicuous and eco-friendly.
  • In Home (2015), Oh makes a few modifications to Tip's car so it can fly, which apparently made it semi-sentient, as its expression is shown to change occasionally.
  • The Incredibile from The Incredibles. Too bad it was only seen in the opening. His black sports car is stylish, with elements of the Mercedes 300SL, Jaguar E-Type and Corvette Stingray mashed together.
    • It does, however, make a comeback in Incredibles 2 where it's revealed that Bob has a remote for the vehicle that can activate all of its features, including its ability to transform into a boat. And he gets a new Incredibile by the end of the film, this one having a red color scheme.
  • Megamind's invisible car. Awesome, but Impractical, since he forgot where he parked it and lost track of it for weeks!
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, DJ Pon-3 drives a really rad convertible that is able to transform into an equally sweet DJ station.
  • In Oliver & Company, the evil Loan Shark Sykes actually drives a giant black car whose hood ornament is shaped like a leaping Doberman Pinscher (guess which animals he owns as pets!), and in the climax, it can actually shred apart its own tires so that he can drive on rails!
  • Il Tempo Gigante from Pinchcliffe Grand Prix. The other cars in the race are also cool, but not quite up to the same level as the protagonists' car.
  • A similar-looking car makes an appearance at the very beginning of The Rescuers, where it is now driven by Madame Medusa.
  • McLeach's half-track bushwacker in The Rescuers Down Under, which is absolutely monstrous. It even has a built-in rocket launcher and a crane!
  • Speaking of wagons, the Reptar Wagon from The Rugrats Movie is, as Stu Pickles described it, the "perfect children's toy". Seriously, besides being designed as the eponymous dinosaur himself, the Reptar Wagon is a multifunctional ATV with flashlight headlight eyes, mechanical moving claws and can automatically double out as a flotation boat via "Aqua Reptar" mode. And, to top it off, it's voiced by Busta Rhymes in a Darth Vader-esque voice. Now Defictionalized!
  • The Patty Wagon in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie is pretty cool. It can drive even though it's just a stack of unattached pieces, some of which probably aren't even mechanical, and every part of it is fast food-themed. It runs on frying oil, its wheels are pickle slices, it has actual sesame seeds, etc. Most notably, despite SpongeBob himself having repeatedly failed his driving test and lacking a proper license, "you don't need a license to drive a sandwich," so he can operate it perfectly competently.
  • Wreck-It Ralph: Sugar Rush being a racing game, the racers' karts are as integral to the game as they are, although how they manage to hold up when they're made of candy, ice cream, peppermints, marshmallows, and (in one case) a giant hollowed-out popsicle is anyone's guess.
  • At the end of Zootopia, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde get issued an interceptor vehicle to track down a street racer in their first assignment together. It's a long distance from her meter maid cart.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 2012 has the sports cars in Yuri's plane which include a Lotus Elise, Lamborghini Gallardo, Porsche Carrera GT and a Bentley Continental that they use to escape the crash.
  • In Two-Lane Blacktop, the two main protagonists are street racers who tour the country in a monster Chevy 150 painted primer-grey. One of them is responsible for driving it, while the other maintains it. They get challenged to a cross-country race by a man in a cherry 1970 Pontiac GTO.
  • 48 Hrs. has Reggie Hammond's Porsche 356 (replica) convertible, in contrast to Jack Cate's 1964 Cadillac Coupe deVille ragtop.
  • The Jet Car from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Seriously, Banzai drove it through a mountain!
  • Every car in American Graffiti.
  • In Angels Revenge (aka Angels Brigade), the team of "angels" puts together a van that looks like a rip-off from the A-Team, except that this movie was made before the A-Team.
  • The Deathmobile in National Lampoon's Animal House.
  • The DeLorean in the Back to the Future film trilogy. The version in Back to the Future The Animated Series had even more gadgets attached.
    Doc Brown: The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?
    • The best part of this is that the actual DeLoreans were dogged by controversial business practices and mechanical failures, but the BTTF DeLorean was so cool it saved the car's reputation in popular culture. It even got a limited-run of replicas!
  • Bad Boys II has the Ferrari 550 Maranello and the Hummer H2.
  • Every Batman film...
    • The 1966 Batmobile is still cool.
    • The Tim Burton Batman films introduced an armored version, but kept the jet exhaust from the TV series. In Batman Returns, we learn that it can also become a narrower, more streamlined version called the Batmissile in order to fit through more narrow spaces like alleyways.
    • The first Joel Schumacher film had it more skeletal-looking with blue lighting.
    • In The Dark Knight Trilogy, Bruce Wayne owns several sports convertibles as part of his "billionaire playboy" cover he uses to hide from others the fact that he is Batman. In Batman Begins, when he is complimented by the valet while showing up at a Wayne Enterprises dinner, he merely tells the guy, "You should see my other one," referring to the Tumbler. In The Dark Knight, Bruce gets a Lamborghini Murciélago (which must mean a lot to Bruce because the car name is Spanish for "bat"). In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce uses the Murciélago's successor, the Aventador. There is a funny scene early in the movie where Selina Kyle kisses Bruce, in the process palming his valet ticket, then steals his car by pretending to be his wife. The sly grin on her face when we see her behind the wheel of the Aventador sells it.
    • Say what you want about the movie, but the Batmobile in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a sleek monster, forgoing the usual black for a gray coloring and a little more heavier to deal with Batman's more darker mindset in the film. When it reappeared in Justice League, it was outfitted with heavier firepower to deal with Steppenwolf and his Parademons.
    • The Batmobile in The Batman (2022) is far less spectacular than previous iterations. It's effectively just a heavily armored muscle car with a rear-mounted jet engine - aside from the tires and the engine, the vehicle looks like it was built piecemeal from whatever Bruce could find, and even the center console looks like it was made from assorted aftermarket components. That said, underestimating the machine would be a very stupid thing to do.
      • While the car may not look impressive, the way it sounds more than makes up for it.
  • In Battletruck, the town's mechanic Rusty rigs an armored VW Bug for Hunter to use in the climactic battle.
  • Bedazzled (2000): As part of the Devil's attempts to sway Elliot into selling his soul she offers him a lift in her Lamborghini Diablo, which even comes with the Vanity License Plate "BAD 1". Elliot was pretty skeptical of her but the car does start to win him over.
  • The old police cruiser used by The Blues Brothers is emblematic of the brothers' style and situation. It is strongly implied that the brothers are indeed on a Mission from God, as the car survives numerous mishaps and displays near-magical powers right up until the moment said mission no longer requires its presence, whereupon it literally falls to pieces on the sidewalk.
  • The titular car in the 2003 thriller, Black Cadillac.
  • Pick a Bond film, any Bond film.
  • Sam Lowry's car in Brazil - actually a Messerschmitt KR200 - is cool in a similar way to the Steve Urkel/Family Matters example mentioned in Live Action TV, and sometimes shows up at UK car shows.
  • The pedal cars from Bugsy Malone. What kid wouldn't want one of those?
  • Bullitt's incredibly badass 1968 Ford Mustang 390 CID Fastback, although it sports no gadgets or gimmicks, is one of the oldest ones in the book, as is the 1968 Dodge Charger R/T he chases around San Francisco.
  • The California Kid has Michael's souped-up car with flames painted on the sides. Almost everyone who sees it comments on how cool it is, and the local teenagers are delighted when Michael lets them drive it.
  • Cannonball features a cross-country road race. Entrants include two identical Pontiac Firebirds, a Dodge Charger, C3 Corvette Stingray, DeTomaso Pantera, Lincoln Mark III, and a modified van. Later, one of the Firebirds crashes and the driver switches to a '69 Mustang.
  • The Red Skull's six-wheeled Hydra Coupé in Captain America: The First Avenger. Scratch it at your own risk. This was inspired by the real six-wheeled Mercedes W31 G4, which was created specifically as an off-road limo for high-ranking Nazis and Wehrmacht officers.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier sequel had Nick Fury driving around in a SHIELD issued SUV, complete with armor, an AI, BFG, a med-kit, and it apparently had flight capability but it was damaged in an attack.
  • The eponymous vehicle in the horror movie The Car. Just because the thing is a driverless Satanic serial killer doesn't mean it can't be cool.
  • The Lazarus was a top of the line luxury car even before it became a sentient murder machine in The Car: Road to Revenge.
  • The 1976 film version of Carrie upgrades Billy's car from a beat-up '61 Chevrolet Biscayne in the original novel to a ruby-red '67 Chevy Chevelle. The 2002 TV remake gives him a customized Chevy pickup, while the 2013 remake gives him a '71 Pontiac GTO. The car is used to try and run Carrie down during the climax (by Billy's girlfriend Chris in the '76 film, by Billy himself in the other versions), and given Carrie's Psychic Powers, it doesn't end well. Given who Billy and Chris were, the only thing anybody is feeling sorry for in that scene is the car.
  • The spiked VW Beetle in The Cars That Ate Paris
  • Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle had lots of cool cars, and a special featurette on the DVD to showcase them all.
  • Ditto the Plymouth Fury in Christine.
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang herself, who possesses buoyancy and flight capabilities.
    • Buddy also gets a sweet 1968 Camaro, probably for visual contrast with Christine.
  • Cleopatra Jones has a black and silver Corvette Stingray with mag wheels, an automated hatch roof to keep tall people from breaking their necks getting in and out, a cassette player (~$200 in 2015 dollars) and a mobile phone (~$890 in 2015 dollars) plus a gun storage rack in the passenger-side door.
  • The so called "Durango 65" from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, actually an M-505 Adams Brothers Probe 16 - a super limited edition (only 3 were ever built) supercar built in England in 1969. The car was specifically chosen by Kubrick based on how cool and futuristic it was. It's main party piece was the fact that it was so low (only 86 cm or 34 inches in height) that it couldn't use normal doors, instead driver and passenger ingressed via an electric sliding glass roof.
  • Malloy's car in Con Air.
    Malloy: Beautiful?! Sunsets are beautiful. Newborn babies are beautiful. This? This is fucking spectacular!
  • The titular hero of Disney's Condorman persuades the CIA to build him a Bond-esque racecar that: starts out disguised inside a rickety truck; boasts rockets, mines, a flamethrower, and a blast shield, among other toys; and converts into a hydrofoil for ocean travel. He gets a Cool Boat later in the film, too.
  • Death Proof features several cool cars, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Charger, Chevy Nova.
  • Almost every car in Death Race
  • Ironically, Drive (2011) had very little driving compared to many movies that feature a "driver" as the main character, but it did have a couple pretty cool cars in the main chase sequence: a black 5th Gen (second body style) Mustang and a modern Chrysler 300. One must also remember the Impala SS used by the Driver at the very beginning of the film.
  • Every car in Drive Angry.
  • Dumb and Dumber has the Shaggin Wagon, a car that looks like a dog. It's even necessary to raise the leg in order to fuel! Even though they lose it halfway through the movie, the Animated Adaptation has them with it again (where it's nicknamed Otto) and the sequel's poster features the car, implying they'll get it back.
  • Elvira in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) has the Macabremobile. It was later featured in Counting Cars.
  • The 1985 Argentine film Esperando la Carroza(Waiting The Hearse) has the Antonio Musicardi's beige Mazda RX-7 (SA22C), a Japanese car that became common to find in Argentina in the 80's which is the main source of memetic catchphrases like "Ahí lo tenés al pelotudo" ("Here you have the fool") and "Qué miseria, che, tres empanadas para dos personas" (What a misery, chenote  three empanadas for two people).
  • The film Eye of the Tiger is worth watching because of only three things: Gary Busey being a badass, Yaphet Kotto being his Token Black Friend, and the bulletproof, heavily-armed Dodge Ram that Gary Busey's character gets as a favor for saving a Cartel member in prison, and which he uses to totally annihilate a group of psycho bikers terrorizing his town.
  • "The Beast," a modified truck driven by the kangaroo poachers in Fair Game.
  • The Fast and the Furious is a series runneth over with Cool Cars so hard, they're pretty much about this trope. Just pick a car, any car. Except for the Chevelle and the Ferraris, being the former apparently uncool and the latter portrayed as "already awesome", all these cars are rigged with the most powerful, badass engine upgrades in the world, enough to make them run like Formula 1 cars, and on top of that, all of them are equipped with bangin' sound systems, neon lights, all sorts of sophisticated control computers (except for the muscle cars, of course, which rely on good ol' humongous block), LCD monitors, and, of course, a lot of Nitro Boost. The list includes:
    1. Two sleek Ferraris (TFATF, 2F2F).
    2. Four Mitsubishis with an awesome paint job (all movies: two were Evolutions (VII and VIII) and two were Eclipses).
    3. Three RX-7s (all movies).
    4. A Dodge Charger (TFATF).
    5. A Chevrolet Camaro (2F2F).
    6. A 1970 Dodge Challenger (2F2F).
    7. A Chevrolet Monte Carlo in primer (Tokyo Drift).
    8. A Dodge Viper (Tokyo Drift).
    9. Two Nissan Skylines (2F2F, Tokyo Drift).
    10. A Nissan Fairlady 350Z and Silvia (Tokyo Drift).
    11. A green Volkswagen Touran (Tokyo Drift).
    12. A 1967 Ford Mustang with a Nissan Skyline engine (Tokyo Drift).
    13. Several Nissan GT-Rs (Fast Five, Furious 6).
    14. Two Koenigsegg CCXRs (Fast Five).
    15. Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SV (Fate of the Furious).
    16. And the list keeps going on and on and on...
  • Ferris Bueller's Day Off: The 1961 Ferrari 250GT California.
    Cameron: Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring this car. It is his love. It is his passion...
    Ferris: It is his fault he didn't lock the garage.
    Cameron: Ferris, what're you talking about?
    Ferris: Whoo!
    Cameron: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.
    Ferris: A man with his priorities so out of whack doesn't deserve such a fine automobile.
    Cameron: No. No! Apparently, you don't understand!
    Ferris: [ignoring Cameron] Wow.
    Cameron: Ferris, he never drives it! He just rubs it with a diaper!
    • And then he destroys it at the end. The car is worth between 5 and 10 million dollars - depending on how much a person is willing to spend.note 
  • Played straight in Gattaca: Despite being set in the future, it features, because of Rule of Cool, a Rover 3.5 l, a Studebaker Avanti, a Jaguar E-Type Superlight and for maximum coolness a Citroën DS Convertible. All of them seemed to be powered not by the original combustion engines but by some sort of turbine or electrical motor.
  • Subverted in 2008's Get Smart. The Tiger Sunbeam Don Adams drove in the first few seasons was part of a Cold War museum display, and after Smart (Steve Carell)'s Prison Break, he takes it to try to catch the bad guys. Unfortunately, though, it runs out of gas shortly thereafter, leaving him needing to find other transportation. Other cars from the series (an Opel GT and Volkswagen Karmann Ghia) also appear in the movie.
  • The Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters and its related material. It may be a bit of a subversion, as the model of car used was shown to be old and junky (and generally used as a hearse, i.e., to transport dead bodies for burial), yet it is still considered a cool car due to its visually striking appearance.
  • Eleanor from Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) (and most of the other cars being stolen are pretty darned cool, too).
  • The green Gran Torino from, well... Gran Torino is an awesome car that kicks off the plot for being too damn cool (aka Theft Bait)
  • Greased Lightning!
  • The villain's Auburn and the hero's Duesenberg in The Great Gatsby (2013). Both were Anachronism Stew for the movie.
  • The villain's Hannibal 8 and the hero's Leslie Special in The Great Race. Both were custom-made for the movie.
  • The Gumball Rally and The Cannonball Run movies: Cool cars in cross country races: Some were just born cool (Shelby Cobra, Ferrari Daytona, Lamborgini Countach) while others (The souped-up Dodge Ambulance) had coolness thrust upon them.
  • After Harold's mother in Harold and Maude gets rid of his hearse, hoping he will let go of his obsession with the grave, she gets him a Jaguar XK-E. Which he then turns into a hearse.
  • Harper drove a Porsche Speedster - as befits the low-rent detective, it's painted a couple shades of primer (and presumably, in the mid-1960s, Speedsters were still affordable for low-rent detectives).
  • Every car driven by Will Smith in I Am Legend.
  • Michael Korben's Lotus Esprit in If Looks Could Kill.
  • Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie had plenty of these. A lot of them are Audis.
  • Pretty much all the cars in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for their mid-century flash, but especially Dick Shawn's '62 Dodge - as he furiously drives it while blubbering for his mama, he gets it airborne over a road dip.
  • John Wick loves his American muscle cars, starting with the 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 he drives at the start of the film. He loves that car so much, in fact, that his wife's dying note to him has to specifically mention that "the car doesn't count" when explaining "something to love" as her parting gift. The theft of the car is one of the plot devices in the film's Inciting Incident.
    • As a complementary replacement, the chop-shop owner provides Wick a loaner Chevelle SS 396. The staff of the Continental also gift him a modern V8 Charger, which he uses in the final chase scene.
  • The protagonist of Kate steals a car for a chase scene. It's kitted out with aftermarket neon and stereo to impress onlookers, but likely not to improve performance.
  • The pussy wagon in the Kill Bill is an obvious example to this trope.
  • The Last Stand has two: first is the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 which is used by Cortez; the second is Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 which Ray uses to chase after him at the climax of the film.
  • Centauri's car in The Last Starfighter took the angular wedge design of the DeLorean, then made it a transforming Flying Car and Cool Starship.
  • The Last Witch Hunter has Aston Martin Rapide which Kaulder uses frequently in the present.
  • The Car (and Nemo's Cool Boat) are probably reasons to watch the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie in and of themselves.
  • Steve McQueen could only out-cool the Mustang by using a real racing car - hence the Le Mans movie in 1970. His timing was fortunate since the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512, two of the coolest cars ever and frankly the main reason for watching the film at all, were outlawed by new rules in 1972 and Le Mans cars were much less cool for many years.
  • Herbie the Volkswagen Beetle from The Love Bug and its sequels. Even though the Última Edición version, with its marginal 50-70 hp, is the most powerful version ever made (a stock 1963 model- Herbie's Canon age- had 40 hp), it still manages to be as powerful as a stock car.
    • Notice, however, that thanks to the Beetle's extremely light weight (~750 kg / 1650 lb) it is possible to turn an ordinary Beetle into something as fast as a stock car without having to use a huge engine.
    • Rally-racing Beetles have usually 100-120 hp engines, rarely 150 hp, and they are stripped down to about 650 kg. They outrun Vipers in the twisties. And out-accelerate them in straight lines.
    • Reportedly, the version of Herbie used in the track racing scenes was stripped down and outfitted with a Porsche 911's flat-6.
    • More than a few impressive-looking racing cars appear throughout the series. Plus, Herbie’s evil twin, Horace, looks strikingly malevolent.
  • "The Last of the V-8 Interceptors", or also known as the "Pursuit Special", the 1973 Ford XB Falcon, in the first, second and the fourth Mad Max films. One of the most understated cars on this page but one of the greatest for it.
    • In Mad Max: Fury Road, while the majority of the action is based on a Big Badass Rig, Immortan Joe's Gigahorse - a pair of 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Villes merged into one overengineered, double-engined monstrosity - is so awesome you almost forget that its owner has no redeeming features.
  • The vehicles used by the elite unit in Megaforce are these - featuring camouflage and some serious firepower.
  • The Ford LTD from Men in Black appears to be uncool at first.
    • J even notes that the MIB have "unlimited technology from around the galaxy, and [they] have to drive around in a Ford POS". He eats his words when it comes time to push the little red button on the stick shift...
    • J's Mercedes in the sequel is a nice upgrade.
    • Agent H's 2003 Audi in Men in Black: International is not too shabby either. It's a literal "rolling arsenal".
  • Mission: Impossible Film Series: IMF agents, and their targets at high level events, occasionally get to drive very nice cars. The franchise has a partnership with BMW that has resulted in some very nice Beamers appearing in the films.
  • Speaking of cool ambulances, Mother's customized Chevy in Mother, Jugs & Speed.
  • The custom-built monster truck in Monster Man. Behind the scenes it was actually unusable for actual driving, as it was hard to steer and ran on expensive rocket fuel.
  • The 1959 DeSoto Firesweep in Mystery Date (1991).
  • Rikkert's Opel Manta B in New Kids: Turbo and Nitro.
  • Pixels has four color-coded Mini Coopers fitted with photon fields to fight giant Pac-Man. They even have custom license plates identifying them as Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde.
  • The Cadillac limo used by Lee Marvin in Prime Cut
  • Played with in Revenge of the Pink Panther with the Silver Hornet. For 5 seconds, it's an incredibly cool-looking car ... then it falls completely apart.
  • The Ramones arrive at their concert in a cool, possibly custom, pink Cadillac convertible, and Eaglebauer provides Tom with a cool custom Chevy Van as a part of his date package in Rock 'n' Roll High School.
  • Rolling Vengeance: When a family of evil hicks kills a man's entire family and rapes his girlfriend, normally he would just pick up a gun in order to get even. But not Joey Russo, who decides to build, all by himself, a bulletproof monster truck and proceeds to (mostly) literally flatten his enemies.
  • The movie Smokey and the Bandit prominently featured the badass new 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am Special Edition, which went on to sell like hotcakes thanks to the film.
  • Balthazar's car in The Sorcerer's Apprentice can change according to his whims. Naturally, it gets cool.
  • It's not precisely theirs (any more than it is all American taxpayers'), but John & Russell drive the world's coolest GMC RV, aka the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, in Stripes.
  • Stroker Ace features the red, ninth generation Ford Thunderbird that Stroker drives, which looks much sleeker compared to the other '80s period race cars.
  • The lifted, nitrous oxide-boosted, bulletproof 1988 Silverado 2500 driven by Tango and Cash, featuring an on-board computer, mounted machine gun, and 120mm cannon.
    Tango: What is that?
    Cash: That is an RV from Hell. Care to join me?
  • The Team America Hummer, in all its star-spangled glory. It even has hidden weaponry for when that terrorist just needs to get taken care of.
  • From the Transformers Film Series of Transformers: Bumblebee as a fifth generation Chevrolet Camaro, Jazz as the Pontiac Solstice, Sideswipe the Corvette Stingray Anniversary concept, and in the third film, a Ferrari 458 Italia. There's also the Wreckers, a trio of NASCAR cars that combine this with More Dakka.
  • Frank Martin of The Transporter has used a few these, including a one-off manual BMW E38 750i—or 735i; depends on the interpretation of Tarconi's accent—(the first film), an Audi A8 L, a Lamborghini Murcielago (both in the second) and a W12-powered Audi A8 (the third movie).
  • The Looney Tunes: Back in Action movie had a double subversion of this trope. The first car Brendan Fraser and Daffy find in Timothy Dalton's garage is a beat-up old Gremlin which barely makes it out of the driveway. About a minute after they leave, however, the floor of the garage flips over and a stereotypical spy car is revealed, complete with Bond-esque musical sting.
  • Undercover Brother. The title character's Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with built-in tape launcher and slick sprayer.
  • Vanishing Point essentially starred an Alpine White 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T.... and Barry Newman.
  • Say what you will about Son of the Mask, but even The Nostalgia Critic admits that the car that Tim (as the Mask) drives at the end, when he's trying to catch up with Loki to get his son back, is made of 100% insta-win awesome.
    • Loki's black and green '66 Ford Mustang Coupe can also apply. Its license plates (that say "Low Key") even have flame designs on them.
  • Xander Cage's car in xXx is cool squared. Not only is it a '67 Pontiac GTO, it's also stuffed with enough weaponry and gadgetry for more than half a dozen James Bond movies.
  • A Cool Ship on wheels picks up the main character from the airport in Waking Life. The painted visual effects make it appear to cruise just as smooth as if it were on water (even without chemical assistance for the viewer).
  • The Woman in Red: The limousine Teddy and Charlotte ride in to her apartment.
  • The Wraith . An unnaturally cool car.

    Literature 
  • The Three Investigators rode around in a gold Rolls-Royce, complete with a cool chauffeur, Worthington.
  • Black Trip has a city full of these, every car is some sort of a mutant '70ies Detroit barge in a sorry state but full working order.
  • James Bond
    • Bond drove a series of Bentleys and a modified Aston Martin in the original Ian Fleming novels.
    • In Thunderball, Bond drives "the most selfish car in England," which he calls "my locomotive;" a Mark II Continental Bentley that Bond buys from a salvage yard, has Rolls fit with a Mark IV engine "with 9.5 compression" and twin two-inch pipe exhausts, and has Mulliners (a now-defunct custom auto body manufacturer) put on a 2 seater rough grey convertible body with black morocco upholstery.
    • Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter drove an old Cord in one novel, and a Studillac (a real car, a 1953-era Studebaker coupe-turned-roadster with a powerful Cadillac engine) later on in Diamonds Are Forever.
    • In John Gardner's novels, starting with Licence Renewed, Bond drove a tricked-out Saab 900 that was later nicknamed the "Silver Beast".
  • John Lanchester uses expensive cars in Capital in much the same way as Fitzgerald: as a symbol of the wealthy characters' materialism and Conspicuous Consumption.
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of the eponymous novel (and film). Written by - who else? - Ian Fleming.
  • The 1970 Charger in Demon Road. First impressions were that it was nice, though one can somewhat feel Amber's eyeroll (or just disinterest) as Milo turns to Car Porn while describing the machine. Always shiny in the morning, even though Milo is never seen to wash it, looks badass and Amber has to admit it is impressive when it is first started in the book, her pulse quickening as Milo revs the car. It repairs itself after a brutal Car Fu battle with a pickup, which ended when the targets tossed a Molotov cocktail on the bonnet and sprayed the car with automatic fire, and tortures anyone who tries to take it (to death, if you leave it long enough, presumably.) Also it is digesting an undead serial killer in the boot by this time. The car is Milo's daemonic symbiote and has been since he was the urban legend known as the Highway Ghost.
  • DFZ: Nik's vintage manual sports car, which runs on gasoline and has no onboard AI. Nik insists that it's purely practical (no AI means nothing to get hacked, high performance means he can catch or escape anything he wants), but he gets embarrassed when Opal asks if he named it.
  • The standard Cool Car in Kim Newman's Diogenes Club stories is the Rolls Royce ShadowShark, only five of which were ever made. Dr Shade had one. Derek Leech has one (which may be the same one Dr Shade had). Richard Jeperson has three.
    Leech: Mine plays the theme from Jaws when I press the horn.
    Jeperson: Mine, I'm delighted to say, doesn't.
  • Dirk Pitt has an entire aircraft hanger full of classic automobiles (Along with two airplanes, a train car, a boat, and a bathtub fitted with an outboard motor). The author actually owns many of the vehicles that Dirk is shown driving, which are on public display in a museum in Colorado.
  • While the main character of The Dresden Files has a Blue Beetle that barely qualifies as a car (except maybe for other wizards), Thomas' Hummer is cool.
    • And Lara's loaner is the stuff of legends.
    • Grevaine's ride ain't half bad—it's a classic Cadillac with a souped-up sound system used to power the living dead.
  • Illuminati assassins in Duumvirate have the shapeshifting, fusion-powered Deathmobile. There's a crematorium under the hood for body disposal.
  • Vigilante Man Mack Bolan known as "The Executioner" has a decidedly uncool GMC motorhome, which does however have the advantage of being the last thing anyone would expect a One-Man Army to be driving. It has advanced electronic surveillance capabilities, an onboard computer system with phone link (in the 1970s!) and a retractable 4-shot guided missile launcher, but no armour except for some steel plates around the driver's seat, as Bolan only uses it for long-range combat.
    • Perhaps a prototype of the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle "borrowed" by Privates Winger and Ziskey, referenced above.
  • The Great Red Shark and The Great White Whale from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Great Red Shark is arguably the fourth biggest character (behind Raoul Duke, Dr. Gonzo, and Drugs).
  • In Flavia de Luce, the Rolls Royce Phantom that belonged to Flavia's mother Harriet is standing mostly unused in the garage after Harriet's death, but both Flavia and her father like to sit in there to find refuge and reminisce, and Flavia has uttered the wish that, someday, she'll be taught driving with it.
  • The Bugatti in Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits.
    Zoey: Is that an expensive one?
    Armando: This is a 2020 Bugatti Chiron. Fifteen hundred horsepower, widely thought to be the apex of the gasoline-powered automobile. Only thirty of them were manufactured. At top speed it gets three miles to the gallon, which means you could get a five-hundred-dollar ticket just for being caught driving it today."
    Zoey: Looks pretty cool.
    Armando: This, Zoey, is a twenty-million-dollar car.
    Zoey: Oh. Wow. I bet the insurance is outrageous.
  • Crowley's Bentley in Good Omens. His infernal powers literally protect it from damage, at least until he drives it through a wall of fire formed by a highway shaped like a diabolical sigil. He continues to drive it all the way to his destination, holding it together through sheer force of will, until it no longer resembles a classic Bentley, or a car for that matter.
  • The Great Gatsby: Possibly parodied with Gatsby’s car: The car attracts attention, but Fitzgerald’s narration is ambiguous: We don’t know if it’s because his coolness or only because it reflects Gatsby's crass tastes:
    He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
    "It's pretty, isn't it, old sport." He jumped off to give me a better view. "Haven't you ever seen it before?"
    I'd seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town.
  • Clarice Starling is described as a "car buff" in Hannibal, and she is quite fond of her Roush Mustang. More than she can really afford, but she got it cheap at a police auction.
  • Jerry's Mustang in Instinct Rising. Modified with off-road tires, raised suspension, and a mounted spotlight. It was red at some point, but age, rust, and countless abuses (including running over werewolves) have worn it down some. He doesn't take very good care of it apart from keeping it in excellent running condition, even shooting it several times with his Hand Cannon just to make a point to another character.
  • Subverted in Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue: Bob's company Smart Car is suited for city cruising. It is emphatically unsuited for driving on the Autobahn, where every passing Mercedes and Porsche sets it rocking in the turbulence. It is further unsuited for the offroad driving that he has to do, where the suspension manages to make him nauseous. That is, until Pinky and Brains manage to make a couple of Q-style upgrades to it, which boosts the coolness rating waaay up. And then it's finally subverted again at the end when the engine locks up and demands to be returned to the factory for maintenance.
  • Stephen King has written not one but two novels about haunted Cool Cars - Christine and From a Buick 8.
    • Also The Kid's lovingly-customized deuce coupe in The Stand. Not supernatural, but it still, unusually, warrants almost half a page of description.
  • Lord Peter Wimsey drives a succession of V12 sleeve-valve Daimlers that he names "Mrs. Murdle," after a character from Charles Dickens (the character was famously against "row", and sleeve-valve engines were famously quiet for the time period, at the cost of considerably worse emissions). He likes to drive fast, too, but is fortunately very good at it.
  • All Dealers in Magistellus Bad Trip have one of these. Kaname has a mint green coupé, while Lilikiska has an oversized limousine with bulletproof armour and a powerful engine.
  • The Jules Verne thriller Master of the World features the Terror, an armored car that can go twice as fast as any other vehicle on the road.
  • Phryne Fisher drives a red Hispano-Suiza.
  • The Pretenders: Carmen Villa drives a bright red Ford Thunderbird, and an original 1950s model too. Justified as the novel's set in the late 1950s.
  • The Saint had a fictional car called a Hirondel, because Leslie Charteris didn't think any real car was cool enough for him to drive. In Vendetta for the Saint, even an Italian mechanic who owns a Bugatti Type 41 Royalenote  is awed when Simon Templar tells him he used to have a Hirondel.
  • The villain of Scarecrow owns a Ferrari Modena, a Porsche GT-2, an Aston Martin Vanquish, a Lamborghini Diablo and several Subaru rally cars. They all get stolen and most are destroyed in what is probably the biggest car chase of any medium, which involved the above supercars, a pair of big rigs, a helicopter, two fighter jets, and a French destroyer. By the end of it, only one car, one truck, one helicopter, and the destroyer are still intact, and several miles of the French countryside are missing. The author himself drives a Delorean.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Tatra 603 and 1959 Chrysler Imperial in The Film of the Book.
  • In Skulduggery Pleasant the title character starts off driving a classic Bentley, but when it gets wrecked is forced to temporarily replace it with a hideous yellow hatchback.
    • The third book reveals that Skulduggery has uncool cars stashed all over the place. This suggests that he is either very fond of his car (and doesn't want to drive it into situations he knows will be dangerous) or it gets damaged a lot.
  • The Deliverator from Snow Crash. Probably the only Cool Car with its own pizza warmer.
    • Ng, a weapons dealer who plays a central role in the book's plot, also has a "wheelchair" which he converted from a German airport firetruck and outfitted with all sorts of goodies, such as a spy helicopter, guided missiles, and cybernetic attack dogs.
    Ng: I tried prostheses for a while—some of them are very good. But nothing is as good as a motorized wheel chair. And then I got to thinking, why do motorized wheelchairs always have to be tiny pathetic things that strain to go up a little teeny ramp?
  • Men Stephanie Plum is acquainted with consider Uncle Sandor's Buick, Big Blue, to be this. Women do not.
  • Tom Swift, Jr.'s Triphibian Atomicar was a convertible that could transverse land, sea and air.
  • Maggie of Trail of Lightning drives a 1972 Chevy pickup with custom paint and chrome detailing. She somehow maintains this vehicle in a post-apocalyptic world with no replacement parts.* John D. MacDonald's "salvage expert" Travis McGee drove Miss Agnes, the world's only custom-made hybrid of a Rolls Royce and a pickup truck. An unknown previous owner did the custom work. Trav named the car after one of his elementary-school teachers because the blue paint job reminded him of the color of her hair. The problem with it is that it's too memorable, so he never drives it on a job.
  • The only indulgence Tom Broadbent of Tyrannosaur Canyon made upon his multi-million dollar inheritance was to buy a classically restored 1957 Chevy pickup. It's considered his signature around town.
  • All the cannibals in The Ultimate Killing Game have a cool car, courtesy of Ballard Customs.
  • In Vampires In The Sunburnt Country, for the short time it is seen there is Kevins' Holden Commodore, as well as the Night Riders' custom - painted Holden Sandman. However the coolest is Kala's Holden Monaro. Coveted even by the Von Schiller operatives, it is taken as a prize, and eventually recaptured by the end of the first book. In the second book, it becomes cooler with a new spoiler, paint job etc., in an attempt to keep the VS from spotting it; however they already have, and spotted the garage it went into. Kevin ends up finding other ways to get around Brisbane.
  • Being a pulp hero Expy, Pendrake from War of the Dreaming has one of these. It's bulletproof, radar-invisible, and has a max speed of around two hundred MPH.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Given how many of the examples below he created, famed car customizer George Barris may deserve his own Creator page. His site features pictures of many of them here.
  • 1000 Ways to Die:
    • The season 1 segment "Car Jacked" features a car thief attempting to steal a chef's prized GTO Judge, only for his slackline to get tangled, causing him to hang upside-down for the next 24 hours and die of blood pooling in his brain.
    • The season 3 segment "Trucked Up" features a guy named Leonard who had recently bought a Boring, but Practical car, and his obnoxious cousin Todd whose parents bought him a Silverado with bells and whistles like chrome rims, LEDs, a DVD player, and an 8-ball gear shift. Naturally, it ends up being his undoing: against the manufacturer's warning, Todd also added a remote starter function and turns the car on while standing right in front of it, unaware that he accidentally put it in drive while showing off the aforementioned gear shift, causing the car to roll over Todd and crush his head to a bloody pulp.
  • Eric's Vista Cruiser, Kelso's Volkswagen Samba Bus, and Red's Chevy Corvette from That '70s Show.
  • The A-Team had a cool black GMC van.
  • The various versions of Adam-12's police cruiser.
  • Lola, Coulson's flying Chevrolet Corvette, from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Another example is the Hell Charger (or Lucy), a modified gen 2 Dodge Charger driven by Robbie "Ghost Rider" Reyes, which Robbie can imbue with fire.
  • Semir's 3-Series BMW in Alarm für Cobra 11.
  • The Battletram in The Aquabats! Super Show! serves as an impossibly-large mobile home for the team.
  • In Auction Kings, Paul has sold several. The recreation of the Delorean from Back to the Future impressed the crew from the actual movie enough that one of them came to the auction to promote it.
  • The car from the show Automan. In the show it's a hologram so it apparently doesn't have to follow the laws of physics. Possibly the only car that could really use inertial dampeners.
  • Emma Peel's Lotus Elan from The Avengers (1960s)
    • Not to mention Mrs. Gale's white MGB (admittedly cooler today than it was then); Tara King's Cobra; and of course Steed's stable of fine Bentleys.
  • The Batmobile in the campy 1960s Batman (1966) series was the coolest thing on the show.
  • The ahead of its time New Old West / Cattle Punk series Bearcats featured a 1914 Stutz Bearcat, of course. George Barris created 3 replicas for the series, one for stunts, one for regular use by the human stars, and one for show promotion. The promotional car also featured what appears to be a forward-firing Vickers machine gun and a rear-firing Lewis machine gun.
  • In the BBC cop show Bergerac, Jersey detective Jim Bergerac's 'maverick' personality was expressed by driving a Burgundy 1947 Triumph Roadster. The producers thought it looked cool but, as many a critic and viewer noted, it was a car supremely unsuited to Jersey's narrow, winding roads and 40mph speed limits. It still set a trend in 80s/90s British crime shows for any "quirky" cop, PI, or amateur detective to drive some kind of collectible car.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel:
    • Angel's sleek black convertible, not to mention Gunn's vampire-hunting truck (for which he literally sold his soul)
    • Angel had a whole fleet of Cool Cars in season 5. Spike destroyed a few of them.
    • Giles initially drove a potentially cool but very run-down Citroen DS but after Spike wrote it off in a car chase he acquired a shiny red BMW convertible, which was seen as a sign of his mid-life crisis and ridiculed by everyone. And Oz had a van which occasionally got close to being the Mystery Machine.
    • Spike's 1959 De Soto is super cool.
    • Played straight with Cordelia's (Chrysler Cirrus) convertible (QUEEN C) and Xander's (uncle's) 57 Chevy Bel Air.
    • Since Kennedy spearheaded the idea of Slayers becoming bodyguards in Season 9 she cruises around in a red Audi that rivals Giles' Mid-Life Crisis Car for style.
  • Amos Burke's 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Phantom II on Burke's Law. It became such a trademark of the character that he kept driving around in it even after he became a Tuxedo and Martini secret agent (he just bulletproofed it and equipped it with some special spy gadgets).
  • On Burn Notice Michael Westen's black '73 Dodge Charger is a pretty, pretty thing. Even though it didn't run when he first got it. It's too bad he had to blow it up, but it came back in early season 5 with Fiona behind the wheel, serving as Michael's getaway vehicle.
  • Caprica: Joseph Adama's Citroen DS, and the Greystones' Jaguar Mark 2. (Although they're technically alien vehicles that happen to look just like them.)
  • Metalder's Metal-Charger, a Mazda Familia with the ability to transform into a Flying Car.
  • Stephen Colbert parodies this with his build-a-bear parody build-a-car workshop. It's a tank on monster truck wheels, has a sail and a sidecar attached to it,an American flag on the back and "You steer it with your balls."
    • There actually is a shop like Build-A-Bear, only with model cars. It's called Ridemakerz.
  • Every car in the 1980s Rat-Pack era Crime Story, especially Torello's 1957 Chrysler 300.
  • George from Dead Like Me drives a Mustang that was owned by one of her reaps.
  • In Doctor Who the Third Doctor spent much of his time on Earth driving around in 'Bessie', an antiquated canary-yellow roadster which on first glance would look the furthest thing from 'cool' you could think of. It's quickly revealed, however, that the Doctor's constant tinkering and playing around have made it a super-powered car that anyone would kill to drive.
    • He later traded up for a weirdly incongruous The Jetsons-style flight-capable bubble car.
    • Plus, an antique car fit rather well with his...let's say "classic" opera cape stylings.
  • Alex Tully's Dodge Challenger from Drive (2007).
  • Ray Vecchio's 1972 Buick Riviera and Ray Kowalski's GTO from Due South
  • The General Lee from the The Dukes of Hazzard
  • The Equalizer drove a black 1984 Jaguar XJ6 Series III, much to the dismay of potential clients who naturally assumed his services were highly expensive.
  • Steve Urkel's BMW Isetta, from Family Matters, isn't cool. In fact, it's so terrible and antiquated that it may punch through the bottom, wrap around to the top and become cool. Or maybe not. He thinks it's cool, anyway.
    • May be so uncool it's cool? You've never seen the action around one at a car show!
  • Forever Knight: Nick's 1962 Cadillac Convertible, which has it own fandom faction, the 'Caddywhackers'. He chose it for the trunk space, so he could fit inside if he got caught away from home in daylight. (incidentally, in the original film it was a '59 Caddy).
  • Frasier: Something of a subversion in that the brothers pride themselves on having top-of-the-line saloons, but they often break down. This eventually led to the episode "Motor Skills" where they attempt to improve their practicality.
  • Get Smart: the Opel GT was nice and the Shelby Mustang very impressive, but Max's Sunbeam Tiger was the trademark car with lots of style.
  • Dan Stark from The Good Guys has a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am of which he is very protective.
  • The Black Beauty from The Green Hornet. In the TV show, a customized 1966 Imperial Crown sedan with green headlamps. Generally stored upside down in Britt Reid's garage.
    • The film has at least three of them, all of them armed well enough to destroy several city blocks, and to top it all off it can change color. Possibly the only car cooler than the Batmobile.
  • The Coyote in Hardcastle and McCormick.
  • Accidental subversion: as part of a Product Placement deal, Hiro and Ando treat the Nissan Versa as though it were a cool car in Heroes — when unfortunately, it's just a mundane family compact. And being from Japan, they wouldn't even know it as a "Versa" — in Japan and Latin America, they call it "Tiida" (that last bit can be explained away by the fact that they read it in the ad for an American comic book. And it's a rental car bought in America).
  • Duncan MacLeod's black 1964 "Flair Bird" convertible Ford Thunderbird from Highlander: The Series, the Seacouver half. (He had a Citroen and then a Land Rover in Paris)
    • Also, Tessa's classic Mercedes in the first season.
  • Home Improvement had a couple hot rods that Tim Taylor built from the floor up - not to mention Jill's Nomad station wagon and Austin-Healey.
  • How It's Made: Dream Cars is pretty much Cool Cars: the series. Being a Spin-Off of How It's Made, it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin: how some of the world's most famous supercars are created, and what goes into their design.
  • Inspector Morse drove a Jaguar Mk. II, but at the time quite a few British TV policemen seemed to drive a classic car (Bergerac, for example).
    • Ironically, a Mk. II Jag would have been regarded by most TV viewers as a villain's car prior to Inspector Morse, thanks largely to several of them being used as such in The Sweeney, which also starred John Thaw.
  • JAG: Harm owns a '70s Chevy Corvette. It gets stolen and stripped for parts, but he eventually builds a new one. Mac buys herself a more modern Corvette at one point. Something of a Kick the Dog moment, however, as this was in the same episode that Harm's Corvette was stolen and stripped.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Kamen Rider BLACK RX (and its notorious adaptation, Masked Rider) had a car for the titular protagonist, the Ridoron, in addition to the usual bike.
    • Kamen Rider Double has a car-like vehicle (it doesn't actually have controls, instead being remote-operated by his cellphone), but it holds the parts for his Cool Bike and is indeed pretty cool.
    • Kamen Rider Drive drops the franchise's traditional bike in favor a full-on car motif: as a result, his personal ride, the Tridoron, is far more feature-packed than any other Rider vehicle. Not only is it the source of his superpowers, but it can transform into three different types of car, assist with his Finishing Move, channel his various superpowers while he's driving it, combine with a pair of auxiliary machines to become a jet, or combine with him to form his Super Mode. Crossover movies make the Tridoron even cooler: if Kamen Rider Gaim is riding shotgun, it can turn into a Back to the Future-inspired spaceship, and if Shuriken Sentai Ninninger are around, it can combine with their Humongous Mecha.
  • KITT and KARR in Knight Rider.
  • Sid and Marty Krofft Productions' Wonderbug combined the titular Cool Car with a Secret Identity as an old junker of a dune buggy called "Schlep Car". The buggy's secret identity was so junky that even the letters on its license plate were crooked, while its superpowered form was sentient, had an actual face (made by its headlights and bumper), and could fly.
  • Gene Hunt's Ford Cortina GXL from Life On Mars
    • It was actually one of the first things to go into the script, which had the working title of "Ford Cortina".
    • Later, in Ashes to Ashes (2008), Gene Hunt has a bright red Audi. "Fire up the Quattro!"
      • The actual car is a 1983 Quattro (in 1981, the Quattro wasn't available in a native British format). Phillip Glenister admitted in an interview that the producers knew it, but...well, it was a Cool Car.
    • Sam Tyler's Chevelle SS in the American version.
  • Hurley's Volkswagen Bus, which he found in the jungle during the third season of Lost.
  • Pretty much every car seen in Mad Men. After Betty inherits her late father's 1961 Lincoln Continental it's noted in-series that that is a Cool Car for a thirtysomething housewife and mother even in its day, it's not just the Gorgeous Period Chrome.
  • In The Magician, Blake drives a white Chevrolet Corvette with custom license plates ("SPIRIT") and, for its time, an exotic feature: a car phone.
  • Speaking of Ferraris, there was of course the red 308 borrowed by Magnum, P.I.
  • In several third and fourth season episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Solo and Kuryakin got to drive an "U.N.C.L.E. car", which was a concept car developed from the Bertone Pirana.
  • The Mentalist's Patrick Jane drives a classic French car - a metallic grey Citroen DS.
  • Miami Vice had many cool cars. Sonny Crockett first drove a black Daytona Spyder, then a white Testarossa, then a red F430 in The Movie.
  • The Middlemobile [and other vehicles] from The Middle Man and to a lesser degree, both of Dub-Dub's mundane cars.
  • Mike & Molly has Mike buying a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. It turns in a lemon through dialogue alone, and is sold back to the previous owner.
  • Say what you will about The Monkees, that wild custom GTO was pretty cool.
  • Sonny Pruitt's green Kenworth W900 from Movin' On. It was equipped with Kenworth's VIT (Very Important Truck) package. An older W925 with a similar paint job was used in the pilot episode.
  • And say what you will about The Munsters, the Munster Koach and the Dragula racer were also pretty cool.
  • Gladys Crabtree (aka "Mother") from My Mother the Car is likewise not a Cool Car.
  • The Mythbusters treat their cars as cool cars, when most are junkers they got because they knew they would be ruined. Various cars have been fitted with RC rigs, prompting Adam to point out that he and Jamie should cruise for chicks in them, while remaining in the backseat. Their very first myth involved a rocket car, and when speed is a factor in the myths, they tend to call on expert drivers and very cool cars to help.
  • In another Don Johnson reference, the title character in Nash Bridges drove a 1971 'Cuda Hemi ragtop. There were only 7 of them made, one in each color offered on the Barracuda, of which 6 survive to this day. It's worth a couple million dollars at auction, pushing this into Improbably Cool Car territory.
  • In season 6 of NCIS, Gibbs is required to return to his hometown to solve a case. Whilst there the car he drove up in (an NCIS company car) is fire-bombed to prevent his investigation. Then his father reveals he fixed up the old '70s Challenger he left behind when he joined the Marines. Needless to say, awesomeness ensues.
    • Abby drives a bright red 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe with the Vanity License Plate "4NS CHIK." The car before this one was a hearse.
  • Only Fools and Horses: The Trotters' Reliant Regal three-wheel van is the So Bad, It's Good of the automotive world, belonging under this heading as well as The Alleged Car.
  • Overhaulin is all about making someone's daily driver into one. Although some cars on the show qualify before the show gets to work on them.
  • Police Woman takes place in 1970's Los Angeles, so there are plenty of cool cars around. It is not surprising that the drug dealers and other crime bosses drive flashy cars, but the detectives also drive brand-new Lincolns and Cadillacs, contrary to the cliché of the police always driving The Alleged Car.
  • Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers RPM go all-out in having car-themed Rangers, and a number of other seasons give the Rangers car mecha.
  • Poker Face: As seen in the trailer, main character Charlie drives around in a Plymouth Barracuda.
  • The Prisoner (1967): Patrick Mc Goohan's Lotus Seven, which, apart from the opening title sequence, only appears in one episode in the series.
  • The vehicle the boys use to traverse the titular road in Route 66: it starts off as a '60 Corvette Convertible, but gets updated every season to the latest, sleekest model through means undetermined in-universe.
  • The 1962/4 Volvo P1800 from The Saint, driven by Roger Moore. When they decided to make the movie in 1996, the Volvo coupe had been so well connected to the character of The Saint that Val Kilmer drove the definitely less cool Volvo C70 because it was a Volvo coupe.
  • In The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah drives a Nissan Figaro, a tiny, incredibly cute, soft-top built in the early 1990s but designed to look like they were built in the 1950s. Only around 20,000 were built and they are very rare in real-life Britain.
  • Sense8:
    • Capheus' van, the Van Damn. First time in history an automobile fly-kicked someone.
    • More conventionally, the red Porsche 911 that Will drives in Iceland. In facts its coolness becomes something of a plot point, as Will is forced to destroy it so as to distract the workers at the facility where Riley is being held. The whole plan hinges on the idea that a bunch of hetero-normative men will be unable to stand such a beautiful car going up in a cloud of smoke, and their misery will allow Will to slip past them. On hearing the plan even Will is reluctant to damage such a nice car.
      Guard 1: Now that's a real shame.
      Guard 2: It's a Fourteen!
      Guard 3: Not even a year old!
  • The Spy features some cool cars from The '60s.
  • The Gran Torino from Starsky & Hutch. Ironically, it was totally stock except for the vector stripe, which Ford later offered on several models - even the Pinto.
  • A different Ray's Corvette in Stingray (1985).
    • Israeli secret agent Eli Cohen fawns over a Syrian magnate's prized Peugeot to make a connection with the man and get a ride across the Syrian border.
    • Ma'azi, the spoiled nephew of a Syrian general, takes Cohen for a tour of Syrian fortifications in a convertible Alfa Romeo.
  • Stranger Things: Apart from the usual 1970s/early-1980s Oldsmobiles, Ford Pintos, and Chevy Blazers that the people of Hawkins drive, Steve Harrington drives (what is implied to be his father's) 1982 BMW 733i E23, which would have cost around $33,000 new in 1983 (around $80,000 adjusted for inflation today). A 1982 BMW E30 320i (a car which cost $13,000 new in 1983) can be seen pulling into Hawkins Middle School and is seen parked in front of the library in a later episode. Lonnie's also got a 1971 Oldsmobile 442. And then, of course, is Billy's ridiculous '79 Camaro in Season 2, which even gets its own spot on the poster. Season 3 has Hopper steal a 1984 cream-yellow Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible with maroon interior and the license plate "TODFTHR."
  • The 1967 Chevy Impala, driven by the Winchesters on Supernatural, which, some have argued, has achieved co-protagonist status, along with Sam and Dean. Some fans believe it to be sentient, as seen in this webcomic, which is quite popular in the fandom.
    • On Frank Devereaux's advice to be less conspicuous, the boys temporarily trade the Impala in for a GM Acadian. Dean treats it as The Alleged Car. In reality an Acadian, which was produced from 1962-71 for the Canadian market, would raise some eyebrows on its own.
    • The cars of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse also qualify. War drives a red 1965 Mustang, Famine a black Cadillac Escalade, Pestilence a green 1972 AMC Hornet with the license plate "SIKN TRD", and Death a white 1959 Cadillac with the license plate "BUH*BYE".
  • Some Super Sentai series would have a Cool car, mostly ran by the Red Senshi. Here's examples:
  • The Land Rover Defender in Survivors.
  • Derek's 2010 Chevrolet Camaro and Stiles' Jeep CJ-7 in Teen Wolf.
  • On the show Third Watch, NYPD Officer Maurice Louis "Bosco" Boscorelli's off-duty ride, a blue 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1, is significantly cooler (not to mention massively more valuable) than his on-duty patrol vehicle.
  • The Core Striker from Tomica Hero Rescue Force, which, due to its AI, also doubles as a Robot Buddy.
  • Top Gear (UK): The Bugatti Veyron SS - with nearly 1000bhp and a price tag in the millions, held the record for fastest lap until the Atom V8 knocked it off the top, Oliver, every Aston Martin to have ever appeared on the show - so cool they get their own mini-fridge that sits past the "Sub Zero" section, the Koenigsegg CCX - a car so Difficult, but Awesome that even The Stig found it hard to control... If we listed every example, we'd be here all week.
  • Used somewhat inexplicably in Torchwood, given that the titular organisation is meant to be a secret, making the decision to drive around in a very distinctive and eye-catching vehicle with the name stenciled onto it a rather strange idea.
  • Mel's classic Mercedes in Tracker, before she sold it to help Jess out.
  • Tom Hanson's '67 Mustang Fastback in 21 Jump Street, which he inherited from his father before the beginning of the series.
    • Judy Hoffs' '58 Triumph also qualifies.
  • UFO (1970) has Commander Straker's gas-turbine car (in reality an impossible-to-drive prop whose gull-wing doors had to be opened by an off-screen stagehand), the SHADO Mobiles (tracked armored personnel carriers with radar sets on top) and the missile-bearing Lunar Interceptor. All of them just crying out to be made into Dinky toys.
  • Some defense teams in the Ultra Series drive these.
    • In Ultraman Tiga and its Sequel Series Ultraman Dyna, GUTS has a fairly standard-looking patrol car, but it comes equipped with a laser cannon on its roof that they can use to blast at kaiju.
    • Ultraman Max: The car used by DASH can not only fire lasers from its hood, but fly.
    • Ultraman X's Xio uses three vehicles — a patrol car called Athos, a minivan called Aramis, and a truck called Porthos — all equipped with powerful laser cannons to add some extra firepower to support Ultraman X against kaiju. They can also merge with Xio's planes, the Muskettys, for aerial combat.
  • The Dodge Viper in Viper
  • Most seasons of Wheeler Dealers had a certain vehicle from it used in filler segments, as it was deemed the coolest:
    • Seasons 2 and 3 had the 1977 MGB GT,
    • Season 4 had the 1976 Porsche 911,
    • Season 5 had the 1983 Mercedes 280SL,
    • Season 6 had the 1975 Ferrari Dino 308,
    • Season 7 had the 1968 Lotus Elan,
    • Season 8a had the 1973 Jaguar E-Type,
    • Season 8b had the 1970 Dodge Charger,
    • Season 9a had the 1970 Fiat Dino,
    • Season 9b had the 2002 Gardner-Douglas Cobra,
    • Season 10a had the 1996 Aston Martin DB7,
    • Season 10b had the 1972 Lamborghini Urraco.
    • Later seasons stopped the practice of using cars in filler segments.
  • The Russo family's flying carpet in Wizards of Waverly Place.

    Music 
  • The car Deep Purple was praising in "Highway Star".
  • The "'59 Ford" in Neil Diamond's "Memphis Streets".
  • Yoshiki Hayashi collects these (or did to a certain point anyway), and owns 20 of them at last count including one of almost everything listed under the Ferrari or Lamborghini or Porsche marques in the Real Life section below (and he and his band X Japan even sponsored a Le Mans race team in Japan once). As a result the Cool Car tends to appear often in X Japan and Violet UK videos made after The '90s, as well as in interview or Real Life footage of Yoshiki.
  • Sammy Johns and "Chevy Van." Released in 1975, much of the action takes place in the back of one of these. Not only did it strike a chord due to its sexual liberation themes, but because customized Chevrolet vans — the van itself is implied to be a post-factory conversion job — were starting to become popular with young adults in the mid-1970s.
  • Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay is a car collector, and owns several cars, such as the Mercedes-Benz Pullman, the Lamborghini Miura SV and the Aston Martin DB5, among others. Some of the music videos prominently feature cars, such as the Lamborghini Diablo in "Cosmic Girl".
  • John Lennon's Rolls Royce, famous for its psychedelic paint scheme.
  • My Chemical Romance: The Dangercar. That is one badass Trans-Am.
  • Rush's "Red Barchetta," itself inspired by Richard S. Foster's short story "A Nice Morning Drive."
  • When Surf Rock groups weren't doing songs about surfing, they were doing songs about hot rods and sports cars. Some claim those songs are part of a separate genre called "Hot Rod Rock".
    • The Beach Boys have quite a few car songs in their repertoire such as "409" and "Little Deuce Coupe". They even released a whole album of these songs named after the latter.
    • Dick Dale sang about street races and cool hot rods rather frequently.
    • Other big hits about cool cars include "Little Nash Rambler", "Hot Rod Lincoln", "Spring Little Cobra", and "Dead Man's Curve"
  • Tears for Fears: In the "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" music video, lead singer Curt Smith drives an antique mid-1960s Austin-Healey 3000 Mark III convertible sports car that was painted in British Racing Green.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic has been asked on multiple occasions about the car he drove in UHF and the video for "All About the Pentiums": a Nash Metropolitan. Notably, it's the same car in both cases.
  • According to Xzibit, his first album introduced him on the scene, his second album established his place, and his third album paid for his car.
  • ZZ Top's Eliminator hot rod.
  • The gold Lamborghini in Seeed's G€ld.

    Pinballs 

    Podcasts 
  • Interstitial: Actual Play has Criss Angel's Bugatti, which can fly and travel through Gummy Space. It can also deploy a pair of drone turrets in a fight.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin got to drive a lot of awesome vehicles during the Attitude era, including (but not limited to) a tanker truck full of beer, a Zamboni, a collection of monster trucks, and a cement mixer (see below). You could also win his signature jeep in a 1996 Royal Rumble sweepstakes.
    Chris Jericho: I loved how the Austin character just morphed into a guy who would just drive any type of vehicle onto the show and trash things.
  • Eddie Guerrero drove several lowriders — often customized mid-1960s Chevrolet Impalas — into various arenas for big pay-per-view shows.

    Puppet Shows 

    Roleplay 

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech has the Rotunda, a Star League-era scout car that had modular body kits to make it blend in with local cars. The appearance is only skin deep, as beneath those disguise kits is a shell of advanced Ferro-Fibrous armor, a fusion reactor, a large laser and a pair of short-ranged missile tubes.
  • A big feature of this subgenre, are the various futuristic cars you can develop and battle with in Road Warrior-style games like Car Wars and Dark Future.
  • Most of the more technologically advanced worlds of Magic: The Gathering are home to at least a couple of these:
  • Rocket Age appropriately enough for the name, features Rocket Cars, but the tropes also applies to many other vehicles in the setting, as it is the 1930s and sports cars are available. In fact, a conventional vehicle isn't even going to cost a player anything, even if it is a hot-rod.
  • The Genestealer Cult army from the 1st Edition of Warhammer 40,000 included a gothic-styled limousine for the Cult leaders to ride in incognito. Although the Coven Limo hasn’t been a part of the game since then, many veteran Genestealer Cult players still hope for its return.

    Toys 
  • Hot Wheels are pretty much this trope in spades, with Wacky Racing and Thememobiles thrown into the mix alongside 1/64 scale versions of numerous real-life cars. Moreover, when they first debuted in The '60s, they were also this trope on a meta level; whereas older toy cars were meant to be rolled around by hand, Hot Wheels cars had an innovative design that let them roll much faster without crashing, allowing them to be raced on wooden or linoleum floors or on the special tracks that Hot Wheels sold to go with the cars. Lots of toymakers copied Hot Wheels' designs in the years to come.
  • LEGO has made a number of cool cars over the years, both licensed designs and unlicensed original designs. Their Creator line has a Ferrari F40, for example. Their mechanical-themed Technic line one-ups this, with fully functional mechanics, such as the flagship model - a Porsche 911 - which has a 6 speed paddle shift gearbox, a flat six engine, and working steering. Many of the larger Technic sets are designed to be easily retrofitted with a LEGO Power Functions motor and battery pack, turning them into remote controlled cars.
  • Transformers: Cool Cars that turn into cool robots! Sometimes the cars are fictional, sometimes the cars are real, such as a Lamborghini or Camaro. Occasionally, they may even do crossover toys that turn into specific and famous cool cars, such as the Ecto-1.
  • Barbie and her pink convertible. While her first car was a brown 1962 Austin-Healey roadster, since The '70s the car she's been most identified with has been the Chevrolet Corvette convertible, particularly the C4 and C5 models from the '80s and '90s. Other cool cars that she's been given include a Jeep Wrangler, a Ferrari 328 GTS (in proper Italian red rather than pink — Ferrari drew the line there), a Rolls-Royce, and a turquoise 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air.

    Video Games 
  • Agent: Intercept has six.
    • The Sceptre. It's a roadster, an off-roader, a boat, a snowmobile, a plane, a submarine, and chock-full of weapons like the Perses Mines and Thunderbolt Laser.
    • The Specters created by CLAW. While it's ambiguous if they possess the same repertoire of weapons, they possess sawblades for sideswiping and nigh-impenetrable energy shields.
    • Eris' car in the third act, which possesses not only compatibility with the Nidhogg control unit for Project Harmony, but hover engines and a scorpion-tail laser cannon.
    • All three of your allies have special cars as well, though not to the extent or versatility of Eris and the Sceptre/Specters: HQ's Jupiter has a quad-barrel Thunderbolt, Penny's Neptune has Hades Missiles and a specially modified security system for the event she was exposed as a double agent, and the Mercury prototype driven by Torpere has an improved boost that can outpace the Sceptre's.
  • Batman: Arkham Series
    • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, we see Batman using the Batmobile early on, a sleek little number reminiscent of the '89 Batmobile. Sadly, the thing is set into the ocean saving Batman from Bane.
    • In Batman: Arkham Knight, Batman hauls out a brand new tank-like Batmobile, armed with various weapons for crowd control, cool stunts and just about anything else.
  • All of the cars from Blast Corps, from the muscle car to the rocket shooting Ballista. Except the Backlash. The Backlash is never cool.
  • S.O.P.H.I.A. from the Blaster Master series, overlapping with Tank Goodness. It's practically the only way Jason (and later his son Roddy, in Blaster Master: Blasting Again) is able to survive underground against a horde of mutants. Comes equipped with a mounted cannon, homing and dumbfire missiles, and it can be upgraded to hover, among other things.
  • The Deuce or "Druid Plow" from Brütal Legend. Cool at the start, and can become even cooler with all the upgrades you can get it.
  • The cars from Burnout, which range from classic gangster cars to slick fifty's cars to modern sports cars.
  • Car Battler Joe is full of these.
  • Republican Bilbao Model 1939 armoured cars appear in COD 2 Spanish Civil War Mod during several missions. Each one is armed with a deadly machine gun and impervious to gunfire, grenades, and even Molotov cocktails.
  • Similarly, Crash Tag Team Racing has some fancy-looking rides for Crash and co. to drive around in, many of which would return in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, which would also add in some cool karts of its own with the primary standout being the Champion kart, being basically a downscaled Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder.
  • The sequel/Spiritual Successor to Nitronic Rush, Distance, continues the trend of flashy cars that can fly and drive on walls, including the starting Spectrum, the unlockable Archive, the returning Interceptor, the Encryptor (basically a skeletal version of the Spectrum) and even a golden version of the Spectrum dubbed the Halcyon which, unfortunately, can overheat unlike the Goldenceptor.
  • 007 Racing, being a James Bond game where all the missions are based on driving, brings out most of the gadget-laden cool cars Bond had driven at that point of the franchise, including the Aston Martin DB5, the Lotus Esprit, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and the gadget-laden BMW.
  • Fallout 2 lets the Chosen One acquire a pre-War electric car (the Chryslus Highwayman) if they manage to find the fuel cell controller needed to power it. It can hold the entire party, which can potentially include a super mutant, a deathclaw, and a robobrain containing the personality of a pre-War AI. It gets even cooler with upgrades installed. The trunk can hold several suits of power armor, a half dozen miniguns, and an infinite amount of ammo.
  • Brynhildr from Final Fantasy XIII when in it's gestalt mode. With it's hellfire doughnuts, burnout that causes sparks, droids that fire on enemies, bombs when its jumps up and rolls up in the air, and the power of fire. A damn fine car indeed.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, there are three of them:
    • The Regalia, King Regis's personal car and the game's primary mode of transport.
    • Noctis's own Audi R8, the "Star of Lucis." It can be seen in the companion film, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV.
    • And there's Ardyn's muscle car. It's actually pretty plain looking, but he thinks it's awesome.
  • The Forza series has hundreds of them! And that's before you start loading them with performance upgrades, body kits, and custom paint schemes.
  • F-Zero has a lot of futuristic hi-tech vehicles used in the grand prix. They are all capable of traveling at incredible speeds and hovering slightly above the ground. In the manual to the original F-Zero, it states that the machines uses magnetic repulsion to hover above the track, not unlike modern day Maglev trains. In later games the machines instead used G-Diffusors, sophisticaed anti-gravity devices.
  • The cars in the Gran Turismo series range from Joke Cars (the one HP 1895 Benz Motorwagen!), to mundane sedans, to nice muscle cars, to great supercars, to awesome JGTC touring cars, to frikkin awesome Le Mans prototypes, to a MIND-BOGGINGLY AWESOME Formula 1 racer.
    • And then there's the Red Bull X2010. It was created because Kazunori Yamauchi (GT creator) wanted to know what the ultimate race-car would look like (no rules, no regulations). Powered by a gas turbine generating 1,483 BHP, with 8Gs, or eight times the force of gravity being exerted at full throttle, a maximum speed around 450 km/h or 279 mph, and saddled with an obviously high 0-60 speed; this is the Cyborg of all cars. And that's not getting into the Super Prototype you can turn it into...
    • Gran Turismo 6 brought us Vision Gran Turismo, a series of concept cars made by manufacturers of the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Renault-Alpine, and each and every one of them are as awesome as they come. From more "normal" concept cars such as the BMW VGT, the Mini Clubman VGT and the Infiniti VGT, to more over-the-top monstrosities like the laser-powered Chaparral 2X and the 2000 bhp SRT Tomahawk, this line-up has it all.
  • Grand Theft Auto has had a number of cool cars of some significance in each series since at least the third game, but the resemblance to real cars was until GTAIV only a resemblance. GTAIV made the cool cars cooler by being much closer to real life cars. GTAV takes it up a whole new level and the cars are almost trademark infringement. Some models have been changed to look like different cars throught the series's lifespan — the "Infernus" in GTA III looks like a Jaguar XJ220, in Vice City it looks like a Lamborghini Countach, in San Andreas it looks like a Honda NSX, and in GTA IV and V it looks like a hybrid between a Lamborghini Murciélago and a Pagani Zonda. To add to the cool car trope nature of the franchise, each of the three main characters has a specific cool car all their own.
  • The Bone Wagon from Grim Fandango. Take this for example.
    • And this.
      Manny: What a relief. I was getting concerned that our transportation wasn't ostentatious enough.
  • In Grow Valley, some engineers make a electrical UFO-like car and later redesign it into a dragonfly-like hovercar.
  • Gordon Freeman acquires a post-apocalypsized 1969 Dodge Charger as his main method of transport throughout the second half of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Interestingly, the developer's commentary states that they were actually considering subverting this Trope by making Gordon drive a total junker and even having a character comment on its crappiness, but they ultimately decided that it's better if the player has a positive impression of the vehicle.
    • Also, fan reaction to an early preview of the "junker" was not positive, particularly since it was essentially the car from the previous game with a passenger seat and minus the tau cannon.
  • The Warthog from the Halo series. Sure it handles like a blind man on roller skates and will flip over if you so much as lean casually against it, but damn it looks awesome. They're so iconic they even serve a vital role in the climax of the first and third games.
    • Even cooler, they made one in real life. Though thankfully it's less tip-prone than the in-game version.
    • They made a "civilian" version for Forza Horizon 3. Hell. Yeah.
  • Horizon Chase, being a tribute to the 16-bit racing games of yesteryear, features many spiffy-looking rides to choose from, with some of them even doubling as Shout-Outs to certain franchises. That said, there are also some rather... strange choices (the Cable Guy, anyone?).
  • Hotline Miami has a few of these.
    • Jacket drives a stylish DeLorean. It gets defaced by vandals about halfway through the game, but that doesn't stop him from still driving it around.
    • In the second game, if Jake steals the Briefcase Full of Money at the end of "Hard News", he arrives at the building in "Withdrawal" in a newly-bought monster truck. Regardless of if you take the briefcase or not, Jake will always appear later in "the Bar of Broken Heroes" with his default vehicle.
    • Also in the second game, the Son can be seen driving a 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.
  • As is Interstate '76.
  • Jak and Daxter:
    • Dune buggies in Jak 3: Wastelander. Especially Dune Hopper that can jump 10 meters or so into the air. And it is outfitted with grenade launcher. Ram Rod, which is Damas' personal vehicle and it's essentially a bulldozer that can break through massive walls, is also a notable example.
    • Arguably all cars in Jak X: Combat Racing. Havoc V12 especially comes to mind.
  • The coolest old cars (oldest Cool Cars?) in a video game Mafia and Mafia II
  • The Saboteur has a lot of really cool cars, but the coolest of all comes from unlocking the third level racing achievement (in game). It is like the batmobile meets an F1 racer.
  • The Mako from Mass Effect. Technically it's a tank, but even without the guns it would be one heck of a ride.
  • The entire point of the Need for Speed games is racing and chasing in only the absolute coolest cars. Whether it be finely-crafted exotics, tricked-out tuners, or tough-as-nails police cruisers, NFS has players covered since 1994.
    • The colloquial Cool Car from Most Wanted and Carbon is a blue-and-silver FIA GT2-spec BMW M3 GTR (E46). In Most Wanted, half the reason for the story is to get the car (the other half is revenge) but it's unmodifiable. In Carbon, it's your starting car, but shortly gets trashed. However, completing an arbitrary set of objectives allows you to buy the street version of the M3 GTR, and then modify it to your liking. It also makes a reappearance as DLC in the later Most Wanted (and in the Need for Speed 2015 reboot) in a pack full of other famed NFS cover cars, one of which included...
    • The Lamborghini Diablo SV, which was first iconic car for the Need for Speed series after its appearance in 1998's III: Hot Pursuit. Being the fastest real life car in the game that was also available from the get-go when players first played it certainly helped. It received a good amount of attention in later Need for Speed games, appearing as DLC in 2010's Hot Pursuit, 2011's The Run, and 2012's Most Wanted, and later reappearing in the base games of the 2015 reboot, 2017's Payback, and 2019's Heat, satisfying classic fans' nostalgic needs.note 
    • The most extreme cars of the world also deserve mention: the McLaren F1 (first appeared in Need for Speed II, reappears in various later entries in both original and F1 LM models), the Bugatti Veyron (frequently appears in the series since ProStreet as a DLC car, with Super Sport variant being featured as DLC in Hot Pursuit [2010]), the Hennessey Venom GT (its Spyder variant is a DLC in Most Wanted [2012]), the Koenigsegg One:1 (downloadable for free in Rivals), and the Koenigsegg Regera (available in Payback, Heat, and Unbound).
  • The Inter Gray from Night Striker. It's also a Flying Car that can transform into a Humongous Mecha or a bike!
  • Nitronic Rush gives us the Interceptor, a car that can jump, fly for a short time, drive on walls and flip. It also has Nitro Boost.
    • Then there's the Avenger, a van that tends to overheat faster in exchange for a more powerful boost, then there's the Commander, the expy of the DeLorean. Finally, there's the Goldenceptor that can never overheat.
  • No Man's Sky has the Roamer, a hefty rally car with spherical off-road wheels that can smash through trees and rocks like they're nothing. Depending on the player's upgrade choices, it can carry a heavy cannon and mining laser, a long-range scanner, or just drive really fast.
  • PlanetSide 1 has a variety of weaponized and armored cool buggies; the "Harasser" is a low-riding sandrail armed with a 12mm gun on the roof and a stealth system, the "Skyguard" is an Anti-Air buggy with a rumbling V8 engine, the Terran Republic's "Marauder" is a pickup truck with a 12mm turret on the roof and a 40mm grenade launcher on the bed, the New Conglomerate's "Enforcer" is a rugged technical with a rocket launcher on the back, and the Vanu Sovereignty's "Thresher" is a hover buggy armed with a spammy Plasma Cannon. PlanetSide 2 (currently) only has the Nanite Systems' "Harasser", which is an extremely fast and well armed buggy that can outrun anything else on the ground, perform sweet drifts, and a soldier can ride in the back and shoot his gun or repair the buggy on the fly. It can can mount a variety of weapons, such as rocket launchers, flak cannons, and empire-specific equipment like railguns or gatling guns
  • The antagonist organisation of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Team Star, have their squad’s leaders drive a Starmobile, essentially a minivan like vehicle that is powered by Revavroom, a multi-cylinder engine like Pokémon introduced in this entry. All Starmobiles are the ace Pokémon of the relevant leader, and have Secret A.I. Moves of the squad’s signature type.
  • The Laytonmobile in Professor Layton is beloved by its owner, but most of the time, it's just a regular car (albeit with a specially raised roof to accomodate the Professor's top hat). In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, however, it gets modifications that allow it to morph, with the press of a button, into a glider!
  • Racing Lagoon, Squaresoft's old PS1's "High Speed Driving RPG" game features night racing storyline with customizable cars. Equipping the body modifier parts into a regular city car will turn it into either a bespoke GT race car, a dragster, or even a Group C car. Not to mention the Tune-Up Of Doom machines that are seriously cool.
  • Saints Row 2 body shops give a lot of latitude for customization, and reputation boosts for pimping your rides. A few cars rewarded for gameplay are already as cool as they can get.
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police drive around in a (quite literally) invincible '60 DeSoto Adventurer. It's recently been demoted to No Manufacturers Were Harmed status, though.
    Sam: Remember our old car, Max?
    Max: I said I was sorry.
  • Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf: Daffy Duck arrives in a limousine during the intro.
  • Street Rod: The game is full of them, and the idea is to you have the coolest one of them.
  • Video game (and eventually movie) example: Spy Hunter had the G-6155 Interceptor, that can transform into a boat.
    • In the PS2 game, it could also turn into a bike. In all games, it had smokescreen, machineguns, oil slicks, and a rocket launcher. The series is essentially a Bond Car homage.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Many of the vehicles from the Mario Kart series games, especially from Double Dash!! onwards.
    • Wario has a pretty sweet ride, which first showed up in Wario Land 4. It resembles a purple Cadillac Eldorado with a decal of Wario's mustache on the hood.
    • As of Super Mario 3D World Bowser has one too, and his intro with it includes gestures that practically say "Check out the new wheels, chumps!" In a later level, it even has Tron Lines!
  • Building these is one of the main features of TerraTech. The player can build cars with missile launchers, cars that fly, cars that climb sheer cliffs, cars that build new components on the go, cars that deploy smaller cars... The sky is the limit.
  • Test Drive (especially the open world Test Drive Unlimited and Unlimited 2) and TDU2's spirital successors The Crew and The Crew 2 are this in essence. Any of this cars are cool in their own right from small hot hatches that are still very fast to Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Mercedes-Benz.
  • Every single car in the Twisted Metal games.
  • The vehicles in the Vigilante 8 game series fit this trope.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • The Time... Car from the pilot episode of The Time... Guys. Unfortunately, it was lost between Episodes I and II in a Noodle Incident.
  • Katie in Oktober is a very interesting case. Not only do none of the characters see Katie the same way, but it appears her trunk is some sort of bizarre interdimensional portal.
  • Classic Game Room
    • 1972 Chevrolet El Camino.
    • Mark's Audi A4 Avant daily-driver counts too.
  • YouTube channel Star Cars features videos of fans who have recreated Cool Cars from films and television shows.
  • Half the point of the show Roadkill. Take a cool car, and go on some crazy journey with it. Notable mentions to the Crusher Camaro and the Super Bee.
  • Regular Car Reviews generally tends towards the mundane, but there have been some prominent exceptions: a Lotus Elise, a Ferrari 360 Modena (owned at that time by auto journalist Doug DeMuro), at least 3 different DeLorean DMC-12s,note  and a Toyota MR2 AW11, the last of which impressed Mr. Regular so much he eventually bought one himself.
    • Also, Mr. Regular's classic car project, a 1960 Ford Falcon, dubbed "The Vagabond Falcon".
  • How to Hero has a whole guide to superhero vehicles here
  • Mystery Flesh Pit National Park brings us the Grumman IAV. Described by one commenter as "an articulated racecar with a winch", the IAV made exploring the Pit much safer and enabled the discovery of many new locations such as the famous Gift Gardens. After the park closed in 2007, the few surviving examples became highly sought-after by wealthy car collecters.
  • Pretending to Be People features Drew Andrew's cherry-red Mini Cooper

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers: The Adrenalinis' van, which is pretty much a heavily souped-up RV that has rocket boosters, a drill tank mode, and the ability to build anything that Enk makes on the computer.
  • The Chan Van from The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, which doubles as Transforming Mecha thanks to Alan.
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", instead of the Batmobile, Batman travels through Gotham in Bruce Wayne's limousine. The version of the Batmobile featured in the show is a long, low rider that seems to stretch forever and wouldn't be out of place in REDLINE.
  • Grandpa Max's Rust Bucket from Ben 10. It's highly idiosyncratic, but it's also got alien tech devices and in episodes set in the future it can even fly and has a TARDIS-esque "basement".
  • In Breadwinners, the main character's form of transportation is the Rocket Van, a delivery van that has a large Rocket on top of it, which allows it to fly. It also has an extremely high-tech security system that includes Slow Lasers.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers had the Geocruiser, which was solar powered. They also had an eco-friendly plane as well.
  • Di Lung's red vintage Corvette(?) in Courage the Cowardly Dog.
  • The Flintstones' car from The Flintstones, which for some reason is actually powered by the driver's feet (along with all other cars in the series). His neighbor Barney Rubble has a cool one too; made entirely of one hollowed out log, it's a very early example of green technology.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Madame Foster owns a black Firebird. Even with the stylized artwork it can still be clearly identified as either a 1977 or 1978 model.
  • G.I. Joe: Renegades features the Joe's method of transport, The Coyote, and Major Bludd's Mad Max inspired ride. Both also count as a Weaponized Car.
  • Gravity Falls: Stan’s red and white classic car, which he’s had since his teenage years and is still in great shape.
  • Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats have the "Catillac", a 1950's era Cadillac that on the surface would appear to be The Alleged Car, but is possibly the fastest vehicle on the planet. And most of the time it doesn't even have wheels! It can also transform into an airboat and a camping trailer. It also has a trophy for a hood ornament. In one episode, they even add a submarine transformation.
  • The Phooeymobile from Hong Kong Phooey. With the strike of a gong, it can change into anything.
  • Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 is all about this trope!
  • The Gadgetmobile from Inspector Gadget, a van that could turn into a police car. On the villain's end of the show, Dr. Claw had the Madmobile, a limo that could turn into a personal airplane or submarine.
  • The Question's car in Justice League looks to be a 60's Pontiac GTO. Extra points for using it to drive over some bad guys.
  • The main cast of Kaeloo own several of these. The most awesome one is probably the time travel car from Episode 75, a parody of the DeLorean from Back to the Future.
  • Kim Possible gets herself a cool car in season 4. It starts out as an ancient, rusty piece of junk, but her brothers customise it. It ends up with rocket boosters, aquatic capabilities and eventually a flight mode, as well as other useful spy gadgets.
  • Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: The Flamingo Scarlemagne uses is black and pink, and the mid section of it is decked as a pink sports car from where he plays on a keyboard in the panel.
  • The Legend of Korra
    • In the first season, the new Team Avatar patrols republic city in Asami Sato's car, a kickass black roadster that fans have dubbed "The Korramobile". Unfortunately, it is destroyed near the end of the season in a day-saving bit of Car Fu.
    • It's not just that either, the series is full of them. But special mention has to go to the race cars in episode 7.
  • Pretty much every single car of the agents from both organizations in M.A.S.K..
  • The Megas XLR has a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda (already a Cool Car in and of itself) for a head. Megas is a giant robot. Somehow, the giant robot qualifies as a car for legal purposes due to this, and is street-legal.
  • All the cars in Motorcity.
  • Mr. Magoo bought a 1910-era Baker Electric in one of his 1950s cartoons. His nephew Waldo considered it an alleged car, but Magoo was proud of it — and it held up fine after a detour into the ocean. Driving an ancient electric car when everyone else was in two-ton dreadnoughts — Magoo was so anachronistic that he was 50 years ahead of the curve. Very cool.
  • The Lunamobile, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is basically a pegasus-with-batwings-pulled flying fourteenth century Batmobile.
  • In Phantom 2040, Kit eventually gets his hands on a Mustang, the last car ever made that runs entirely on internal combustion, which Steele outfitted with a cloaking device, hover capability, and numerous weapons. It's called Hero, after the 21st Phantom's horse.
  • Uncle Bobby Proud of The Proud Family owns a tricked-out car that comes with various special features, such as a parachute should the car drive off a ledge (as shown in "Thelma and Luis") and an anti-parking ticket device that enables him to transform his car into anything object he wants, such as a post office box, to avoid such outcome (as shown in "Crouching Trudy, Hidden Penny", which caused the Prouds' electricity to go out because the mailman didn't pick up the electric bill, among others).
  • The golf cart from Regular Show.
  • C.A.R. from The Replacements is sentient, can fly, and is a lot smarter than his alleged driver, Dick Daring.
  • The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo. Its iconic status is solidified by being synonymous with Mystery Inc. as a whole — almost every single piece of media in the franchise has always had the Mystery Machine, regardless of the main characters.
  • Speed Buggy is a dune buggy that had helicopter & submarine modes. Also, he never lost a race he was in despite competing against race cars.
  • Speed Racer: The Next Generation: The powerful Mach 5 itself is found by Speed Racer Jr. and restored for two final races. After it ends up totaled, its successor the Mach 6 is built. Speed's brother X's car, the Shooting Star, is also cool. The Mach 6 eventually gets an air-powered engine.
  • Mike Chan's car in Sym-Bionic Titan.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have the Turtle Van (also known as the Party Wagonnote ), which, according to Turtlepedia, is filled with "all kinds of technology the Turtes found or developed". Among other things, it has laser guns on the roof, and on the fold-out doors. They also have other vehicles as well.
  • Transformers: Generation 1: The Autobots, when in their vehicle modes. All of them.
    • So were the Stunticons.
  • Dick Dastardly may have been the token villain in Wacky Races, but his Mean Machine was the coolest car in the group. Also it was apparently the fastest, it had to be for Dick to get far enough ahead of everyone else to stop and lay traps for them.
    • Along with all the other cars, as well.
  • Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch is set in an entire world of cool cars that can talk and drive themselvesnote 
  • In World of Winx we have the Winxmobile, a van that, among other things, can be disguised as anything the Winx can think of.

 
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His Majesty Martin

9-year-old Martin Morning wakes up as a king.

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His Majesty Martin

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