Any Mustang guy will tell you that Bullitt is the greatest Mustang movie of all time. Dodge guys love Vanishing Point. Street-rodders all know American Graffiti backwards and forwards. There isn't a Porsche guy on earth who hasn't sat through Steve McQueen's Le Mans without imagining himself behind the wheel of 917. Heck, AMC Pacer fans flock to Wayne's World. But there's never really been a great Corvette movie.
Oh, there have been Corvettes in movies, but counting cars parked in the background is a cheat. There's even been one movie that was actually about a Corvette and had the word "Corvette" in its title, but calling 1978's Corvette Summer a great movie is an irrational stretch. Corvettes have been used as hero cars, as the cars of villains, as props for mayhem, and as objects of desire and envy in movies, but there has never been that one film that fixes in the public's collective mind the essence of the Corvette's personality.
Why is this so? While there's some real heft behind a couple of conspiracy theories, the truth is that cars are cast in films in about the same way that actors are: They get into the movie only if they fill the role correctly. It's hard to root for a hero who has all the advantages, and if a hero has a Corvette ... well, it's pretty obvious that things have already been going his way in life. That's why-though on occasion heroes drive a Corvette-it's more common for the heavy (who the hero will eventually overcome and vanquish) to own the sleek two-seater. Plus there's the simple fact that often a story requires three people to ride in a car (and this is a bigger factor than it might at first seem).
So in the name of our enlightened readers, herewith we dole out 10 carefully considered (and nowhere near comprehensive) awards for various appearances by Corvettes in film (television not included). No burnouts on the red carpet, please.
Dorian Gray Award for Best Reflection of Decrepitude
Boogie Nights (1997)
When porn star Dirk Diggler buys his orange '77 C3, it's new and it's pristine. But as time goes by and he becomes more debauched and more desperate, the car spirals downward with him. By the end of the film, he's a wreck and so is the car.
Pamela Anderson Award for Startling Over-Inflation
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
According to Josh Hancock, automotive consultant on all of the Austin Powers movies, the red, white, and blue '65 roadster driven by "Felicity Shagwell" wasn't anything special. "It was just a nonmatching small-block car that wasn't in particularly good shape," he recalls. "It couldn't have been worth much more than, oh, at most 15 grand." Except, of course, that it had been in a movie.
But dang if someone didn't think that being in a movie mattered. In an online auction run by New Line Cinema, the studio that released the film the summer of 1999, the car was sold for an unfathomable $121,000. Did actress Heather Graham leave a particularly adorable dent in the seat? For that kind of money, her butt should still have been in it.
For $121,000, this Corvette...
For $121,000, this Corvette should have included the driver, Heather Graham.
Best Tiny Corvette In A Chase Scene
The Dead Pool (1988)
As the fifth movie in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series, The Dead Pool came out when most of the good ideas had already been played out and the weariness was obvious. But there was one amazing exception in the form of a chase through the streets of San Francisco between Harry and his partner in an Oldsmobile sedan (remember when they made those?) and a radio-controlled, scale-model mid-year Stingray carrying an explosive charge.
The scene plays as a sly parody of the classic chase in Bullitt, but also works on its own at being both suspenseful and unique. Too bad the rest of the movie is such a disappointment.
Best Flight
Con Air (1997)
In what's probably the single most improbable series of events ever depicted in a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film (and his films are nothing but improbable series of events), DEA Agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney) watches his '67 Elkhart Blue roadster being dragged into the sky behind a C-123 cargo plane. It's not a perfect sequence (a lot of the computer-graphics work looks like, well, computer graphics), but for sheer audacity combined with over-the-top ludicrousness, it may be one of the most memorable scenes in Corvette filmic history.
Bonus points if you notice the early C4 that gets smushed in the finale by the same C-123. Don't cheat on the scoring! The only person you hurt is yourself.
Best Corvette Unrecognizable As A Corvette
Live And Let Die (1973)
The first James Bond movie featuring Roger Moore is filled with Chevrolets, and much of the stunt driving was actually done by the Chevy-sponsored Joie Chitwood thrill-show team. At first glance, the most memorable car in the film, however, appears to be a white Cadillac Eldorado dripping in such excessive ornamentation that it should just sink though the Manhattan Island. But it's not really an Eldorado at all.
In fact, the white pimpmobile, with its deadly dart-shooting sideview mirror, is a "Corvorado" which is a C3 under a crust of fiberglass molded to look like an Eldorado's fenders. The Corvorado was (and presumably still is) the product of Dunham Coach of Boonton, New Jersey. The Corvette origins of the car are most obvious in interior shots.