There is a scene in Batman Begins which is both a wink to the Lamborghini cognoscenti and a gesture of the kind of machismo which finds close contact between women exciting.

Bruce Wayne arrives at a party in a black Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster, that most Batman of road cars, disembarks, and is followed by two stunning young ladies who both emerge from the Murc’s single passenger seat:

While a perfect adolescent fantasy and a testament to the Murciélago’s image as a pussy magnet, would a superhero really want to transport his female companions stacked?

And have them pummeled and beaten and crushed by the savage acceleration, their only cushioning each other’s silk-clad body?

In the film, Wayne’s companions end up having to cool their bruises off in a decorative pool, setting off a chain of events which will see our hero shamed in public, depicted as nothing but a moneyed oaf.

Thankfully, the kind people of Lamborghini have though of everything. Granted, their thinking is from back when Batman was a comic book instead of a motion picture franchise, but the decades have not corrupted their logic.

The elegant answer to Wayne’s need is very simply the four-seater Lamborghini Espada, shown here in a painting by Bill Klemm with room to spare in comfort for yet another companion:

Then again, good times do not necessarily require the presence of throngs:

Image Credit: Warner Bros., Bill Klemm, Balázs Fenyő

It appears that the guy in the 5, finding himself behind the CX, takes a "short cut" across the countryside in order to reappear… still behind the CX. Some pretty good Franco-hoonage here, and that's what counts!

Yes, that's Quinton "Rampage" Jackson playing Mr. T playing B.A. Baracus. Bradley Cooper is Face. Sharlto Copley from District 9 is playing Murdoch while Liam Neeson will lead the new A-Team as Hannibal. And yes, that is the GMC van behind them. All is right in the world.

[via ETOnline]

The return of the Interceptor makes us wonder if this movie will be some kind of prequel, as Max's rare-in-story Ford XB Falcon was thoroughly blown to smithereens in The Road Warrior. The truck on the other hand looks like a hot wheels car, with a ridiculously huge supercharged engine and a thoroughly chopped top. Looks like every Billetproof builders wet dream, and we wouldn't sneeze at taking it for a spin either. The two are part of what's expected to be quite an armada of vehicles planned for the $100 million Warner Brothers backed film which will be constructed over the next year. The cast is currently completely up in the air, after Miller refuted previous reports of lead roles going to Sam Worthington and Charlize Theron. Filming will begin next summer in New South Wales, Australia.

[ABC News]

Not only is Detroit a great place to film a movie like Red Dawn 2 because they'll allow you to blow up downtown buildings without a care in the world, but also because folks in certain parts of the region will futilely shout the name of a certain non-indigenous-to-Michigan furry animal on a fall Saturday without any prodding whatsoever. Usually it's with the word "Go" attached to the front of it — but that can be fixed in post-production, right? Anyway, here's the shot of that Humvee we were talking about above.

We knew selling Hummer to the Chinese would lead to disaster — and us having to fend off the red menace with nothing but a Dodge Ram. There's a slew of other pics of filming in downtown Detroit here.

Anyone else take any shots? If so, drop 'em in the comments below.

We see Keitel behind the wheel of a '72 Imperial LeBaron and Proval piloting a '72 Dodge Coronet sedan… and the streets of Brooklyn don't have room for both cars!
Spoiler Alert! Don't watch this scene if you haven't already seen Mean Streets all the way through; it would be a shame to give away the ending of this all-time great Scorcese film to those who haven't yet experienced it.

We were there for the unveiling of the Black Beauty and learned that Seth Rogen, set to play the titular Green Hornet, was a fan of the site. We wish him the best in this endeavor and, of course, just assume it was Kato driving. Hopefully, this was just part of the filming and not an accident — though it looks fairly real to us. The vehicle seems to have nosed itself right into the CAA building in Century City. (Hat tip to James!) [Photos from JustJared.com]

[via JustJared.com]
[via JustJared.com]
[via JustJared.com]

Before we get to the interview, let's jump over to Mr. Cox's site and read what he has to say about the central theme of Repo Man:

Nuclear War. Of course. What else could it be about? And the demented society that contemplated the possibility thereof. Repoing people's cars and hating alien ideologies were only the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg itself was the maniac culture which had elected so-called "leaders" named Reagan and Thatcher, who were prepared to sacrifice everything — all life on earth — to a gamble based on the longevity of the Soviet military, and the whims of their corporate masters. J. Frank Parnell - the fictitious inventor of the Neutron Bomb - was the central character for me.

Yes, the Greatest Car Movie Of All Time wasn't even about cars! As a nuclear-war-obsessed 18-year-old gearhead equipped with a fleet of wretched hoopties rattling with Suicidal Tendencies and Stooges cassettes Repo Man was a Tzar Bomba dropped right into my skull. Lately, what with all the rumblings about Cox's recently-finished non-sequel, Repo Chick, I was inspired to email Mr. Cox and ask him the Repo Man car questions I've had for him all along. Even though he's swamped with Repo Chick-related work these days, he got back to me right away and was kind enough to provide detailed answers to my ranting, obsessive queries. Here we go:


MM: Let's get to the most obvious one first: why a '64 Chevelle Malibu sedan for J. Frank Parnell? One can easily imagine him coming home after a long day designing enhanced-radiation physics packages, easing the car into the garage attached to a wholesome Los Alamos ranch-style house, etc., and a Chevelle 4-door would have been just about right for a successful young bomb designer in the mid-to-late 1960s; unpretentious and practical, yet with a certain amount of sportiness not found in the lower-end Chevelle models. He's still driving it in the early 1980s (or he's just obtained it), and that must mean something. I've always imagined his family leaving him in '69 or so, as he proceeds with his downward spiral, with the house and car kept unchanged as a creepy shrine to happier suburban times, but some of my car-geek friends feel that J. Frank just stole the car at random (due to its easily hot-wired pre-steering-column-lock ignition) when he grabbed whatever the hell is in the car's trunk and fled New Mexico.

AC: I think you answered that one very well. I just liked the boxy aspect of the '64 Malibu: it seemed very sinister to me. What I didn't realise was how similar it was to the Impala, which the Repo Man drove. So maybe they are two sides of the same coin, too.

MM: Every time I watch Repo Man, I'm amazed by the excellent vehicular casting of the film, and the fact that most of the cars actually used in the film are as specified in the screenplay shows that vehicle selection was very important to you. How is it that an Englishman, living in Los Angeles for just a few years, could have developed such an eye for the nuances of American cars and their cultural overtones? Most Americans, even serious car freaks, would be at a total loss if they tried to do the same with British cars; you'd probably get 1979 London heroin kingpins driving Humber Sceptres, or worse. What was your crash course in American cars?

AC: I knew people who owned those cars. My motorcycle mechanic had the Malibu; our casting director drove the '73 Impala: we bought it from her for the film, then I drove it around for a couple of years until it passed away.

MM: That leads straight to the next one: What kind of car did you drive while shooting the film? For that matter, what did you drive while you were studying at UCLA?

AC: I wasn't a car person at that time. I had motorcycles: Hondas, old BMWs, and a 750 Norton Commando which was the coolest of them all, on the rare occasions when it ran.

My first four-wheeled vehicle was a Toyota pickup which I bought to transport the motorcycles when they broke down. Then came a beloved 68 Chevy Impala convertible (305 cu in) which I bought in Tucson Arizona and drove for many years until an actor borrowed it and wrecked it. For many years I had a 1986 Isuzu Trooper and my current, and I hope final, ride is a 96 Trooper. It is a fine vehicle as long as you don't drive at more than 70 or turn too many corners.

MM: The mirror-shade-wearing government agents drive AMC Matadors, at a time when most cop types would have had Ford LTDs and Chevy Caprices. The inept-yet-sinister effect comes through nicely with the off-brandedness of AMC products, but at the risk of overemphasizing the inept side. Were you influenced by the Matador driven by Stacy Keach's Sergeant Stedenko character in Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke when you selected the Matador as the agents' car?

AC: No, I liked the Matador for its weird shape and for its name. But even it pales into insignificance beside the AMC Gremlin, perhaps the ugliest motor vehicle ever, prior to the Hummer at least.

MM: It's impossible to imagine Harry Dean in anything other than a '71 Impala sedan, of course, but did you consider other cars for the Bud character when getting vehicles for the production? If so, what cars?

AC: Wasn't it a '73? Anyway, it was always his ride.

MM: That Impala sure looks like a '71 to me (the '73 didn't have the turn-signal lights on the fender leading edges, and US government regulations mandated monstrous 5 MPH crash bumpers on '72 and later models, while the car in the movie has the pre-72 bumpers). Of course, the full-sized Chevrolets of that era were pretty much all the same under the skin, so it could have been a '73 that got wrecked and had '71 body parts bolted on; that way all the registration paperwork would have had "1973" all over it.

AC: I bet you're right about that Chevy. I never even looked at the paperwork, just thought of it as the '73'.

MM: How much thought did you put into choosing the cars that got repo'd during the film? Did you agonize over the cars with less screen time, such as the '78 Cutlass Salon Coupe ripped by Otto in his first-ever repo? Or were those cars selected more on the basis of what was easily available within budget?

AC: Those were based on what was hanging around the set. I think the Cutlass belonged to one of the Teamsters.

MM: I've had a nice PR lady from the Car-Freshner Corporation, maker of the "Little Tree" air fresheners, send me vast quantities of free trees to give away at races and so on, because of the exposure they got from my series of "you'll find one in every car" junykard-photography posts. Apparently the employees of Car-Freshner were totally unaware of their products' role in your film.

AC: Nonsense! They have forgotten now, or perhaps your contact wasn't there then, but Car-Freshner sent us a whole bunch of air fresheners WITHOUT the scent, which is too horrible for anyone, even an actor, to endure for long. This, plus the generic goods from Ralph's Supermarket, was the extent of product placement in the film.

The Esprit’s status in underwater history was cemented in the wonderful chase scene from The Spy Who Loved Me, where Roger Moore drives his Lotus into the water where it promptly turns into a submarine:

The NSX is known more for being fast. Very fast. If you need to not only beat the clock but beat even your expectations of beating the clock, look no further than Harvey Keitel’s stepping on the stage of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a movie only slightly younger than the 19-year-old NSX:

Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds. But what if you’re not in sunny Southern California but in a region affected by torrential downpours, like the Western Ghats in India—or Orange Park, Florida? It turns out the NSX has another trick up its sleeve as you'll see from this video:

There are cars whose whiny sound would benefit from the addition of Al Pacino’s booming baritone to their exhaust note. The Porsche 928 is definitely not one of them. Powered by a 5-liter V8, it’s got boom aplenty with a classic grand tourer shape to match it. Still, the 928 is one of the cars which appeared in Scarface and if you’re selling an example in these derelict economic times, you might as well make note of the celebrity connection. Especially here in New York City.

The car is parked mere yards from Jalopnik’s New York City headquarters and there is only one thing wrong with it: the seller is called Toby as opposed to Tony. Otherwise, it appears to be a fine cruiser.

If you do purchase it, try and not make much of its less than spectral motion picture history as an accessory to score with women: the 928 is the car Al Pacino’s character Tony Montana purchased to impress Elvira Hancock, played by Michelle Pfeiffer—to no avail.

I sincerely hope the American flag draped over the luggage area comes with the car.

If you want a more high-res experience, hit the trailer homepage at the fruit.

And, of course, that got me to thinking: what about all the other cars driven by movie bad guys? We've seen some excellent bad-guy movie cars over the years, and today I'm honoring fifteen of them. Those of you who were outraged by what I missed in the last list (yeah, I got all your venomous emails about the exclusion of Vanishing Point Challenger- a movie car I love dearly, believe it or not- last time around), prepare for further jaw-droppingly egregious omissions!

Here we go, in no particular order of preference, the Jalopnik Sinister Fifteen Movie Cars! Thanks to the Internet Movie Car Database for most of these images.

Bill Duke's 1990 Chevrolet Caprice
Payback, 1999. Crazy Mel Gibson has been in quite a few good car movies, in between drinking shots of holy water and shaking his fist at the Vatican, and this minor neo-noir masterpiece has plenty of Jalopnik-Grade™ rides. For corrupt cops, you just can't beat the good ol' Caprice.
Albert Popwell's 1973 Cadillac Eldorado
Magnum Force, 1973. After Popwell's character Drāno-izes a ho who holds out on his money (this execution method inspires the line "That shows a certain sense of style" from Clint Eastwood), he meets his doom in this gorgeous pimpmobile at the hands of vigilante motorcycle cops.
Bob Skokes' 1968 Chevrolet El Camino
Suburbia, 1984. I totally spaced on the punked-out Ford LTD from this classic film in my last list, but the El Camino driven by the bitter dog-slaughtering laid-off autoworkers can make this one!
Paul Newman's 1958 Cadillac Sixty-Two Convertible
Hud, 1963. Newman's character of Texas rancher's son Hud Bannon stands as one of the meanest amoral bastids in motion picture history, and his (pink, according to the dialogue in this black-and-white film) '58 Cadillac suits that character perfectly, given the landscape of pickup-drivin' good country people.
Conrad Veidt's 1926 Mercedes-Benz Modell K
Casablanca, 1942. Nazis in movies are always sinister and/or evil (unless you're Leni Riefenstahl), and there's only one vehicular choice for them in Vichy-governed Morocco: Mercedes-Benz!
Lord Humungus Motor Pool 1973 Chrysler Valiant VH
The Road Warrior, 1984. With all the outstanding baddiemobiles in this movie, how do you choose one car? In the end, the quad-pneumatic-arrow-gun turret gave this Valiant the edge.
Drive-By Shooters' 1986 Hyundai Excel
Boys N The Hood, 1991. It's hard to imagine an '86 Excel even running, much less holding together long enough to facilitate a drive-by, but sometimes the cinema viewer needs to break out the ol' suspension-of-disbelief thing.
Emmett Walsh's 1966 Volkswagen Beetle
Blood Simple, 1985. I can't make any movie list without something from Los Hermanos Coen, and it's hard to come up with an ickier bad guy than the unnamed VW-driving detective in their first film.
Dennis Hopper's 1968 Dodge Charger
Blue Velvet, 1986. It's hard to imagine a scarier bad guy than Hopper's Frank Booth, who huffs from a mysterious can of compressed gas, beats women, and hits the road in a completely evil beater Charger.
Emile Meyer's 1956 Ford Fairlane
Sweet Smell Of Success, 1957. This incredibly dark movie- which pretty much bombed when released, but is now regarded as one of the all-time greats- wouldn't have been complete without the corrupt Fairlane-driving cop doing dirty work for the Walter Winchell-based Burt Lancaster character.
Larry J. Blake's 1948 DeSoto Custom
Sunset Boulevard, 1950. What do the burly and ominous repo men coming after William Holden's Plymouth drive, as they attempt to de-wheel (and maybe de-kneecap) him in the City Where Only A Nobody Walks? Yessir, a stolid DeSoto.
Ann Blyth's 1942 Pontac DeLuxe
Mildred Pierce, 1945. Dan Savage says it's the greatest film ever made, and he may be onto something. Based on a novel by master crime writer James M. Cain, this film features a sporty little Pontiac convertible driven by the thoroughly evil- yet utterly shallow- character of Veda Pierce.
David Patrick Kelly's 1955 Cadillac Hearse
The Warriors, 1979. The gang costumes alone make The Warriors worth watching, but the supremely evil '55 Caddy hearse driven by the Rogues vaults it into all-time Bad Guy Movie Car greatness. "War-ri-yers… come out to play-ee-yay!"
Robert Mitchum's Model T Ford
Night Of The Hunter, 1955. I really wanted to use a car driven by Mitchum in Cape Fear, because his character in that film is so terrifying as to make De Niro's version in the Scorcese remake seem like Mr. Rogers by comparison, but Max Cady takes the Shoe Leather Express instead of getting wheels. No problem, though, because Mitchum's character in Charles Laughton's directorial masterpiece is damn near as menacing (and even slimier), and he does drive.
Robin Williams' 2002 Toyota Echo
One Hour Photo, 2002. Williams' creepy, obsessive character managed to purge all the happy from the image of the cute lil' Echo.

Jeffries isn't quite the showman and self-promoter that some of his car-customizing peers of the era were, so his contribution to the canon of amazing machinery to come out of postwar Southern California doesn't always get the recognition it deserves. In addition to building the Monkeemobile, Damnation Alley Landmaster, and the Green Hornet Black Beauty Imperial, Jeffries painted the first-ever AC Cobra and did the striping and lettering on huge quantities of Indy 500 racers… and that's just scratching the surface.

One of the first things we learn about Jeffries is the type of car that got him started: a late-30s Horch sedan! He was in the Army in the early 1950s, stationed in Germany, and acquired this Teutonic proto-Audi monster for road trips around Western Europe. Once he'd installed straight pipes on it, he learned to paint stripes from an old German furniture maker (a story reminiscent of Jimmy Bryant picking up guitar tips from Django Reinhardt while in a French military hospital during the war).

This is a coffee-table book full of pretty photographs of greasy LA boys putting together works of art that today's ironic hipsters will spend their entires lives attempting to emulate, but author Tom Cotter went ahead and wrote a proper biography of Jeffries for those eggheaded types who actually, like, read words. Cotter, as 24 Hours Of LeMons insiders know, is the author of The Hemi In The Barn, the book the LeMons Supreme Court uses for the "Preach To The Converted" penalty; miscreants must read aloud the account of a racing Pinto rescued from oblivion, and they must do it with passion.

The Mantaray and Monkeemobile get plenty of coverage- in part thanks to Jeffries' diligence with a camera, documenting his projects as he went along- but I'd have preferred to get more of the dirt on the feud between Jeffries and former employer George Barris (involving credit for the design of the Monkeemobile, among other things). That's just me, though; those who don't hunger so much for sinuendo will be perfectly satisfied.

I'm giving this one a Jalopnik Three Rod rating. Murilee says check it out!
[Motorbooks]

You might notice that there's no Vanishing Point Challenger, no Two Lane Blacktop '55 Chevy or GTO, no Road Warrior Falcon, no French Connection Pontiac LeMans, and so on; you can go anywhere to find those admittedly deserving machines in a Top Movie Cars list… but you're in for something a little different when your Rambler clanks into my drive-in!

Fee Waybill's 1968 Plymouth Sport Satellite
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, 1981. Just look at this evil '68 Satellite, driven by the character played by Tubes mastermind Fee Waybill in the nearly-forgotten punk classic starring Diane Lane.
Stacey Keach's 1972 AMC Matador
Up In Smoke, 1978. Some folks might try to tell you that Cheech's '64 Impala is the automotive star of this all-time Malaise Era classic, but those same guys will sell you a bag of "Acapulco Gold" that turns out to be oregano. Sergeant Stedenko's unmarked Kenosha sedan, take a bow!
Isaac Hayes' Cadillac Fleetwood
Escape From New York, 1981. An apocalyptic Caddy with chandeliers on the fenders, in jail, being driven across a mine-studded bridge by Isaac Hayes? Why the hell didn't Cadillac issue a chandelier-equipped Escape From New York Edition Cadillac?
Barbara Stanwyck's 1937 LaSalle
Double Indemnity, 1944. It's taking all my willpower to avoid stacking this list with nothing but film noir cars- for example, the cop '49 Ford stalking Sterling Hayden in the opening sequence of Asphalt Jungle- but there's no way we can neglect this LaSalle, which features in the greatest post-murder-victim-body-dump 'car won't start' sequence in cinema history.
Robert Mitchum's 1950 Ford
Thunder Road, 1958. That ol' dope-smoking Bob Mitchum won't let the '57 Chevy-drivin' revenoors catch his triple-carbed Ford, no way! You'll get some nice closeup shots of the triple-carbed overhead-valve Ford V8 in this excellent car movie.
All 250 Vehicles In The Final Sequence Of Used Cars
Used Cars, 1980. The greatest Malaise Era movie of all time! You'll see everything from an early Bronco to a Fiat 128 burning rubber in the final ten minutes of this Kurt Russell classic.
Mel Gibson's 1994 Chevrolet Caprice
Conspiracy Theory, 1997. A movie in which Crazy Mel delivers the line "It's time someone lifted the festering scab that is the Vatican" is already starting off on the right foot, but his awesomely evil Caprice cab sets a new standard for scary movie taxis.
Harvey Keitel's 1972 Imperial LeBaron
Mean Streets, 1973. What do low-level mob associates drive in Early Malaise New York City? Exactly. Spoiler: this car doesn't get a happy ending.
Reese Witherspoon's 1967 Dodge Coronet Wagon
Freeway, 1996. This movie features cynicism galore, a nightmarish Danny Elfman soundtrack, Brooke Shields sticking a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger… and this beautifully wretched Coronet wagon, the crapping out of which starts Witherspoon's character on her Red Riding Hood-esque adventures. Murilee says check it out!
Bette Davis' 1947 Lincoln
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, 1962. Yeah, so I like my movies dark and cynical- you got a problem with that? Davis' character, Baby Jane Hudson, uses this reminder-of-past-glory luxury machine to haul her crippled sister to her death on the Santa Monica beach.
Ronald Reagan's 1959 Ford
The Killers, 1964. Man, imagine having an actor become governor of California! Watching The Great Communicator- in this case, playing a criminal mastermind plotting a mail-truck heist- hoon this gigantic boxy Ford down a dirt road while wearing the same exact suit he wore as President… well, I'm shopping for '59 Fords now!
Dick Rude's 1976 Toyota Corolla
Repo Man, 1984. I'm going to go on record stating that Repo Man is the Greatest Car Movie Of All Time, and that choosing one car to honor in this list was quite difficult. I've read the screenplay many times, and it's telling that Alex Cox specified the exact year, make, and model of every car to be used in the film (and, in most cases, those are the cars that were used during the production). The red Eldorado? The Government Agents' Matador? The Malibu? I'm going to give the honor to the "get sushi and not pay" gang's very punk Toyota… and that reminds me that I've committed a grievous mistake by omitting the Torino from Suburbia in this list. Well, next one!
John Lurie's 1965 Dodge Coronet 440
Stranger Than Paradise, 1984. What's the best possible car for a pair of small-time gamblers to drive from New York to Cleveland to Florida during the winter in 1984? Jim Jarmusch knows!
Rodney Dangerfield's 1966 Mulliner Park Ward Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III
Caddyshack, 1980. What car best epitomizes bad taste and conspicuous consumption, Middle Malaise Era style? Sure, a Zimmer might have worked just as well, but a Mulliner Park Ward Silver Cloud is just as horrifying and ten times as expensive!
Matt Dillon's 1965 Cadillac Fleetwood
Drugstore Cowboy, 1990. When you're ripping off drugstores for that good pharmaceutical-grade junk during the Nixon Era in the Pacific Northwest, there's no better ride.
Billy Bob Thornton's 1940 Dodge Coupe
The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001. Of all the Coen Brothers' films- which show excellent taste in vehicular selection- I settled on this one as my favorite. Tough choice, and I almost went with the '85 Cutlass Ciera in Fargo, or the detective's Beetle in Blood Simple.
Roger Sloman's Morris Minor 1000 Convertible
Nuts In May, 1976. This annoying little car is so perfectly suited to Sloman's fingernails-on-chalkboard character that it's impossible to imagine him driving anything else.
Gloria Swanson's Isotta-Fraschini
Sunset Boulevard, 1950. Wicker bodywork. Leopard skin upholstery. 800 feet total length. Best of all, a golden telephone to speak to the driver!
Burt Reynolds' 1972 Citroën SM
The Longest Yard, 1974. A drunk-driven SM being chased by Malaise Era Mopars, with Burt Reynolds at the wheel and Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio. Enough said!
Ömer Simsek's Opel Manta
Manta, Manta, 1991. As any longtime Jalopnik reader knows, we have a sick love for the Opel Manta, otherwise known as "the German Camaro." Here's one of the many, many gorgeous Mantas from the German film Manta, Manta.
Image source: Automobilsport

That's correct. While Seth Rogen, who'll star in next year's movie, didn't have time to answer any questions for us, he did have time to let us know he's an avid reader of Jalopnik. He also called one of us "Jalopnik Ray," claiming he recognized us. It must have been that Colbert Report thing. Whatever it was we're hoping it'll give us the inside line on driving this here "Black Beauty" unveiled late last night here in San Diego on the Comic Con show floor.