Movies and cars have had a close knit relationship throughout Hollywood history. The popularity of the Fast and Furious franchise and new films like Drive makes them heirs to the unique winning partnership between the camera and the wheels.

Earlier films like Bullit, Ronin, The French Connection and The Italian Job thrilled petrolheads with their dynamic chase scenes. Inspired viewers have gone so far as to modify their cars to capture the spirit of the movies. Here are some great examples. [...]

Back to the Future

Few movie cars are as iconic as Doc’s DeLorean/time machine from the Back to the Future trilogy. Popcorn munching petrolheads may recall wishing they could take it for a spin through the fourth dimension. Incredibly, a talented US engineer recently created a perfect replica, even adding a flux capacitor. The eventual buyer paid over $450,000 for it. It’s not known whether they went back in time to fight off their mother’s sexual advances. Check the car out here.

This Car Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts

An exact replica of the 1959 Cadillac Ecto-1 Ghostbusters Ambulance also recently came up for sale. Even possessing the famous film car’s wailing siren, which made more racket than the spooks, this superb vehicle was obviously snapped up pretty quickly by a collector for around $235,000.

The Ultimate K.I.T.T. Car

A realistic reproduction of the iconic Knight Industries Two Thousand (K.I.T.T) car from the cult 80s show Knight Rider also came screeching on to the eBay Motors site with a $27,000 price. The 1982 Pontiac Trans Am came with the lights and gizmos associated with K.I.T.T., although thankfully David Hasselhoff was absent.

Need To Escape A T-Rex?

This driven movie fan bought a 1990 4-wheel jeep and slaved away on it until he had an awesome replica of a Jurassic Park jeep to race imaginary raptors in. Featuring all the logos from the fictional dino safari, Jeff Goldblum will have some nasty flashbacks should it ever drive past him.

An Almighty Paint Job

Good Lord! NASCAR and Jesus are popular across the Bible belt, but The Passion of the Christ paintwork? It’s rather crazy way of marketing the equally bonkers Mel Gibson’s powerful film. See the big C here.

A Question of Taste

Remember Jim Carrey’s mind-bending performance as The Riddler in Batman Forever? Well a super modified race car recently advertised on the market for $32,000 had been given an amazing green and black question mark paint job to resemble the suit of the famous Batman villain.

Keeping with batty cars, Casey Putsch has built his own turbine powered Batmobile featuring everything but the Caped Crusader’s weaponry. Possessing a Boeing turboshaft engine, giving it a power to weight ratio equal to a Dodge Viper, it’s sure to leave even superheroes stunned. Take a peek into the Batcave here.

Driving Force

When George Lucas called up movie fan and Red Bull Racing boss Dietrich Mateschitz with a pitch it was always going to be a head turner. Modifying the body of their F1 racing car with Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith imagery, the pit team also dressed up as famous characters from the film, being careful not to cause punctures with their lightsabers.

In the Minority

Doesn’t the real world sometimes modify its cars to fit within the movies? Of course it does. The Lexus 2054 concept car was specially created for Spielberg’s Minority Report. Lexus took their striking design and modified it to represent what an advanced Lexus car might look like in 2054. Will we see them in future showrooms?

Future Spin

Not to be outdone, Audi designers modified their own distinct style to create the Audi RSQ concept car for the 2035 cityscape of sci-fi blockbuster I, Robot. Audi’s futuristic vision perfectly suited the robotic world of the film, once again proving the right car can drive through the barrier between reality and fiction.
 

This is a guest post from our friends over at Netcars.