From Batman to Vin Diesel, the muscle car is the go-to ride for macho stars. Couldn’t they drive something greener?
Like hemlines or facial hair, the Batmobile has always been a barometer of
fashion – from Adam West’s extravagantly finned 60s version to Tim Burton’s 80s stretch limo to Christopher Nolan’s urban battle machine. Judging by early images, Robert Pattinson’s ride in the forthcoming reboot resembles none of these so much as a 1970s muscle car. This is bang on trend, because if you want to be taken seriously in the movies these days, a muscle car is what you need to be driving.
The definition is vague but the term broadly applies to a handful of souped-up US models of the late 60s and early 70s, whose mean lines and outsized horsepower made them the coolest cars on screen. None of your fancy European sports cars, thank you; these were more like crime cars, built for a fast getaway, an interstate smuggling run, or a leap across a rickety bridge that the pursuing cop cars just weren’t going to make. Muscle cars were lionised at the time in movies such as Vanishing Point, The Driver, Bullitt, Two-Lane Blacktop, Smokey and the Bandit, Gone in 60 Seconds (in the 2000 remake the most sought-after car was basically the same model), not to mention the good ol’ Dukes of Hazzard, which eventually ran out of Dodge Chargers to trash.