Best and worst movies for car guys

As a movie, "Grand Prix" is a flimsy thing, with its standard-issue daredevil racers and fishy Formula One intrigues only loosely strung together in a coherent story. As a faithful reproduction of the early days of F1 racing, though, it's riveting, with some shots taken directly from the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix. Even the mocked-up footage was captured at speeds of more than 150 mph, much of it from the first true camera cars in film: a Shelby Cobra and a Ford GT 40 that were packed with front-, side- and rear-facing 70mm rigs.

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In classic racing movies such as "Grand Prix" and "Le Mans," the story is filler, just punctuation marks between clips of highly realistic racing footage. "Days of Thunder," however, never gets out of its own way. Its final race is pure melodrama: Tom Cruise fills in for his dying friend and fights through a mechanical failure to take first place at Daytona. And the visuals, while captured in part during real NASCAR races, are too flashy to inspire that heady combination of wish fulfillment and terror.

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Car chases had been committed to celluloid before, but Steve McQueen's air-catching, high-speed pursuit across San Francisco marked a new era in going fast on film. McQueen famously drove that 1968 Ford Mustang GT during some portions of the movie's climactic scene, demonstrating an automotive brio that would become part of his cinematic legacy (see our "Le Mans" entry, as well as his fence-jumping motorcycle scene in 1963's "The Great Escape").

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The original, 1973 version of "Gone in 60 Seconds" isn't a great movie, but this overadrenalized remake is a special kind of clunker. Nicolas Cage's good-guy crook has just 72 hours to boost 50 cars, thereby saving his brother — also a crook, but of the bumbling kind — from bad-guy crooks. In the rapid-fire grand-theft auto that ensues, viewers glimpse Bentleys, Ferraris and no fewer than five Porsches. It's too much of a good thing, even before Cage leaps a traffic jam in a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT.

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Whether the 1970s were the golden age of car cinema or a high point for American movies in general, 1971 was a banner year for films about tough guys in tough cars. "Vanishing Point" kicked things off with an anti-establishment fable, featuring a Vietnam War hero turned pill-popping delivery driver trying to get his client's 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T from Colorado to California in way too much of a hurry. Police chases ensue, and our hero's protest-infused journey ends, literally, in flames.

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When it was released, Jay Leno called "Driven" the worst car movie ever made. More than a decade later, the burn holds true. Sylvester Stallone wrote, produced and starred in this mess, an IndyCar movie that clearly wants to be about F1, featuring crashes that are equal parts computer-generated and utterly insane. Cars are constantly spinning and torquing in midair, and one wreck sends a character hurtling into a lake. "Driven" isn't supposed to be a comedy, but it is.

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Steve McQueen's F1 racing movie was tanked by the release of "Grand Prix," but with "Le Mans" the actor finally had his way. The result is similarly light on story — it involves a rivalry between Porsche and Ferrari drivers — but is just as thrilling for its racing footage, much of which was shot during the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Porsche 908/2 that McQueen's character drives in the film is the same one that the actor took to second place in the actual 1970 12 Hours of Sebring race.

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Some people swear by "The Fast and the Furious," hailing each increasingly over-the-top action sequence with the appropriate frequency and amplitude of fist-pumping. It's "Point Break" on wheels, with a Los Angeles cop going undercover in the illegal world of street racing, hot on the trail of a gang of hijackers. It's a breezy, nitrous-oxide-powered look at the once-relevant tuner subculture, at least until the movie remembers that although tricked-out Civics may be neat, Vin Diesel's 1970 Dodge Charger R/T is better. Even in bad car movies, the classic pony car reigns supreme.

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Where "Le Mans" tried to capture the rarified echelon of rich-guy racing, "Two-Lane Blacktop" is a scrappier, more counterculture take, with nameless characters — the Driver, the Mechanic — rumbling across Route 66 in a primer-gray '55 Chevy One-Fifty, street-racing anyone they come across. More of a tone poem than a road movie, "Two-Lane Blacktop" makes amends for its aggravating dialogue with some of the best and grittiest drag races on film.

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Depending on whom you ask, "Cars" is either a great car movie, distilling decades of car culture into a uniquely gearheaded fairy tale, or it's sterile and dumb, a kiddiefied, Happy Meal-ready take on America's love affair with personal transportation. Maybe it's both — a heartfelt tribute to 1950s Americana with a story line that's packed with clichés. All would be forgiven, though, if a future sequel shows the cars rising up to slay their makers — that, and how you hold a wrench when you have tires for hands.

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After that volley of the 10 best and worst, let's end on a high note: the five best car movies.

Proof that quality car movies don't have to be filled with hard-charging psychopaths, "American Graffiti" is uncut early '60s nostalgia, with its series of coming-of-age stories playing out in an array of gorgeous '50s-era cars. For raw classic-car ogling it's impossible to beat the film's finale, a drag race between a black '55 Chevy One-Fifty — the same one used in "Two-Lane Blacktop" — and a yellow, chopped-top 1932 Ford V8 Deuce Coupe.

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Hollywood's belated, big-budget answer to "Vanishing Point," "Smokey and the Bandit" presents the nonstop, cross-country police chase as less of an existential cry for help and more of a showcase for high-octane zaniness. Like the illicit cargo of Coors beer that Burt Reynolds helps deliver to a dry county in Georgia, the movie goes down pretty smoothly. The stunts, most of them involving the hero's 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, are real enough to clip cartoon country without plowing right into it.

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What's more tragic, the death of Mad Max Rockatansky's dog or the subsequent detonation of his beloved jet-black Pursuit Special, a supercharged V8 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT Coupe that might be the coolest car ever built? "The Road Warrior" forges ahead manfully, though, culminating in a pitched battle between a tanker truck laden with precious fuel — or is it? — and an army of chain-wielding, crossbow-cannon-firing lunatics in an assortment of pickups, makeshift convertibles and dune buggies. In other words, a masterpiece.

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It's not that car movies throughout the '80s and '90s were bad — they were terrible. With "Death Proof," Quentin Tarantino resurrected muscle-car adoration but made it problematic: Kurt Russell's 1971 Chevy Nova SS, stenciled with a skull and lightning bolts, is an object of beauty — and a murder weapon. He kills his unbuckled passengers through aggressive braking, and then totals the car in a collision. The movie's final chase scene is a Mopar fever dream, pitting Russell's black 1969 Dodge Charger R/T against a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T inspired by "Vanishing Point."

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Simultaneously ultraviolent and art-house impenetrable, "Drive" is as haunting as its protagonist, an unnamed stunt and getaway driver played by Ryan Gosling. Those getaway cars range from an unassuming late-model Impala to a black 2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0, and although the chases aren't as epic as the centerpiece scenes in "Bullitt" or "Vanishing Point," they're the best kind of throwbacks, free of computer imagery and full of white-knuckle stunt driving. But the most evocative ride in the movie might be the driver's everyday car, a white 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle that Gosling dismantled and reassembled himself.

Based out of the Boston area, Erik Sofge is frequent contributor to Popular Mechanics and Slate.com. He specializes in everything scientific and technical.