Best Trucks on the Silver Screen

1985 Toyota SR5

Say you've just traveled back in time to put the local bully in his place, ensure that your parents' relationship gets off to a suitably romantic start while dodging some seriously Freudian complications, and help invent rock 'n' roll — all while avoiding a tear in the space-time continuum. What's a proper reward when you return to the awesome present you helped create? If you're Marty McFly in "Back to the Future," it's this lifted and blacked-out 1985 Toyota SR5 pickup. If you came of age during a certain part of the 1980s, there was possibly no truck in pop culture with quite the same cool factor.

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1986 Ford F-350 (Bigfoot)

"Road House" is one of the greatest "bad" movies of all time. It hits all the major touchstones of the Reagan era: tight jeans on men, big feathered hair also on men, Patrick Swayze, synthesizers, fake karate and Bigfoot. Monster-truck racing really started with the first Bigfoot, built in 1979 by Bob Chandler from the chassis of a 1974 Ford F-250, and it was such a rage by the end of the decade that an entire line of Bigfoot racers was built that included the No. 7 created specifically for the 1989 movie about the world's best bouncer.

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Ford F-150

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson may have been the star of the 2004 film about an ordinary citizen ousting a corrupt small-town lawman, but the movie couldn't be a true remake of the 1973 classic without a pickup truck — in this case, a Ford F-150 — to haul Sheriff Chris Vaughn's butt-kicking lumber. Truck fans no doubt flinched when the lifted, late-1980s F-150 was blown up in the movie, just as Chrysler execs were no doubt miffed when they realized the movie's director had put the good guy in a Ford and the bad guy in a Dodge.

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Mater (1951 International Harvester)

Mater, the rusty, buck-toothed, tow-truck sidekick, was the breakout animated star of the original Disney-Pixar movie "Cars," going on to take the leading role in the sequel and likewise starring in a number of spinoff stories within the larger "Cars" franchise. Voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, the tow-truck character is based on a 1951 International Harvester, with minor detailing touches lifted from GM trucks from the same era.

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2007 GMC TopKick C4500

Michael Bay movies are known for gratuitous explosions, high-gloss women bouncing in slow motion and massive and/or screamingly fast machines. The Ironhide character from the three "Transformers" movies serves two of those three ends: In vehicle form, the character is a GMC TopKick C4500 that, er, transforms into the Autobots' weapons specialist — meaning, basically, that he's a hulking medium-duty truck full of a mind-boggling array of things that go boom. Fun fact: According to Bob Budiansky, who thought up the names of the original comic-book "Transformers," Ironhide's name is derived from the TV police procedural "Ironside," about a wheelchair-bound San Francisco detective, which aired from 1967 to 1975.

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1997 Chevrolet C-2500 Silverado Fleetside

Quentin Tarantino's two-part homage to samurai flicks and spaghetti Westerns — and Uma Thurman's ability to kick people in the face — is a nonstop murder-fest. The first on-screen snuff-out by Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo (aka the Bride) is a sleazebag named Buck, who drives an easy-to-spot truck. The '97 Chevrolet C-2500 Silverado Fleetside with a custom spoiler and banana-yellow-and-hot-pink paint job was given a memorable name written on the tailgate. This being a family friendly website we can't write the name here, but suffice to say it could be called a "kitten carriage."

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1974 Kenworth W900

We can't do a piece about trucks without including at least one 18-wheeler — and what cinematic big rig better deserves that recognition than the one that hauled 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana, Texas, to Atlanta following a now-iconic 1977 Pontiac Trans-Am Special Edition? The 1974 Kenworth W900 driven by Cledus "Snowman" Snow, embodied perfectly by the late Jerry Reed, had everything one could want in a law-dodging big rig: namely, lots of beer, a wise-cracking good ol' boy driver and a basset hound named Fred. Burt Reynolds, Sally Field and that Firebird may have taken top billing in the flick, but remember that without Snowman and his truck, there would have been no need for the Bandit.

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1986 GMC Sierra 3500

For a once-suicidal, former special-forces assassin turned Los Angeles cop, Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs in the "Lethal Weapon" franchise has some pretty impressive brand loyalty. Riggs drives a different — that is, newer — GMC truck in each of the four films, starting with an 1986 GMC Sierra 3500 crew cab in the original, followed by an '89 and '92 GMC Sierra 3500 in the second and third films. Riggs downsizes a bit in the fourth installment with a 1999 Sierra 1500 Z71 club cab, although as with all previous models, the truck is black.

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1973 Chevrolet 4x4

They say everything's bigger in Texas — by "they" we mean Texans — and this applies to both the Chevy 4x4 pickup in "Varsity Blues" and its driver, the morbidly obese and concussion-prone Billy Bob. (Interestingly, no last name is provided for this character, played by Ron Lester, meaning there's a possibility this cowboy-hat-wearing football player with a pig for a pet is actually named William Bob.) The heavily customized Chevy is a long-wheelbase model, sports massive tires — we'd wager 35- or even 38-inch — and has been subject to what looks to be a 4- to 6-inch lift kit.

View Pictures:  Pickup-Trucks, Tow to Tow

1972 Chevrolet C-10

This Richard Linklater cult classic is known as much for its collection of heart-stopping American muscle cars as it is for its 1970s classic-rock soundtrack and a bevy of yet-to-be-discovered Hollywood stars, including Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich and Matthew "All Right All Right All Right!" McConaughey. In addition to the classic Pontiac Firebird, Chevy Chevelle SS, Plymouth Duster and Ford Maverick that get the bulk of the gearheads' attention, the movie features a rumbling black 1972 Chevrolet C10 pickup driven by Benny O'Donnell (Cole Hauser). Parker Posey's character, Darla Marks, drives a sweet '55 Chevy 3100 half-ton pickup. And a royal blue 1975 GMC pickup shows up in a couple of scenes, piloted by an uncredited character with no lines, played by a then-unknown Renée Zellweger.

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Joshua Condon has covered everything from nanotechnology to champagne and caviar for the likes of The New York Times, Popular Science, Men's Journal, Cargo and RL Magazine. He's recently relocated from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Los Angeles and is spending way, way more time in his car as a result.

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