Five of the coolest cop cars movies and TV have to offer

The police chase has been a staple of action movies since... uh... a really long time ago.

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but it had like... four references you guys) the cinematic car chase as we know it was born in 1968 with Bullitt (because of course something like that would start with Steve McQueen).

This means that there are people alive today who were born before car chases in movies were even a thing. How weird is that!?

And what would the chase in Bullitt be without the 1968 Ford Mustang GT hero car?

A good chase is made all the better with cool cars to do the chasing and boy have there been a lot of them throughout the years. So to narrow it down I thought today we could focus on the coolest cars from the side of the law in these movies.

There are a lot of them, and because the law of the internet requires that I work in fives (you don't want to know what happens to you if you break this rule) I've probably missed some. Hell, I'm not even going to talk about Bullitt again. So if I've missed a favourite of yours, I'm sorry.

Anyway, here - in no particular order (except we all know what no. 1 would be if they were...) - are five of the coolest:

1975 Ford Gran Torino - Starsky and Hutch

When Starsky and Hutch producer Aaron Spelling showed Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky) and David Soul (Hutch) the car they were going to be driving Glaser remarked to his co-star it looked like a 'striped tomato'. The nickname stuck and even made it into the show.

In fact there were a few criticisms of the car from the cast and crew, for example the logical question of: 'if they're undercover cops, why do they drive such a flashy car?' to which you can imagine the answer was probably 'it looks cool so shut up'.

But the red and white Gran Torino was almost a very different car. William Blinn, the show's creator, originally wrote the hero vehicle as a green and white Chevrolet Camaro convertible, after owning one that he was: "passionately in love with". Unfortunately for Blinn, the show's transportation deal was with Ford and not Chevrolet, so the Gran Torino ended up as the show's hero car, but that's fine. I mean it's not like that car went on to be an icon of the decade or anything...

Even though the car was put through its fair share of driving stunts it was pretty much just a stock Gran Torino.

The car was hugely popular and if you wanted to recreate it at the time it actually wouldn't have been that difficult.

See, even though the car was put through its fair share of driving stunts (with Glaser, who hated it, vowing to destroy it any chance he got), it was pretty much just a stock Gran Torino. The only changes that were made to the car were the new paintjob and bigger rims. The Gran Torino was dubbed over with the sounds of a more powerful engine, sort of like what movie musicals will do if their star power isn't great at singing.

But that didn't matter to the TV viewing public. In the making-of documentary Starsky and Hutch: Behind the Badge, Antonio Fargas, who played Huggy Bear, comments on how he would meet people across the US and even as far away as Europe who had painted their own cars with the same colour scheme. Whether they tried to get an engine double as well? We'll never know.

Coyote X - Hardcastle and McCormick

Hardcastle and McCormick is one of those shows that, if you were to describe it to someone, they might have a hard time working out if it was an actual show or a parody show from The Simpsons.

If you've never seen or heard of it the premise is as follows - actually... wait, the show's intro will do a better job than I will:

Yeah, that uh... that just about sums it up.

What that clip doesn't explain is that the two of them chase down crime (tee hee) in a prototype sports car, the Coyote X (Or Cody Coyote). The Coyote was designed by McCormick's best friend, who was murdered (because is it really an action series from the '80s if there isn't a murdered best friend?). Hardcastle makes a deak with McCormick, if he helps Hardcastle hunt down criminals that have escaped justice then he stays out of jail. Also he gets to keep the car. Which doesn't really seem like a punsihment at all for a car thief.

The Coyote was a kit car based on the McLaren M6GT, with some parts later featuring in Manta Montage kits. The car changed from season to season and was based on a range of cars from a Volkswagen Beetle to a De Lorean DMC-12 (the non-time-travelling kind).

The cars used over the seasons ended up in different places, one ending up with a private owner in New Jersey, others being repurposed for other projects, such as Knight Rider 2000.

Pursuit Special - Mad Max and The Road Warrior

The Pursuit Special (a modified 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT351) also referred to as "the last of the V8 Interceptors" was just as much a star of Mad Max and The Road Warrior as Mel Gibson's Max Rockatansky. In fact you'll probably have an easier time remembering it than any of the other characters that Max gets into those visceral, high speed chases with.

The Falcon's modifications were done by Murray Smith (who took ownership of the Falcon after filming wrapped), Peter Arcadipane and Ray Beckerley. Peter Arcadipane, who worked for Ford, designed the Concorde front end for the film, which was so popular that it was later made available for purchase by the public. Like the Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino, there were modifications that were superficial only. The supercharger not so much peeking as it is launching itself over the bonnet, was not actually functional. Kind of like someone who wears fake glasses because it makes them 'look smarter'.

The Mad Max franshise is known for wrecking more cars than your average monster truck rally, so there aren't many of the original stunt cars left. After filming wrapped on The Road Warrior the Pursuit Special was put up for sale, but it couldn't find a buyer and ended up in a wrecking yard. Eventually it was bought and restored. After changing hands a few more times it wound up at the Miami Auto Museum at the Dezer Collection, one of the largest collections of cars in the world.

Its housemates at the Collection include James Bond cars, Batmobiles and even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So it's in good company.

Bluesmobile - The Blues Brothers

The Bluesmobile was a 1974 Dodge Monaco sedan, but it was referred to more often throughout The Blues Brothers as: "that shitbox Dodge".

The Bluesmobile really oversold the power of police cars. After jumping a drawbrige early on in the movie, Ellwood Blues (Dan Akroyd) explains that the car has "a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas." which, for the purpose of the movie, makes it a physics defying god-mobile.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, The Blues Brothers is a wacky mix of musical numbers and high speed car chases, starting with the rampage through the Dixie Square Mall:

Powering through a bridge chase (where the Bluesmobile backflips over two wagons full of Nazis):

a massive cop car pile-up and a chase through the Richard J. Daley Center:

Culminating in the brothers reaching Chicago City Hall at the completion of their "mission from God", at which point the Bluesmobile falls apart:

Making use of its $30 million (US) budget, the film destroyed so many cars for one film that it set a record (a record that was only beaten by its own sequel). All of this added up to make it one of the most expensive comedy films ever made.

Blues Brothers 2000, the 1998 sequel, also starred a cop car as the hero vehicle, a 1990 Ford Crown Victoria. But at the end of the day when you think of the Blues Brothers you'll always think of the "shitbox Dodge".

KITT - Knight Rider

As any member of the TV viewing public knows, KITT is the name of a super advanced 2008 Ford Shelby GT500KR voiced by Val Kilmer in the TV movie and subsequent series Knight Rider that first aired in 2008.

... I had you going there didn't I?

KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand if you're at a pub trivia night), voiced by William Daniels, was - of course - David Hasslehoff's co-star in the TV series Knight Rider that ran from 1982 to 1986. If you've never seen it you probably know it, whether you've flicked past re-runs, seen clips in listicles like this one, or remember that one gag from The Simpsons.

KITT was a 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am equipped with a whole bunch of cool gadgets that you secretly wish could be in your car, and some of which you can kind of get now anyway.

Beyond the Turbo Boost (which likely made people's expectations of the turbocharger in their car way too high), oil slick, flamethrower, ejector seat, grappling hook and... jeez, you know what, just read the list on the Wikipedia article, KITT was also able to drive itself. A feature that we're going to start taking for granted at some point.

The car itself was designed by Michael Sheffe who also helped create Doc Emmet Brown's time travelling DeLorean.

KITT and partner Michael Knight work as field agents for FLAG (Foundation for Law and Government), a public justice organisation. Their pilot program involved Knight and KITT working together to resolve issues that required 'immediate action' or that went beyond normal legal measures. It was basically a 1980s reimagining of The Lone Ranger.

The car itself was designed by Michael Sheffe who also helped create Doc Emmet Brown's time travelling DeLorean. KITT proved to be so popular that according to Joe Huth, co-author of Knight Rider Legacy, people would go to Pontiac dealerships wanting to buy Trans Ams which looked like KITT. It was such an issue that Pontiac requested that the show no longer refer to KITT as a Trans Am.

Sadly, for anyone who wanted to sit behind the wheel of the Knight Industries Two Thousand you'll have to do it in a replica. Or just give it a little longer and settle for a standard autonomous car.

We're bound to have left some of your favourites off this list, what are they? Tell us about it in the comments below.