The Burrow
Jul 25, 2022
Whether you’re a diehard fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, love to watch all the Mission Impossible films on repeat, or just can’t get enough of a classic film like The Italian Job, we all have a favourite car chase scene that sticks in our memories.
However, while it can be tempting to replicate iconic movie scenes and feel like a drifting superstar, reckless driving is not an impressive move. Not only is dangerous driving illegal, but it also puts yourself and other road users at significant risk of injury. To add insult to literal injury, if it’s revealed that your reckless driving was the cause of an accident, it’s possible your car insurance claim may be denied.
As car insurance experts, we have compiled a list of examples that demonstrate some dangerous driving scenarios that could impact your ability to claim:
If you’re still looking for your erratic driving fix, we also explored 10 of the most iconic dangerous driving cases in Hollywood history so that you can get your fix in a safe way.
We gathered key data that included the number of vehicles featured in each film, the number of YouTube views of the most popular car chasing scene per film, and the estimated cost of each chase, in order to calculate the most expensive scene.
So, does your favourite film make the list? Read on to find out the top 10 of all time!
Ranking first on the list with a car chase scene costing around US$1,464,454, featuring 103 cars and 301,292 YouTube views – is the 1971 movie Vanishing Point. The film is essentially just one long car chase.
The main car featured (the iconic 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T) was actually eight different cars that Chrysler loaned for filming. Despite speculation that the white Challenger was chosen to symbolically represent a ‘clean slate’, the colour white was actually chosen simply so it would stand out against the background.
Fast and Furious is perhaps the biggest franchise for car chases, and its 2011 instalment, Fast Five, ranks second on our list of iconic car chases. The iconic million-dollar race car chasing scene, featuring four 2011 Dodge Charger Pursuits that Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drove, cost around $255,683 and has 8,137,777 views on YouTube.
Coming a close third in terms of cost is Mission Impossible: Fallout, with an impressive 4,473,060 YouTube views, and an estimated cost of $253,283 spent alone on the car chasing scene.
Even though the four-wheelers shone and dazzled the audience with riveting car chases, the Mission Impossible franchise primarily features iconic motorcycles. With 106 vehicles featured throughout the movie, BMWs really are the stars of the show.
The BMW R nineT Scrambler, the BMW 740le, and other classic models, such as the BMW R1200RT-P, all make an appearance in the movie. Known for its iconic twin headlamps and powerful engine, the motorcycle which Ethan Hunt rode to escape was the Triumph Speed Triple.
Next on the list is Mad Max: Fury Road, with the iconic car chasing scene racking up 41,711,603 views on YouTube. While only 54 vehicles are featured in the movie, this adrenaline-packed film proves it’s really a case of quality over quantity, as the estimated cost of all the vehicles involved in the chase is almost $200,000!
Some of the most iconic cars featured in the film were also up for auction, including the War Rig, which was driven by Charlize Theron, and the Razor Cola, which was owned by Tom Hardy’s titular ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky.
Rounding off the top five, with an estimated car chasing scene cost of around $105,567, and with 73,072,928 views on YouTube, is Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which featured a respectable 91 cars.
The scene features vehicles such as the Freightliners FLA 9964 truck and the Honda XR 80. Terminator 2 fans rejoiced in 2018 when the iconic 1991 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy was auctioned off for an impressive $480,000 USD.1
Following in sixth place, with 153 featured cars and a car chasing scene totalling $61,747, is Ronin. What makes this film different is that everyday cars (such as the Peugeot 406) were used in car chases, making the film feel especially gritty. Its 2,032,686 YouTube views are extremely well deserved!
Coming seventh on the list, featuring an eye-watering 231 cars, 5,094,263 YouTube views, and a car chasing scene totalling $50,923, is Bullitt. The film features perhaps the world’s most expensive Mustang, which was purchased especially for the film, and was tweaked by Steve McQueen himself before being auctioned off a couple of years ago for $3,740,000.2
With 1,611,970 views on YouTube, and an estimated cost of the car chasing scene totalling $49,475, is The Bourne Supremacy. There were 125 cars featured in the film, with the stolen yellow taxi and Mercedes Benz G-Class driven by the stars of the show, Bourne and Kirill. The iconic Moscow car chase also won multiple industry awards for the quality of its execution.
The second Bourne film to feature on our list is The Bourne Identity, with 1,749,667 YouTube views, 118 cars featured throughout the film, and an estimated cost of around $29,502 for the iconic car chasing scene.
Perhaps the most iconic car to feature in the movie is the vintage Austin Mini Cooper that Bourne uses to escape the French police, proving Brit cars just might do it best.
Rounding off the top 10, and featuring an impressive 126 cars throughout the film, it’s Baby Driver. The opening chase scene is by far the most popular, despite being one of the newest films on the list, with a huge 82,027,075 views on YouTube.
With an estimated cost of the iconic car chase scene featuring the red Subaru WRX being $11,548, the film is packed with massive moments as well as a soundtrack to match. From the opening scene featuring the Subaru Impreza WRX slowing to a stop in front of a bank, to the collision between the 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche pick-up and the gun-toting driver of the Dodge Ram; this is a modern classic that’s full of epic car chases from start to finish.
While we all love to watch a good car chase on TV or the big screen, it’s imperative to remember that these films are made for entertainment purposes. High-speed chases aside, accidents can and often do happen in the real world, too – that’s why it’s so important to choose the right car insurance when you buy a new vehicle, or your old insurance comes up for renewal.
From comprehensive car insurance to third-party fire and theft, it’s worth spending some time reviewing different providers and their levels of insurance to choose the right policy for you.
We collated data from various sources and articles to determine which were the most well-known movie car chases. In order to choose the most popular ones, we ranked them by using the number of YouTube views of the most relevant and most viewed video per each car chase.
We then worked with Car & Classic’s Head of Editorial, Chris Pollitt, to estimate the cost of the vehicles from each car chase scene. The movie scenes were then ranked based on the estimated cost per car chase scene.
Several of the featured movies used custom or specially modified vehicles. Where the studio hasn’t released the cost of these cars, we calculated a figure based on the cost of an unmodified version of the vehicle. Given the depreciation in value of each older car model featured in the movie scenes, we took inflation into consideration to rank the movies by the inflation-adjusted estimated cost.
The number of cars involved in each movie was taken from www.imcdb.org.
All data correct as of 19.4.2022
Please note that some videos and movies are older than others and this might influence the number of YouTube views. Furthermore, only the original movies were considered in the research and later remakes were not included.