20 Crazy-Expensive Cars Destroyed by Hollywood

For some viewers, movies may be the closest they get to owning an expensive luxury car. For car collectors, movies featuring iconic cars can be tragic because they often don’t survive to the end credits. We looked at 20 of the most heartbreaking movie car wrecks. Movie-car expert Brad Hansen, producer/director of Star Cars at Mandatory (formerly called CraveOnline) gave us more details about some of these tragic movie car wrecks.

The Ferrari that Cameron (Alan Ruck) kicks out of the garage wasn’t real. It was a Modena replica. A real one could be worth over $10 million. “They were always worth a lot because they made very few of them,” Hansen said. Even a Modena can go for six figures. “It’s called a Modena Spider,” Hansen said. “At least one of them had an automatic because I think Matthew Broderick couldn’t drive stick.”

Steve McQueen’s Mustang survives the famous car chase in “Bullitt.” His Porsche 917 in Le Mans wasn’t so lucky. “Racing cars are always expensive no matter when you’re talking about it,” Hansen says. “Those are the most purpose built cars in the world, so that would’ve been a very expensive crash.” So expensive “Le Mans” almost bankrupted McQueen. The Porsche 917 sold for$14 million in 2017, too late to profit the movie.

DeLorean was already defunct two years before the first film. By the time the time machine was hit by a train in Part III, it became a collector’s item. “Unfortunately the movie came out too late to help the company,” Hansen says. “DeLoreans have been on the rise in value ever since.” A movie DeLorean sold for half a million dollars in 2011, while regular silver DeLoreans have gone for just $40,000-$50,000, or even less.

This 1953 Bogart film drives a 1920 Hispano-Suiza off a cliff. The blogger Berang at OppositeLock suspects the original did not fall in the water but couldn’t locate the original. Cars like this were made to order, increasing their rarity. “You’d be like, ‘I want my car to be yellow with a saddle interior with a white top, and I want it to have this engine and that thing,” Hansen says. Today they auction for six figures.

The particular Stingray 1967 that’s hooked to a plane and dropped to the ground in Con Air is the top of the Corvette heap. “Most people consider this to be the best-looking Corvette of all time,” Hansen says. “They were pretty much the fastest cars you could buy back in the day. They’re worth a very pretty penny nowadays.” One ’67 ’Vette sold for $675,000 in 2017, and Stingrays often go for six figures.

Had Buster Keaton not destroyed it for a laugh, the Pierce Arrow would’ve been a collectible from the Wild West era of auto manufacturing. “Up to the ’60s, no one cared about fuel economy, crash safety, making the car easy to park or maneuver,” Hansen said. “All you had to do is just make the car look awesome. The Pierce Arrow is a good example that looked amazing and had such great artistic lines to them.” Now they fetch over $140,000 at auction.

When a caddy vomited in a Porsche 930, there was probably no restoring the interior. Would you even want to? The 930 is actually still a 911, and its manual controls make it more collectible. “It’s the ultimate analog sports car,” Hansen says. “Because of that, their value has doubled in the last 10 years. They’re air-cooled specifically. They don’t have a radiator with coolant inside.” These are selling for six figures now.

Another rich superhero drives a Lamborghini, and his car crash was part of his origin story (Don’t text and drive. You won’t get super powers in real life.). “If you want to flaunt your wealth to the world, you buy a Lamborghini,” Hansen said. “Lamborghinis are like Ferraris that are even more wild. Those are the cars for millionaire playboys.” The Huracan was priced at nearly $274,000.

Vintage cars add to the budget of period pieces, but Hansen suspects Paramount got a good deal on a ’41 Lincoln in the ’70s. “In the ’70s, it probably wasn’t worth that much,” Hansen said. “It was probably like, ‘Oh yeah, maybe some old guy has one somewhere. Let’s get that and shoot it full of holes.” They were luxury cars in the ’40s and now often list in the $50,000-$60,000 range.

When Jaguar turned down “Goldfinger,” the Aston Martin DB5 became the definitive James Bond car. One DB5 got shot up and crashed, but a surviving 1964 “Goldfinger” car sold for $4.6 million in 2010, ejector seat not included. By “Spectre,” Aston Martin made the DB10 exclusively for 007. “It evolved from them asking, ‘Can we please have two cars?’ to ‘We’re going to build you from scratch 10 brand new vehicles and never sell them to the public.’”

While Ford Mustangs were fairly common, the Carroll Shelby models were much more exclusive. So exclusive they made one just for Nicolas Cage. “The producers wanted to amp up the look of the car, so they added this special body kit,” Hansen said. “It doesn’t look like a ’67 Shelby, but I think they wanted to make that particular car look unique.” One of the movie cars sold for $1 million in 2013.

Related: 15 Best Mustangs of All Time

This bachelor party wrecks the groom’s father-in-law’s Mercedes, and it tells you everything about the father-in-law. “That movie portrays the kind of person who has these classic cars now: well-off, middle-aged men,” Hansen said. “When ‘The Hangover’ was made, that car was worth a decent amount of money.” An eBay Buy It Now auction offered the movie car for $95,000, but the listing is long gone.

“The Italian Job” was such a classic car-chase movie, they remade it in 2003. The original used a Lamborghini so valuable, they didn’t crash it. They found an already-wrecked car and cut to that. “The Miura was sort of the first really popular Lamborghini,” Hansen said. “That was the first real showstopper. It was so cool looking. Most car guys consider that to be the absolute apex of car design.”

Porsche did not provide cars like the one young Tom Cruise loses in the lake, and the 928 is an obscure footnote in the Porsche line. “It didn’t sell very well,” Hansen said. “I think they’re really cool because they look like spaceships. They have these weird popup fog lights in the front that pop up like weird frog eyes.” Mint condition 928s can still sell for $60,000.