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JUL 30th 2021

Seán Ward

Seven irritating car movie bloopers

Despite a production team’s best efforts, continuity errors are all but unavoidable. Whether someone’s clothes change colour, a character mysteriously points with a different hand from one shot to the next, or a takeaway coffee cup appears on a medieval banquet table, mistakes happen. Car films do not escape.

What we’ve done here is put together a list of seven irritating car movie continuity errors you might have missed. Some you would probably notice on a second watch, others you almost certainly won’t spot unless someone tells you about them.

Cars – 2006

There are a number of continuity errors in the movie Cars, none of which makes the film any less good, but the one we’ve settled on is where an action replay shows a different finish…

At the end of the first race of the film, it’s a photo finish between McQueen, The King and Chick after McQueen loses his rear tyres. In the first replay McQueen is sticking his tongue out straight ahead, but in the other replay his tongue is out and to the left. If this was F1, conspiracy theorists would be all over it. Did he really win? Was the race a set-up? What’s even real anymore?

The Fast and the Furious – 2001

Imagine writing a list about car movies and not including the original, the daddy, The Fast and the Furious? It would be madness, which is why we’re here with a mistake that’s hard to miss.

Clearly this error occurred after Rick Yune’s agent became agitated, realising his client’s chiselled shoulders weren’t on display. Because when Jesse (a member of Dominic Toretto aka Vin Diesel’s crew), played by Chad Lindeberg, lines up to race Yune’s character Johnny Tran, Tran goes from wearing a long-sleeve black top to a dench collar bone-exposing vest.

Days of Thunder – 1990

Despite its many, many clichés, Days of Thunder is a cracking racing movie, one that anyone can sit down with a huge bag of popcorn and a chilled beverage and enjoy. There are, however, a number of little issues. For example, someone actually calls Tom Cruise’s character ‘Tom’ rather than Cole Trickle, and at one point Trickle’s number 46 Chevrolet is seen in the background at a point when it hasn’t even been built yet…

The error we’ll mention here makes the cut purely because it is such a small one, something that you look at and wonder how on earth it could have been done. What happens? Trickle’s crew chief Harry Hogge, played by Robert Duvall, has a drink and a chat with Trickle up in a grandstand about how Trickle seemingly cannot look after his tyres. “Tyres is what wins a race,” he says, before proposing to Trickle “You run 50 laps any way you like, then 50 laps like I want you to. Give me an honest run – if you do I’m going to beat you.” So that’s what Trickle does. Sadly, when Hugge leans into the window of the 46 car during a tyre change to say “now we’re going to do 50 laps my way” his baseball cap has mysteriously changed. It’s still white, but it’s no longer a cap for the Georgia Bulldogs but one for the Florida Gators. Was someone from wardrobe a superfan up to mischief? A minor error but one that’s painfully irritating.

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Bullitt – 1968

Say what you might about Bullitt as a movie, the car chase has to be one of the best around. It’s a real chase, shot for real on the streets of San Francisco without crazy special effects or unusual physics. There are stunt drivers, Steve McQueen, and nearly 11 minutes of proper driving, McQueen’s character Frank Bullitt hunting down two shady gentlemen in a 1968 Dodge Charger 440 Magnum in his 1968 Ford Mustang GT.

Where the chase falls down, however, is in how the Charger is able to respawn hubcaps. At various points in the chase it loses its caps, but this happens more times than there are wheels on the Charger… We’ve watched the chase and counted five occasions where the caps go walkies, the final two lost when McQueen nudges the Charger off the road and into a gas station where it promptly explodes (fun fact: look closely and you’ll see the Charger drive past the station and continues on), but some claim as many as eight hubcaps are jettisoned. How many do you think parted ways with the Dodge?

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby – 2006

Another film that simply couldn’t be ignored, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. With Will Ferrell starring as NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, it’s a racing movie classic, one that’ll have you grinning for 99 per cent of the ride.

One of the best moments has to be a literal sprint to the finish between Bobby and Jean Girard, played by comedy hero Sacha Baron Cohen. A long –running feud between the pair results in a crash, after which they extract themselves from the cars, remove their helmets and start running to the line – slow motion and a suitably stirring ballad completing the drama. There are a couple of mistakes, however. Firstly, the pair do not remove HANS devices, which were made compulsory in NASCAR after the loss of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001. Secondly, in the sprint to the line, Bobby’s crew are screaming at him through their headsets to encourage him on, even though his helmet has been removed and there’s no sign of an earbud or radio of any kind. The big continuity error, however, comes in the moments before when the two cars have collided, flipped up and into the air. The crash pulls at least one wheel from each car, and yet once the duo have settled and the camera moves up to survey the scene both cars have all four wheels. At the same time the camera looks at the computer of crew member Lucius Washington, played by Michael Clarke Duncan, and on-screen are the now stationary cars. Oddly, Bobby’s car is wheels down, and yet the crash concludes with both cars wheels up.

Gone in 60 Seconds – 2000

A motoring movie classic, Gone in 60 Seconds follows legendary car thief Randall ‘Memphis’ Raines (Nicholas Cage) as he’s forced out of retirement by a gang that needs to make good a promise to steal 50 cars for a client. There are a number of little continuity errors throughout the film – one that includes everything from a Porsche 911 to a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing – but the one we’ve chosen to include here is a blink and you’ll miss it kind of mistake.

Memphis’ brother Kip has been kidnapped by the gang, handcuffed to the steering wheel of a Pontiac Firebird that’ll be crushed if Memphis doesn’t do their bidding. As the crusher is turned on you can spot the centrecap of the Firebird’s left rear wheel is in place, and moments later it has mysteriously disappeared. Only the roof has been damaged at this stage, so there is absolutely no reason for it to have gone missing. See, we did say blink and you’d miss it.

Drive – 2011

Drive is the only other film on this list that could stand alongside Bullitt for driving realism. It’s an odd film, and certainly not one with the same kind of mass appeal as The Fast and the Furious, but it has pulled a sort of cult status for its relative lack of dialogue, its dark plot and the occasional fantastic car chase.

One part of the movie, however, stands out for making precisely no sense whatsoever. The driver, a man without a name played by Ryan Gosling, ambushes one of the film’s villains, first rear-ending the villain’s car to push it towards the end of a cliff before steaming into its side at great speed to knock it over the edge. Oddly, despite the rear-end incident, before Driver goes in for the second hit he turns his lights on, a miracle, frankly, given how hard the first hit was. Then, after the second car has rolled down the cliff, Driver’s car can be seen at the top of the cliff with its nose facing out to see, once again with its lights full ablaze. Now I don’t know about you, but if you were driving a 1973 Chevrolet Malibu and you crashed into a 1998 Lincoln Town Car Executive Series no fewer than two times at high speed, you’d have probably damaged the front end a little, wouldn’t you?

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