We love a movie car chase. Everyone does it. Some movies are only made by their car chases, even if they only have a small amount of time in the movie. But they remain in our minds forever. As you’d expect, being able to set up and film a car chase doesn’t come cheap. In no world are they cheap, but how do you know which is the most expensive. Well, the most expensive in Hollywood history, according to the guys from Compare the Marketis the scene of Vanishing Point in 1971.
It’s one of the most iconic car chase scenes in Hollywood history. It featured an iconic 1970 To dodge Challenger R/T, which was actually eight different cars loaned by Chrysler for filming. In the film, the Challenger is seen taking on an iconic Jaguar E-Type/XK-E, with the Challenger driven by Barry Newman. There are more car chase scenes in the film, but this one is the most expensive. And it’s interesting to see why the chase scene was indeed the most expensive.
The methodology behind the work of the iconic car chase
Compare Market helpfully gave us their methodology for how they worked this out. They collated data from a variety of sources to determine which were the most well-known car chases. They ranked them using YouTube views of the most relevant and watched video for each car chase. Next, they worked with Car & Classic editorial manager Chris Pollitt to estimate the cost of the vehicles we see in each car chase scene. Movie scenes are then ranked by estimated cost per car chase scene.
As the Compare the Market team was keen to point out, several of the films featured used custom or specially modified vehicles. But where the studio would not reveal the cost of the cars, the figures are calculated on the cost of an unmodified version of the vehicle. The Compare the Market team also factored inflation into the rankings, given the depreciation in value of each older car model featured in the scenes. This led to the estimated cost adjusted for inflation, and the number of cars involved in each film was taken from IMCDB, the Internet Movie Cars Database.
The Vanishing Point Car Scene
Vanishing Point ranks first on the list of car chase scenes, and there’s a good reason for that. The scene is estimated to cost a staggering $1,464,454 million, a whopping figure that tops second-place Fast Five by more than $1 million. On YouTube, the video in question has 301,292 views and the folks at Compare the Market have calculated that 103 cars were used to shoot the scenes in the film. The 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T was of course the main car, in its signature light white livery.
There is a lot of speculation as to why this livery was chosen. Over the years, it’s been speculated that it was simply to represent a “clean slate,” but apparently the producers chose white because it stood out well against the backdrop the film would be shot against. Nevertheless, it is good to speculate what could have been the reason. It’s so, so impressive how much more expensive the Vanishing Point scene is than all the other scenes on the list. No film comes close, and even if Baby Driver has 82,027,075 viewsit sits at the bottom of the list with $11,548.
The clip used by Compare The Market
The video that Compare the Market used in its research from the vanishing point was the one that features the incredible chase with the Jaguar E-Type. In this scene, Barry Newman is engaged in an epic contest with a classic Jaguar, and it involves a bit of bumping and scuffing that sees Newman in the Charger go off the road. At the end of the scene, approaching a narrow, narrow bridge, the Jaguar rolls over a mound and is wrecked, while Newman manages to get away from the approaching cops in his Challenger.
Incredible car chases in movies
There are so many more amazing scenes in the Compare the Market study that will no doubt feature on HotCars at some point. The Fast Five is featured, Mission Impossible: Fallout is there as well as The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Identity. But above all, it’s that vanishing point scene. The whole movie is one of the most amazing, with amazing scenes as well as lots of amazing cars. So if any movie deserved this title, then it has to be Vanishing Point.
Source: Compare Market