Car movies that need to be made Lessenberry Ink

Here’s

a trivia question for you:  How many

movies have been made throughout history? 

I don’t mean class projects, industrial films or shorts, I mean

full-length feature films.







After spending a little time on the Internet, I was

able to come up with this definitive answer: Nobody knows. I found estimates

ranging from 140,000 to more than half a million – and that higher estimate was

more than seven years old. So the short answer is –







More than you could ever watch. Okay, now for my next

question, which occurred to me here at the North American International Auto

Show.  How many car movies have there been, and which was the best one of all

time.  Not surprisingly, that’s not all

that clear either.







First of all, there’s a question of defining just what

a “car movie” is.  When I looked at auto

buffs lists of car movies and the best car movies, they are all over the place.

Some people think Martin Scorsese’s Taxi

Driver is the best car movie.  Others

don’t even think it qualifies as a a car movie at all.  Not surprisingly, the Mad Max movies got a

lot of votes. 







So did Stephen King’s Christine.   My two personal

favorites, at least without thinking deeply about it, are the immortal Thelma and Louise, and also a wonderful

1988 biopic called Tucker, The Man and

his Dream, a too-little appreciated collaboration between George Lucas and

Francis Ford Coppola.  With those two

guys behind it, how could any movie be bad?







But my two favorite car movies of all time are two

movies that have never been made.  Here

are the plots:  Movie number one:  At the dawn of the automotive era, a

brilliant if erratic genius named Billy Durant takes over a struggling automaker

called Buick, builds it into the top-selling brand in the country, and then

uses it to create a holding company that takes over Oldsmobile, Pontiac,

Cadillac and other automakers.  He calls

his creation “General Motors.”







He almost succeeds in buying Ford too.  But he fails, and is forced out of the

company by the stockholders.  Unfazed, he

starts a new car company, calls it Chevrolet, and before long uses it to get

control of General Motors again. But eventually, he is again fired in a palace

coup.







Billy again starts another car company, but the coming

Great Depression does him in. He ends his career flipping hamburgers and

running a bowling alley in Flint.







Sound too crazy? 

Maybe – but every word of that is true.







Okay, here is my second movie.  Another genius, this one half crazy, actually

invents the modern auto industry, and puts the world on wheels with his Model T

Ford.  He becomes insanely rich, but

mistreats his brilliant and cultured only son, who worships his father.  Nothing the boy does is good enough, even

when he saves the company by insisting on a new model.







Instead, his father, yes, Henry Ford, prefers the

company of a goon-like former security guard. The two of them drive the

heartbroken son into an early grave, and nearly drive the company into

bankruptcy, till his 26-year-old grandson, aided by a team of young former Air

Corps officers, manages to win control and save the Ford Motor Co. from

destruction.







Once again, that is all true, and just a smattering of

the highlights of the stories of both firms, whose rich and storied history

goes on and on and continues still.