Project Petrolhead

Movie car chases are great, aren’t they? Tense action, recognisable cars and big-budget stunts and effects are a great way to spend a Saturday night in front of the telly. But which one is best? (Ronin, obviously.) Why don’t the Fast and Furious films seem to compete? And what makes a car chase great?

For starters, you need the right car. For years, people have said that Goldeneye is a great Bond film but I struggle to take any recommendation seriously based solely on the fact that it contains a scene where a 1964 Aston Martin DB5, complete with it’s anaemic 210bhp straight-six, keeps pace with a brand-spanking-new (for 1995) V8 Ferrari F355, sporting close to 400bhp and capable of hitting 60mph a full 3.3 seconds faster than the antique Aston. In order to make a chase believable, you either need to make sure both cars are evenly matched, or you need to level the playing field.

As an example of the former, take the famous chase in Bullitt. Both Steve McQueen’s Ford Mustang 390 GT Fastback and the Baddie’s Dodge Charger 440 R/T can match each other punch-for-punch in terms of both performance and handling, all while ploughing through the streets of San Fransisco. This chase has been lauded by many for being the “best car chase of all time” for it’s sense of realism and speed, even though at one point the Dodge clearly wipes out into a parked bystander, before being unscathed in the next shot.

For the latter, we can take a look at a much better Bond chase, the one from the beginning of Quantum of Solace. On the surface, Bond’s 517bhp V12 Aston Martin DBS seems like it would run rings around several armed henchmen in a couple of Alfa Romeo saloons, but that isn’t the case when you factor in where the chase takes place; a narrow, single-carriageway road tunnelled through a mountain at the side of Lake Garda. The road is also busy, with oncoming cars and lorries to contend with, giving the whole scene a tense, claustrophobic feel and further putting the Aston on the back foot, never giving Bond the room to open the taps on his big V12. Once the chase exits the tunnel, the landscape opens up, allowing for some more high-speed shots, before we take a turn into a quarry. This may seem arbitrary but for petrolheads, this makes a lot of sense. You see, the Alfa Romeo that is bearing down on Bond in this scene is a 159 JTS V6 that features, among other things, four-wheel drive. This again allows the filmmakers to keep the chase close and fair on the loose gravel, keeping Bond within arm’s reach of the goons and their guns.

And that brings us neatly onto Ronin. This 1998 action thriller uses both of the same tricks that Quantum demonstrates, but across two separate chase sequences over the film’s runtime. First, a failed heist results in a chase between an Audi S8 and a Citroen XM, starting on open French D-roads, before moving to a dirt track and then into the tight, single-track streets of Nice. Both cars spend the entirety of the chase glued to their counterpart’s bumpers, with no clear advantage between the two. This is made even more impressive when you learn that Skipp Sudduth, who plays the team’s wheelman Larry, was an amateur racing driver and did the majority of the driving stunts himself.

The second chase somehow tops the first when it comes to tense wheel-to-wheel action. Taking place between an E34 BMW M5 (the best looking M5, bar none) and a V6 Peugeot 406, director John Frankenheimer manages to maintain an even fight by setting the chase in the busy rush-hour streets of Paris, with both cars ducking and diving through tunnels, tightly packed traffic and ornate French architecture before culminating in a bridge construction site (supplemented by some slightly hilarious “driving face” from the film’s star, Robert De Niro).

So that’s what makes a great car chase. Even footing, engaging action and a sense of both tension and speed. Something that the Fast and the Furious franchise, with their focus on flashy extravagance, CGI explosions and the word “family” being said in progressively gravellier voices, hasn’t been able to replicate. Maybe it’s time to strip the films back to their roots and create one world-class car chase? Then again, I can’t imagine Vin Diesel wedging himself into a mid-nineties French saloon, although I would pay to see it.