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2026 Chevrolet Tahoe ReviewTom Cruise Movie Cars
We’ve come to expect wild stunts and pulse-pounding car chases in Tom Cruise action movies, but even his quieter films feature legendary cars.
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Famously, Tom Cruise loves to do his own stunts. He runs, jumps, flips, and faux fights the bad guys as few movie stars ever have. Does the script include his character hanging precariously from a cliff/building/wing of a plane, almost getting stabbed in the eye, or riding a motorcycle off a mountain peak? Tom’s up for it. So, when it comes to “easy” stunts like high-speed car chases, Tom’s got the skills and the nerves to J-turn with the best of them.
It’s rumored that, fresh off the massive success of Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise is looking to reboot another of his Tony Scott collaborations, Days of Thunder, set in the world of NASCAR racing. We don’t know if this is just to keep pace with Brad Pitt and his upcoming F-1 movie or whether such a reboot can indeed recapture the magic of the original 35 years later, but we’re up for it either way.
These rumors got us thinking about all the great cars that have been featured in Tom Cruise movies from Risky Business to the latest Mission Impossible. Here are our favorites, in no particular order.
Risky Business – Porsche 928
Tom Cruise, even in 1983, was clearly destined for stardom given his turn as Joel Goodsen in Risky Business, and not just thanks an iconic moment involving Calvin Klein underwear and the song “Old Time Rock ‘n Roll.” The plot of Risky Business, a high school student who befriends and beds an erstwhile “lady of the night,” might be played as gritty drama today but was forty years ago was done as a teen comedy. The ‘80s were truly a different time.
Central to the story is Joel’s dad’s Porsche 928. What better to borrow when your folks are out of town, right? The car helps Joel evade Guido the pimp (Pantoliano), in a chase that pits the 928 against a ’75 Cadillac. Later, the car accidentally slides down a hill and into Lake Michigan. Improbably, Joel gets the car repaired before his folks return from vacation, which is better treatment than the Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari got in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off. The movie hero car, not the one that took a dip in Lake Michigan, sold at Barret-Jackson’s for $1.98 million in 2021.
Rain Man – Buick Roadmaster
Raymond Babbit is definitely a good driver, or so he says from behind the wheel of a 1949 Buick Roadmaster owned by his late father in Rain Man. That car, along with some prized hybrid rose bushes, are all car importer Charlie Babbit has been bequeathed in his father’s will. The bulk of Rain Man is a road trip of the two brothers as they making their way from Cincinnati to LA (Raymond definitely does not fly). Along with the beautiful Roadmaster, the movie also features a quartet of Lamborghini Countaches stuck in EPA limbo which Charlie has been desperately struggling to import and the Ferrari 412 he drives as his daily.
Days of Thunder – Chevy Lumina NASCAR
Days of Thunder is what you get when Hollywood producers ask, “Can we do Top Gun again but with racecars?” The answer was a resounding yes. Though it was probably never going to achieve the same level of success as Top Gun, Tony Scott’s NASCAR set redux provided an exhilarating window into professional racing just as Top Gun had for the world of fighter pilots. Cruiser plays Cole Trickle (a reference to real life racing legend Dick Trickle) the young hot shot racer whose promising career is almost derailed by a nasty accident. Cole prevails, naturally, getting the girl (Dr. Lewicki played by Nicole Kidman) and beating the bad guy (Cary Elwes’ Russ Wheeler). Two cars feature most prominently, Cole’s Superflo #46 car and his Mello Yello #51 car (both Chevy Lumina NASCARs).
Collateral – Ford Crown Victoria Taxi
If there’s one thing director Michael Mann knows how to shoot it’s driving scenes in iconic cityscapes (and diner scenes involving awkward first dates). So, you’d think a movie set on a single night in Los Angeles would feature some kind of iconic car on par with the Ferrari’s of Miami Vice, and it does, sort of. In Collateral, Tom Cruise plays a hitman (Vince) opposite Jamie Fox as his taxi driver/captive (Max). The cab is a Ford Crown Vic, an icon of the everyday, a popular fleet vehicle and police cruiser. The Crown Vic’s legendary durability gets tested to the max in Collateral as it has a body dropped on it from four stories, gets Max’s sandwich strewn all over the upholstery (!), and finally gets flipped in a high-speed crash (by Max). Despite the centrality of both Cruise and the Crown Vic taxi, Tom does not drive in the movie.
Top Gun & Top Gun: Maverick – Porsches
Through two Top Gun movies, we learn that Tom Cruise’s Maverick is brash and bold, a loyal friend and a one heck of a fighter pilot. We also learn that his taste in women is extreme specific – they need to be intelligent, blue eyed, and driving a classic Porsche. In Top Gun, Charlie (Kelly McGillis) a PhD from the Defense Department drives a black Porsche 356 Speedster. In Top Gun: Maverick, bar owner/Admiral’s daughter Penny (Jennifer Connelly) drives a silver ’73 Porsche 911 E. The adrenaline junky Maverick rides motorcycles in both movies, a Kawaski GPZ 900 in Top Gun and a Kawasaki Ninja H2 R Carbon in Top Gun: Maverick (the former even gets an Easter egg cameo in the sequel). As we’ll see below, Tom Cruise loves riding motorcycles in movies almost as much as he loves running, jumping, and hanging by his fingertips from perilously great heights.
Mission Impossible Movies 1-7
Rather than go movie by movie, which would be as exhausting as it would be exhaustive, we’ll lump all seven of the Mission Impossible movies together, highlighting the coolest cars, bikes, and other vehicles spanning Cruise’s signature action franchise. Like the Fast & the Furious franchise, the stunts and set pieces keep getting bigger and more elaborate as the series has gone on.
The first Mission Impossible doesn’t have a ton of interesting cars or any big car chases. Mission Impossible II partly takes place in Australia and thus we get some cool Holden as part of our chase scenes, including a Holden Statesman. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt evades the bad guys in a Porsche 911 (996-gen) and rides a Triumph Speed Triple 955i in the film’s big chase sequence. The third film in the franchise, with the unlikely title of Mission Impossible III, was a bit thin on car chases, though a Lamborghini Gallardo gets blown up and the bridge scene is spectacular wherein Hunt’s Lincoln Navigator gets hit by a drone missile and flips end over end.
Next, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has a pretty great car chase through a Dubai dust storm. This movie is probably where producers embarked on their BMW product placement deal as BMWs, both cars and bikes begin to take up an inordinate proportion of the principal vehicles. The dust storm chase features two BMWs: a BMW 6 and a BMW X3, both wrecked by the end of it. Another BMW is used when Hunt needs to get down a parking ramp as quickly as possible, which meant driving the BMW 118i off the ramp and straight down, crashing seemingly seven or eight stories below (don’t worry, seat belt and an airbag both worked as intended). In the background of a luxurious party in Mumbai, you can glimpse a dazzling assortment of supercars including a Ferrari Enzo, Ferrari F430, Bugatti Veyron, and a 1955 Rolls-Royce Silver-Ghost to name but a few.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation brings in more elaborate car chases and more Bimmers including BMWs M3, 3, 5, 6, an X5 wagon as well as R 1100 and R 1200 motorcycles. The bike chase in this one is among the most thrilling of the franchise (a Land Rover Defender 110 gets in on the action here, too). Set partially in France, we also get a lot of background Peugeots and Renaults.
Mission Impossible: Fallout has even more motorcycles including BMWs R 1200 and R nineT Scrambler and Triumphs Speed Triple and Tiger 800 XCx. Hunt/Cruise’s driving skills get put to the test trying to maneuver that Triumph Tiger in an ’86 BMW 528i through the narrow streets of Paris. The escape scene features two trucks lesser known to American audiences, a Renault MIDS is the police van that gets knocked into the Siene by the DHF LF van driven by Hunt. The latter is made by British Leyland, whom you may know from such British car brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini, MG, etc.
The latest movie, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning’s chase through Rome stands as the current peak of the series. It features loads of bikes, BMWs and Hondas, and, you guessed it, more BMWs including an M5 with no doors. When the M5 crashes, Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell) take the next best thing … a little yellow Fiat 500 that still manages to at least partially evade the pursuing baddies in an armored Hummer H2.
Reflecting on forty years of Tom Cruise cars, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but that ’49 Buick Roadmaster is definitely great.
