Hood Ornament Hottie



"Homer: Do you come with the car? Model: Oh, you! *giggle* Random other man: Do you come with the car? Model: Oh, you! *giggle*"

- The Simpsons

Attractive women, not wearing very much, draped over cars or motorbikes. Extra points if they're washing said vehicle and there are suds in interesting places...

Common for car and motorcycle magazines, as well as motor shows.

Sometimes the models are just in a swimsuit like a Flag Bikini, are Hell-Bent for Leather, Pretty in Mink (real or fake), Going Fur a Swim.

A Sub-Trope of Sex Sells.

See also Pit Girls, Biker Babe.

Advertising

 * Paris Hilton's infamous car-washing ad for the Carl's Jr./Hardee's fast-food restaurant chain.
 * Parodied by Target Women with a more realistic version of someone trying to eat a burger and wash a car at the same time. Sarah slid down the slippery windshield and fell off.
 * This MX vs ATV Untamed commercial.
 * Subverted by a German radio commercial for radio commercials in which a (decidedly male) speaker announces he'll be publicly washing cars from his car dealership - in a pink bikini wearnig a blonde wig. And then goes on to explain that the guy laughing maniacally next to him will be his boss, who bet that he'd be able to sell a certain number of cars extra by advertising on the radio. Guess who lost the bet...
 * Conan O'Brien does similar, washing his -desk-. Fortunately, in normal clothing. Then he starts eating the sponge.
 * Parodied with Subaru ads. Instead of attractive girls, they feature sumo wrestlers, seen here.

Anime and Manga

 * Girls und Panzer:
 * Played with early in the TV series, when the girls are washing their tanks. Wet T-shirts (with bras underneath) all around, except for the one girl who was convinced to wear a bikini while she was on the tank.
 * One of the OAVs begins with the student council president, wearing a swimsuit and a smile, posed languidly across the top of one of the tanks.
 * Hane's "body wash" of her motorcycle's seat and gas tank in episode 5 of Bakuon!!.

Comic Books

 * The covers of Chassis would often depict the eponymous heroine draped over the bonnet of an aero-car.

Film

 * "Lucille", the girl washing her car in front of the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke.
 * There is a shout out to this scene in The Venture Bros, with Rusty Venture washing his walking eye. Quite definitively not a hottie, though.
 * Mikela Banes from the Transformers film franchise definitely fits this trope.
 * Parodied in the German movie (T)Raumschiff Surpsrise where the male hero imagines the princess being Hood Ornament Hottie doing a carwash and she then starts to shave her legs and brush her teeth. The music is also hilarious.
 * In the background of the arms show scene from Lord of War, one can see models in camo-print bikinis and assault rifles strutting and posing on top of a tank. Presumably a parody, yet there is the fear that it might actually have happened.
 * The original Bring it On movie had the Bikini Car Wash variation, with the cheerleaders raising money by washing cars. Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku in Bikinis FTW.
 * Happened on Dodgeball.
 * In The Bobo, a seldom-seen Peter Sellers movie, Britt Ekland's character lounges seductively on the hood of a Maserati in a showroom. The car's new owner admires how she looks on it, unaware she had blackmailed the dealer out of it for herself.
 * Biker Boyz had one of the motorcycle 'clubs' having an annual bikini bike wash to benefit local schools; and while a few of the sister bikers had shown up as well, much head-shaking commenced until the organizer for the hosting club revealed Turbo, just about as scantily clad as the ladies.

Literature

 * Similar to the "Lucille" example above, an unnamed woman puts on this show for the contestants in Richard Bachman's The Long Walk. (Pretty sure, anyway. It has been a while...)

Live Action TV

 * The Cheerios in an episode of Glee do the bikini car wash fundraiser variety.
 * Happens often in WWE, usually in promos for Summerslam.
 * In the Frank Cottrel Boyce book Framed, the protagonist's sister followed in her father's footsteps and became a mechanic because the fact his car magazines subscribed to this led her to believe pretty women fix cars.
 * The Business Model from Arrested Development.

Music Videos

 * The quintessential example would have to be Tawny Kitaen on the Music Video for Whitesnake's Here I Go Again.
 * In reference to this, one of the former hopes and dreams of the subject of Bowling for Soup's song "1985" was to "shake her ass on the hood of Whitesnake's car."
 * Jessica Simpson's similar bit to the Paris Hilton ad mentioned above in her video of "These Boots Are Made For Walking".
 * The Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson examples above were hysterically parodied by Pink in her video for "Stupid Girls".
 * Just about every ZZ Top video ever.
 * Rihanna's "Shut Up & Drive"
 * Poe's music video for "Hey Pretty".
 * Papa Roach and Buckcherry's "Turn Me On".

Video Games

 * Reiko Nagase, the mascot of Namco's Ridge Racer series, can be best described as this.
 * The female sidekicks in the Need for Speed series after Underground also double as Hood Adornment Hotties. Especially Rachel from Underground 2, played and voiced by Brooke Burke.

Web Comics

 * In this They Might Be Giant Robots comic, two female transformers take turns being the cool car and the hottie.
 * Inverted strangely in this Something Happens strip.

Western Animation
""The Catholic Church. We've made a few...changes.""
 * Wuya from Xiaolin Showdown poses this way with a car she gave Raimundo after he briefly joined forces with her.
 * American Dad: Francine became one, briefly, when Stan went into underground street racing in an attempt to spice up their love life.
 * And then there is the much more nightmare fuel-ish instance: Stan & Steve, both having taken lots of estrogen and grown huge breasts (long story), are shown to be washing a car, both being dressed in daisy dukes, and posing provocatively on it.
 * Motor Ed tricks Shego into being his hood ornament hottie in an episode of Kim Possible. Shego was... not happy to learn this.
 * Hilariously parodied on The Simpsons. A mock commercial shows a nerd driving through the desert. He stops at a deserted gas station and three Hood Ornament Hotties come out and start washing his car to the sounds of 80's hair metal. Then the camera zooms on the cleavage of one of the girls to reveal...a crucifix.


 * Chief Wiggum poses as a Hood Ornament Hottie for a police calendar in "The Devil Wears Nada".
 * One episode of Chowder features the voice actors washing cars to raise in-show money for animation. Tara Strong gets her moment at 1:16.
 * Spoofed in an episode of Family Guy where Peter tells the story of his caveman ancestor Inventing the Wheel. When he has trouble marketing it, Cave-Brian has Cave-Lois' stand next to it in a Fur Bikini, which instantly makes all the other cavemen want one on the assumption that attractive women will like them if they own one.

Real Life

 * High school women's athletic teams quite often attempt to raise money with a bikini car wash. It works. It doesn't even have to be a bikini car wash. Tank tops and short-shorts work just as well, considering that the probability of wet tank tops and short-shorts approaches 1.
 * Go to any car show. Motorcycle show. Boat show.
 * Played literally straight by the "Spirit of Ecstasy," the famous hood ornament on all Rolls Royce motor cars. The spirit herself is modeled after Eleanor Velasco Thornton, the secret lover of John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu for when the latter wanted a mascot for his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The mascott later became standard on all Rolls Royce motor cars.