Improbably Cool Car

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Who buys a fifty-thousand dollar car for a sixteen-year-old kid? Just who are you trying to impress!? —Ms. Hatzilakos, Degrassi

Similar to the Cool Car, but there's no logical reason for the character to have it. They don't fight crime, they're not wealthy, they've never shown a particular interest in cars or any mechanical aptitude, and yet their daily driver is something right off the showroom floor of the local Porsche dealer? How did that happen?

This trope often manifests itself one of two ways. Either it's a brand-new luxury-sports car with at least a high five-figure sticker price or it's an impeccably preserved classic car (Old-school 1960's muscle cars and large convertibles are popular choices).

In many cases this can be attributed to blatant Product Placement for the former and writers choosing memorable cars from their youths for the latter.

This can get jarring when, despite looking awesome, the car in question will be characterized or described as a jalopy; sort of the automotive version of Hollywood Homely. This may be an attempt to connect with the Small Reference Pools of like-minded viewers who will understand that something built in Detroit 40 years ago is an "old car" while ignoring the fact that it obviously isn't suffering from the usual old car problems of body rust and worn-out parts and would be worth a small fortune to any number of collectors.

This trope is also a frequent sight in shows and films with Ordinary High School Student characters who attend an Elaborate University High, where the use of a Cool Car for the personal transportation of a 16-year-old might just be accurate.

Examples of Improbably Cool Car include:

Anime and Manga

• Odd Manga example: in Ah! My Goddess, the character, a Japanese student, winds up having a WWII-era experimental Japanese fighter plane, which is never mentioned again after the story when he receives it. Likewise, the same character inherits a vintage (and operating) extremely expensive motorcycle, again which is never mentioned again after the story when he receives it (although the story ends with a good in-context reason for never seeing that bike again).
• Gunsmith Cats: Rally Vincent's Shelby GT500 is an extremely rare and valuable car for a semi-employed half-broke teenage bounty hunter to own. Apparently, even Kenichi Sonoda agreed since she can't replace the Shelby after it gets destroyed, and she buys a Mustang II Cobra in the Gunsmith Cats Burst sequel.
  • Of course she might have inherited it from her father.

Film

• Many movies where the female protagonist drives an early Ford Mustang, presumably as an allegory for her own untamed character.
  • Like Niobe from The Matrix with an early Pontiac Firebird.
    • The Operator can get her any car he can conceivably code in the Matrix, the only limit is how much Agent attention the chosen model would attract.
  • Being a bit of a car fan, Steve Coogan knew enough to subvert this one in Saxondale by giving the middle aged protagonist a '72 Mach One Mustang. Since the character is an ex-roadie who's still stuck in The Seventies, he'd prefer the seventies Mustang.
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: The high school Jerk Jock who tries to take on Sean's secretly awesome Monte Carlo drives a Dodge Viper. The Viper apparently belongs to the jock's very rich father. Sean's Monte Carlo almost seems to be played straight, though.
• Any movie featuring David Spade will probably have a rare vintage Chrysler muscle car somewhere.
• Also, the Mini Coopers used extensively in The Italian Job remake. Justified for the chase scenes, as they were chosen for their size so they could be driven down subway tracks and through storm sewers, and extensively remodeled to carry several thousand kilos in gold in reinforced trunks. Not so much in the opening scenes, where a legitimate safecracking expert has one just for zipping around.
• Jerk Jock (jerknerd?) Kent in Real Genius drives a Citroen DS. Citroen never had much of a presence in the USA and the "Goddess" would be at least a decade old at movie time and a pig/money pit to keep running (okay, he IS an engineer).
• A few important characters in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, despite being rather ordinary high school students attending Extremely Average High School High, drive pricey and/or incredibly slick and rare cars which middle- and working-class kids would be quite unlikely to own, as noted in the Criterion DVD commentary. Examples include Pickford's 1970 GTO Judge, and a rare 1970 Plymouth Superbird which appears briefly in the background. Some of the better cars belonging to named characters, however, are driven by the few slightly older, non-high school students. In 1976, most muscle cars were at least four years old and thought of as cheap gas-guzzling used cars, but rusted out sixties sedans would probably have been more believable.
• Charlie Bartlett depicts a Mercedes 600 Grosser in use as a chauffeured vehicle by a non-car-enthusiast owner in the early 2000s. Apparently it hasn't yet run up a repair bill that approaches the cost of a three-year lease on a Lincoln Town Car...bit it will...
• Bo Burnham's character in Adventures in the Sin Bin is a High School student who drives a $100,000 vintage Jaguar E-Type.

Literature

• Entertainingly averted in Twilight (though probably not intentionally). Bella's impossibly gorgeous, Badass brooding vampire love interest Edward Cullen drives... (drumroll please) ...a Volvo, while Bella herself has a classic '60s Chevy pickup.

Live-Action TV

• Averted in Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld is a Porsche fanatic in real life, and the apartment set is peppered heavily with Porsche memorabilia, but his TV persona drove an innocuous Saab. However, Kramer drives a spotless 1970s Chevrolet Impala, improbable for a car that presumably spent 20 years parked curbside in Manhattan.
• Justified in Life, where the ordinary cop character drives a flashy Bentley thanks to a large legal settlement. The car is crushed by a tractor at the end of the pilot episode.
  • In the second episode, he gets a '87 Buick Grand National. Yes, Buick used to make Cool Cars.
• Mr. Bean's lime green/yellow Mini Cooper is a classic example.
• The brothers Winchester on Supernatural roam around the States in a 1967 Impala. It's absolutely gorgeous—and should have gotten them caught a dozen times over, considering that they're wanted men. In season seven they finally have to leave the car behind as the new Big Bad made sure that all his minions all over the US are on the lookout for it. It is heartbreaking.
• Stephen Colbert parodies this with his build-a-bear parody - Build-a-car workshop. It's a tank on monster truck wheels, has a sail and a sidecar attached to it,an American flag on the back and "You steer it with your balls."
• Nash Bridges 1971 Hemi Barracuda convertible. One of only seven made, and worth more than a million dollars. How many honest San Francisco Police detectives could afford one?
  • Or even dishonest ones? A million dollars is a lot of bribes.
    • Not so improbable for a crooked individual with some financially worthwhile dirty laundry on someone powerful.
  • On the show, it's established that the 'Cuda used to belong to his brother. Now the question is how he got it.
• The Avengers was legendary for the cool vehicles driven by its stars. Steed favored Rolls Royces or Bentleys while his female partners drove a white MGB (Cathy Gale); a powder blue Lotus Elan (Emma Peel) and a Cobra (Tara King).
• Eli's early '60s Cadillac-based hearse in Degrassi the Next Generation. Most hearses in Canada at that time would've been based on Buicks (which were made in Canada, Caddys weren't), and the most available hearse for a teenager in 2010 would be a late '80s/early '90s Caddy, most of which are just now being sold out of funeral service and which use easy and (relatively) cheap-to-get-parts-for small-block Chevy engines.
• My Name Is Earl has, in our only view of the local high school, an obnoxious student with a mint 1967 Chevy Camaro despite being sixteen and in a town implied to be mainly rundown and poor.
• For a time in The Sixties, George Barris-customized Thememobile cars were almost de rigeur for Sitcom characters who were in any way eccentric. The Munsters' Koach (sic), the Monkeemobile and of course the '60s Batmobile came out of this.
• One episode of In Plain Sight lampshades this when Mary has to replace her old car which was wrecked in a shootout. Her sister's rich boyfriend owns a car dealership and he hooks up Mary with a great looking vintage muscle car. However, Mary's boss quickly points out that the car is way too noticeable. A US Marshall working for Witness Protection cannot stand out and Mary is forced to return the car to the dealership.
• In Magnum, P.I. Magnum goes around in a prize Ferrari which is not only something to conspicuous for the work of a hired gumshoe, but would be irresponsible to take into the nasty parts of town that his job sometimes takes him to. It is a zig-zag as he has a running security contract with a rich writer which reasonably allows him some perks but in real life those should be enjoyed off duty.

Web Comics

• Webcomic Misfile gives us Ash's Monster XR, a custom-built all-wheel-drive V-8 powered rally car based on a rare late-eighties European Ford Sierra Cosworth) that was never actually imported to the U.S and wouldn't even be legal to import until it falls under the 25 years or older "classic car" exemption sometime around 2015. It hasn't actually figured in the story much since it's such a Game Breaker it threaten's Ash's characterization as the plucky underdog.

Real Life

• Truth in Television - In high schools for rich neighborhoods, there are sometimes two parking lots: one full of nice cars, one full of crappy ones. The crappy ones belong to the teachers, and the nice ones to the students.
• Corvette ZL-1 (all of 2 made), and 1964 Corvette Grand Sport (5 built).
• The Pagani Zonda R Clubsport. A car that you will never see on the road since it ignores all government regulations on road cars nor will you ever see in a race since it also ignores all the rules of competitive motorsport. It is a car built simply to see what is possible when all the rules are ignored. A car that simply shouldn't exist because no sane manufacturer would make one, yet it does.
  • Same applies to the Zonda Cinque, only five of the standard, and five of the roadster versions were contstructed. All of them going to museums.