10 Movie-Inspired Special Edition Cars

The relationship between cars and cinema goes all the way back to the very beginning of the movie industry, and over time, plenty of cars have arguably become the most memorable parts of the films they starred in. The ’67 Mustang in Bullitt, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, the orange Supra and black Charger in The Fast and the Furious, the Ford Mondeo in Casino Royale… okay, maybe not that one.

The point is, whether through product placement or just good car casting on the part of the producers, a movie can turn a car into an icon. But what happens when car companies try to bring some movie magic into the real world? These are 10 film-inspired special edition cars, released with levels of success that we’d best describe as… varying.

Mercedes-AMG GT 63 APXGP Edition

Released as a tie-in with the 2025 Brad Pitt-fronted F1 movie, erm, F1, the APXGP Edition of the Mercedes-AMG GT wears a colour scheme inspired by the film’s fictional racing outfit.

Mechanically unchanged from the regular 577bhp V8-powered AMG GT 63, the matt black and gold colour scheme’s not bad, although we could live without the abstract zig-zag patterning all over the back. The question is, is a link to a fictional F1 team enough to shift all 52 examples? We suppose it’ll hinge on whether the film is a success or a critical flop when it comes out this summer – at this point, it feels like it could go either way.

Land Rover Defender Tomb Raider

There have been multiple attempts at Hollywood-ifying the Tomb Raider game franchise, starting with 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie. A box office success but critical punching bag, the film did at least see Jolie’s Croft cutting about in a very cool kitted-out Land Rover Defender.

While the cars built for the movie got 3.5-litre V8s and cool open-top bodies, the resulting special edition had to make do with a TD5 diesel motor and regular 110 pickup or 90 Station Wagon bodies. Still, cool spotlights, huh?

Jeep Wrangler Jurassic Park

Various entries in the angry lizard extravaganza that is the Jurassic Park series have featured Ford Explorers and Mercedes SUVs in starring vehicular roles. However, it’s only Jeep – whose YJ Wranglers featured as staff cars in the original 1993 film – that’s taken the inevitable special edition bait.

Arriving slightly late to tie-in with the Wrangler’s inclusion in the film (okay, 30 years late), 2023’s Wrangler Jurassic Park was really a limited-edition sticker pack that could be retroactively applied to any JL-generation Wrangler or its Gladiator pickup cousin. We have to imagine Jeep’s marketing department was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Porsche 911 Sally Special

It’s kind of strange that a film called Cars, that’s all about cars, and features a cast of anthropomorphised cars in a world basically entirely populated by cars, hasn’t spawned more special edition, erm, cars.

Maybe it’s because most of its main characters used slightly generic, trademark-skirting designs – but Sally Carrera didn’t. 2022’s Porsche 911 Sally Special was technically a one-off, but it was fully road legal and auctioned off to a member of the public, so we’re counting it. It recreated Sally’s spec (or possibly genetics – we’re not entirely sure how these things work in the Cars world), albeit on a contemporary 991 rather than the 996 generation featured in the film. Thankfully, though, it didn’t have a gigantic pair of eyes stopping the driver from seeing out.

Ford Mustang Bullitt

The hubcap-slinging chase between Steve McQueen’s hard-edged titular cop in a Ford Mustang and a pair of mafia mooks in a Dodge Charger is arguably the greatest piece of driving action to hit cinema screens (Ronin still gets our vote, though).

It’s little surprise that Ford subsequently used the film car’s Highland Green paint and five-spoke wheels as a launching pad for special edition Mustangs not once, not twice, but thrice. It did it first with the ‘New Edge’ fourth-gen model in 2001, then the retro-tastic fifth-gen in 2008, and most recently with the sixth-gen car in 2018. That’s our favourite of the bunch, mainly because we could buy it in Britain right-hand drive, and use the many hills of Sheffield as an unconvincing stand-in for San Francisco.

Chevrolet Camaro Transformers

It was pretty much inevitable that Michael Bay’s big-budget, product placement-heavy adaptations of the Transformers franchise would result in a special edition car or two, and why not Bumblebee? Whether in original VW Beetle form or as a Chevrolet Camaro in the Bay films, this particular robot in disguise is one of the franchise’s most recognisable characters.

The problem with 2009’s Chevrolet Camaro Transformers Edition, though, was that this particular iteration of Bumblebee was a fifth-gen Camaro in Rally Yellow with black stripes – a spec you could already order on the reborn muscle car anyway. All your extra $995 got you was some badges alerting passersby that you were a particularly devoted fan of lens flare.

Citroen 2CV 007

Half of this list could have been made up of cars inspired by the James Bond franchise, but we’ve gone for perhaps the strangest. In 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, Britain’s least subtle secret agent uses a bright yellow Citroen 2CV to escape from some Peugeot 504-driving wrong’uns in Spain.

To celebrate its unexpected elevation to the same pantheon as the Aston DB5, Citroen produced a limited run of 2CV 007 editions in the same yellow as the film car, complete with massive ‘007’ graphics and, the pièce de résistance, fake bullet hole stickers. A possibly apocryphal tale goes that when Citroen UK was trying to get hold of some of these cars, a mistranslation meant that the head office in France received a memo asking for some 2CVs covered in, well… a different kind of hole.

Nissan Juke Kiiro

Don’t be fooled by its name, which means ‘Yellow’ in Japanese – the limited-edition Nissan Juke Kiiro of 2022 launched alongside a truly baffling marketing campaign that saw it advertised alongside 2022 Batman film, The Batman (where do they get these titles from?).

This obviously made perfect sense – whenever anyone thinks of Batman’s car, they think of a small grey crossover with yellow accents. Oh no, hang on.

Hyundai Kona Iron Man

Not to be outdone in the realms of ‘small crossovers inexplicably being tied in with big-screen adaptations of comic book superheroes’, a couple of years before the Juke Kiiro, Hyundai had its own crack with the Kona Iron Man. It was, quite literally, a Kona with some Iron Man badges and a paint scheme inspired by Tony Stark’s extremely metallic alter ego.

This obviously made perfect sense – whenever anyone thinks of Iron Man’s car, they think of a small grey crossover with red accents. Oh no, hang on.

Jeep Renegade Dawn of Justice

2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is pretty roundly regarded as a massively underwhelming film, so it’s apt that it lent its name to a special version of a massively underwhelming car: the Jeep Renegade.

The Renegade Dawn of Justice’s special edition-ness came courtesy of some special paint options and Dawn of Justice badging, so you could show just how committed you were to cinematic mediocrity. Of course, the car has had the last laugh – we’ve all pretty much forgotten about the film, but the Renegade is somehow still limping on in production.