√Car-nage: The movie directors who’ve destroyed the most cars on film

When it comes to Hollywood and the world of movies, these famous directors have destroyed more cars than anyone else.

We love a good celluloid car chase. Sure, we might have to suspend our disbelief at some of the outrageous stunts movie stars seem to get away with behind the wheel, but there’ no denying a good car chase provides a surge of adrenaline and entertainment that’s off the charts.

Better yet, when cinematic car chases end badly, as the inevitably do, the tyre-screeching, metal-crunching explosions fill the big screen in an orgasm of wanton automotive destruction that’s as unbelievable as it is amusing.

Back in 2021, Scrap Car Comparison, an independent British comparison website that appropriately enough offers “free, instant scrap and salvage quotes”, researched the movie industry to name the “most dangerous driver in Hollywood”, i.e. the actor responsible for writing off the most cars in the world of cinema.

Unsurprisingly, Vin Diesel came out on top, thanks largely to his ongoing role in the Fast & Furious franchise.

This time, the British company has turned its attention to the people behind the cataclysmic scenes of automotive destruction on our screens – Hollywood directors.

We’re not sure how scientific Scrap Car Comparison’s research was but according to its website, the team “bought a bucket load of popcorn, and sat down to analyse the filmography of some of the world’s most popular action directors. For each film we watched, we totalled the amount of cars that each director has either damaged, such as bullet-holes in the bodywork or a broken wing mirror, or completely written off”.

As for a more scientific methodology, the company offered the following: “We compiled a list of the most popular action movie directors in the world, using rankings from IMDB, and tallied up the number each director had either damaged or ‘written off’ within their films.

“The numbers included in the research detail cars damaged in the final cut of each feature film researched, but not during production of the film itself (cars damaged during takes that weren’t used in the final edit of the film).”

This is what they found.

Michael Bay, the famed director of five Transformer movies, started his career as he intended to maintain it, by destroying a Shelby Cobra 427 in his directorial debut in 1995’s Bad Boys.

Since then, Bay’s car-death count sits at 354, been totalled almost three times as many as the next director on the list. In fact, Bay’s car-death count across five Transformer films runs to 155, still more than the director with the second highest car body count across their entire oeuvre.

Bay makes no apologies for his metal-crunching ways, telling interviewers recently he “definitely probably destroyed more vehicles than any other director in history”.

Justin Lin, he of Fast & Furious fame sits in second place, his kill count running to 135 across 10 of the franchise’s film. That’s a surprising low number for so many movies where the cars are, after all, central to the plot. We’d venture way more cars were destroyed during production, their senseless demises not making the final cut.

Old-time Hollywood director John Landis takes the final step on the podium, his career tally of 120 wrecked cars just behind Lin’s. Impressively, the bulk of those came from just two movies, Blues Brothers and Blues Brothers 2000, both of which featured memorable multi-car pileups.

Batman director Christopher Nolan clearly wasn’t trying very hard his total of 83 just ahead of the Russo Brothers whose Marvel franchise movies have been responsible for 80 automotive deaths.

Of course, none of this is exactly scientific, but for those who love cars – and obviously we at Drive number ourselves among them – it’s still hella fun to watch some classic metal getting all bent out of shape. Long may the car chase and subsequent carambolage prosper. Pass the popcorn.