The Cars of DRIVE: Recognize That Gold 1966 Pontiac GTO?

Does this 1966 Pontiac GTO look familiar? You may have seen it in 3 recent movies.

LOS ANGELES

Without turning a wheel, a gold 1966 Pontiac GTO manages to steal a scene or two in the movie “Drive.”

Did you notice where Driver hid the money?

Did you also have a sense of deja vu about that car? It was probably with good reason.

“That particular car was also used in ‘Faster‘,” said Darrin Prescott, the stunt coordinator for “Drive.”

Although the car’s paint is best described as “gold”, the actual color is called “Martinique Bronze.”

Knight & Day GTO

Sharp-eyed movie-goers with long memories might also recall that car – or one very much like it – being used in the Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz rom-com-thriller “Knight and Day.”

It was not, however, the actual car that Ms. Diaz drove rather memorably in the movie, but an extra – a vehicular “stunt double” – that the stunt crew put together from spare parts. Most of the footage of that actual car wound up on the cutting room floor. The movie car belonged to a private GTO collector in Massachusetts (note license plate in photo).

But the stand-in GTO came in handy when the director of “Knight and Day” decided the original ending of the movie didn’t work – and re-shot it at Point Dume State Beach in California. Remember Cruise and Diaz driving off to “Tierra del Fuego”?

Bingo.

“Good eye on that one,” Mr. Prescott said. “I’d forgotten that.”

Keep popping up in movies, little GTO, and you may wind up with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. You’re the right color.

Jerry Garrett

September 13, 2011