10 Best Dodge Chargers In Movies

The B-body Dodge Charger is definitely on the Hollywood A-list, with thousands of starring movie roles

The Dodge Charger should have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and that's not hyperbole. According to the Internet Movie Car Database, Chargers have starred in over 2,700 movies, TV shows and music videos, since its introduction in 1966. Some may argue that those with stars are actual people, while a Charger is a machine, but both the Rugrats and Absolut Vodka have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Certainly the greatest muscle car is more deserving than mediocre cartoon characters and alcohol.

The Charger, especially the second-gen, really caught the entertainment industry's attention because it was super-fast and mean-looking. It is such a wicked and powerful ride that it was often cast in the roll of a villain in films such as Bullitt and Cannonball. When filmmakers needed a car that could blow doors off and intimidate, the casting directors put in a call to Dodge for a Charger. It is truly an American automotive icon that has come to symbolize the entire golden age of muscle cars and a genuine movie star car.

Making a list of the 10 best Chargers to ever grace the silver screen could be as easy as reeling off the 10 films of the Fast & Furious franchise, which all feature a variety of killer Mopars. That however is lazy and ignores all the great Chargers that have wowed audiences, from '66s all the way to the modern generation. That being said, it's obvious Dom's '70 Charger is going to be somewhere on this list.

A conscious decision was made to exclude the General Lee from the 2005 film The Dukes of Hazard because that was a schlocky insult to the series. If this was a list of the best TV Chargers, the '69 General Lee would have been included because of its significance and importance to Mopar history, but the movie was a mockery.

RELATED: Best Dodge Charger Muscle Cars From Every Generation

Big Fish features the only first-gen Charger on the list with this red '67. Actually, it is advertised as a '67, but is clearly a '66, which is obvious to Mopar super-nerds because it doesn't have the fender-mounted turn signals of a '67. What is not obvious to anyone is what engine this car has. While the Charger's speed isn't central to the plot, it's good to know what it was packing.

Engine

318ci V-8

Engine Output

230 horsepower, 340 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

8.3 seconds

Quarter-mile

16.5 seconds

Top Speed

120 mph

A 1966 Charger came with anything from a 318 to a 426 Hemi and the movie car is lacking any fender badge that might identify what is under the hood. A guy named Larry posted on IMCDB, claiming he used to own this car and that it had a 318 and a TorqueFlite 3-speed automatic. Big Fish is a movie about a son trying to find the truth about the tall tales his dad used to tell, but Larry seems on the level.

People probably only remember the Mustang Boss 429 (which is actually a Mach 1) from the first John Wick movie, but it was the 2011 Charger STX that was the real hero. John was driving this Hemi-powered seventh-gen Charger when he stopped Viggo, the Russian crime boss, from escaping. It's also one of the few 13-second Chargers on the list.

Engine

5.7-liter Hemi V-8

Engine Output

370 horsepower, 395 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Five-speed automatic

0-60 time

5.3 seconds

Quarter-mile

13.5 seconds

Top Speed

164 mph

John used the Charger as a weapon, smashing into Viggo's henchmen, and even fired through the roof of the vehicle to take out the baddies. The Charger gave its life to save the day, and eventually ended up plunging into a dry dock, where it was totaled. Sadly, this is the fate of most Charger movie car stars.

The Charger in Death Proof isn't just the bad guy, it's a truly evil villain, or at least is driven by one. Mike is a former stuntman and current serial killer who murders women by crashing with them in his stunt car that has been "death proofed" for him but not the passenger. His first ride in the movie is a 1970 Chevy Nova, but when he picks the wrong girls to mess with, he's behind the wheel of a matte black 1969 Charger.

Engine

440ci V-8 Six-pack

Engine Output

390 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Four-speed manual

0-60 time

5.3 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.0 seconds

Top Speed

123 mph

The second-gen Charger is a nod to the bad guy car in Bullitt, but there's plenty more references in the film. While Mike is stalking the women, they are driving a yellow 1971 Mustang Mach 1, which is in honor of the "Elanor" car in Gone in 60 Seconds. When the women take a white 1970 Dodge Challenger for a test drive, that's clearly an homage to Vanishing Point. In the end the Mopar duel proves fatal for Mike and his Challenger.

RELATED: A Deep Dive Into John Wick’s Epic Muscle Car Collection

The 1971 R/T from A Vampire in Brooklyn is the lone third-gen Charger on the list, but one of two vampire-related Mopars. Unfortunately the only video featuring scenes of the Charger in the movie cannot be embedded, but can be viewed here to see how important this killer Mopar was to the plot. This car is also significant because it's one of the few Chargers that doesn't get destroyed in a movie.

Engine

440ci V-8 Six-Pack

Engine Output

375 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

6.0 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.3 seconds

Top Speed

135 mph

The picture of this amazing Charger is from a Bring a Trailer auction and is the actual car from the movie. It sold for $44,000 in 2021, which is a steal for a 440 Six-Pack, even if it isn't a famous movie car. Then again, A Vampire in Brooklyn isn't Eddie Murphy's best work. If it had been in Beverly Hills Cop, it would have sold for much more.

There are simply too many badass Chargers from the Fast & Furious films to only include one on this list. Since Dodge is discontinuing the gas-powered Charger, the 2023 SRT Hellcat Widebody from Fast X seems like an appropriate inclusion. Dominic Toretto, and even his son, drive his signature '70 in the latest Fast & Furious film, but first he has to save the day in a brand-new Hellcat.

Engine

6.2-liter supercharged V-8

Engine Output

717 horsepower, 650 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Eight-speed automatic

0-60 time

3.8 seconds

Quarter-mile

11.9 seconds

Top Speed

203 mph

When a terrorist decides to blow up the Vatican in Rome, Dom uses the Charger to steer the rolling nuclear weapon away from the Pope and into a river, which mitigates the blast. Luckily, the 2023 Hellcat has plenty of power to continually catch up to and reroute the bomb. On a sad note, the hero Mopar was destroyed in the blast, but Chargers have to be used to this fate in movies by now.

Cannonball is actually a pretty bad movie, in terms of story, acting, and the reality of physics, but the cars are cool. The hero drives a pair of '70 Trans Ams, plus a souped-up '69 Mustang and there is also a '73 De Tomaso Pantera. The bad guy of course drives a black 1968 Charger because at that point in the movie industry Chargers were type-cast as the heavies.

Engine

440ci V-8 Six-Pack

Engine Output

390 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

6.1 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.3 seconds

Top Speed

132 mph

Based on the real-life coast-to-coast underground race, Cannonball preceded the more famous Bert Reynolds film, Cannonball Run. The triple-black 440 Charger from the 1976 movie was dressed up with some street features like a spoiler, slot mags, and KC lights, but was otherwise pretty true. It was also one of the few bad-guy Chargers that was allowed to be faster than the good guy car.

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There probably isn't a better vehicle for hunting vampires in than a Charger, despite its unearned reputation for being evil. In the 1998 film, Blade, the hero stalks the undead in a 1968 Charger 440 Six-Pack, that has a few modifications. It's got big mag wheels, a couple of extra lights mounted in the grill, and for some reason, a hood scoop from a 1969 Roadrunner.

Engine

440ci V-8 Six-Pack

Engine Output

390 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

6.1 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.3 seconds

Top Speed

132 mph

The Blade character is a human/vampire hybrid who hunts bloodsuckers with weapons designed to expose their weakness to sunlight, silver, and garlic. It is possible that vampires also have an aversion to horsepower because Blade's Charger is bursting with it. In another rare feel-good story, the supernatural-fighting Charger survives to star in the sequels.

As one of the few non-black or blue Chargers on the list, the '69 R/T from Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry sticks out from the pack. While it does have the correct Citron Yella High-Impact factory paint, that body-length stripe is decidedly an after-market add-on. Also, several cars were used in the film and occasionally a '68 grill can be spotted.

Engine

440ci V-8 Six-Pack

Engine Output

390 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

6.2 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.4 seconds

Top Speed

131 mph

After pulling off a heist to finance a NASCAR career, Crazy Larry, his mechanic, and Dirty Mary ditch their 1966 Impala, for a 1969 Charger R/T because it's way too fast for the pursuing cops. The speedy Mopar comes through and leaves the cops in the dust, but then suffers the most unnecessary death in cinematic history. It crashes into the side of a train, as if something on tracks isn't the easiest peril to avoid.

Dominic Toretto is a Charger guy, as he proves with words and deeds across the Fast & Furious films. Though he's been behind the wheel of many a Charger in the franchise, there's nothing more iconic than his supercharged 1970 R/T. Not only is it the only 426 Hemi to star in a movie, it is the most destroyed car of any make or model in film history.

Engine

426ci supercharged Hemi V-8

Engine Output

900 horsepower, "so much torque that the chassis twisted coming off the line"

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

4.9 seconds (est)

Quarter-mile

9.0 seconds

Top Speed

145 mph

This poor Charger has been crashed, smashed, flipped, and even turned into a 4x4, but always comes back better than ever. While Dom is the hero of the FF franchise, in The Fast and the Furious, the first film, he was the antagonist, which fits in with Chargers frequently being cast as the bad guy car. The thing is with the franchise is that whoever is the villain in one film will come back in the next as part of the hero crew, so the '70 Charger has redeemed itself.

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Dodge Forum lists the '68 R/T from Bullitt as the most famous movie Charger of all time and there's no reason to question this ranking. The chase scene in the 1968 Steve McQueen action film is considered the best of all time, so it stands to reason that the cars involved are also the best. There's no question McQueen's '69 Mustang GT is awesome and even less doubt about the 1968 Charger that was chasing it.

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Engine

440ci V-8 Six-Pack

Engine Output

390 horsepower, 490 pound-feet of torque

Transmission

Three-speed automatic

0-60 time

6.1 seconds

Quarter-mile

14.3 seconds

Top Speed

132 mph

Bullitt is the first movie to establish a black Charger as a bad guy car, and it's something that has stuck with vehicle through decades of filmmaking. It also began the shameful trope of the Mopar dying in the end, when the Charger blew up spectacularly. It's not all bad however, because the fame the Charger got from this movie translated into insane sales for Dodge in real life.

Brian Anderson's love of cars started at an early age with Hot Wheels, slot-car racing, and building model kits. When he was old enough to drive, he got the fastest thing he could afford, which was 1973 Pontiac LeMans with a 350. After an experimental phase with Toyotas and Nissans, he eventually gravitated to Mopar. He currently has a 383 Magnum and a 5.7 L Hemi sitting in his driveway.