Features

We've collected 10 of the finest car chases in big screen history and put them together on a free DVD in this month's issue of Top Gear magazine. Read Rob Bright's guide to the most memorable moments of movie motoring... and then head on over to our blogs, where the Top Gear writers have selected their favourites.

Bullitt (1968)
Realism and innovation set the chase sequence in Bullitt apart from the usual thriller. The realism is obvious enough, what with McQueen's tyre-smoking performance ensuring a touch of cinéma vérité.

As for the innovation, the most startling by today's norms has to be the sound editing. Where a rising score usually accompanies mounting action, Bullitt does the opposite. As the hit man clips on his seatbelt and the chase begins in earnest, the music that has been building the tempo - a fantastic jazz score by Lalo Schifrin, all onerous strings, shrill horns and stoners' bass - abruptly stops.

The soundtrack now comes from the cars themselves, the deep burble of the V8s rising in fury as the chase intensifies, lacerating barks puncturing each gear change. The choice of cars is significant. The villains are in a black Dodge Charger, a new breed of muscle car at the time: sleek, unornamented and aggressive - a fitting match for the steely expressions and stranglers' gloves of its occupants. McQueen, meanwhile, uses the Ford Mustang Fastback painted in 'Highland Green'.

The car was already a blue-collar hit in the States by 1968. Throw in the vertiginous roads of San Francisco and the saturated radiance of Technicolor and you've got the complete iconic package.

The French Connection (1971)
The cultural optimism of Sixties America had long since ebbed away by the time The French Connection hit the screens. New York in 1971 has become a landscape full of mortal dread, the streets ashen and decaying, steam emanating from manhole covers like the city's final, tubercular death rattle.

It's an oppressive vision mirrored by the cars; the baroque exuberance of Fifties styling is long gone, and in its place are cars so flat it's as if they're slowly being crushed by gravity. 'Popeye' Doyle personifies this city on the slide: morally ambiguous, he's a man corrupted by the very crime he's fighting.

In commandeering a Pontiac to pursue an elevated train containing his would-be assassin, he embarks on a chase that sees him write off just about every vehicle that crosses his path (including one involving a real driver unaware of the filming) and nearly mow down a mother pushing a baby in a pram (no, not real).

But of all the images, it's Popeye slamming his hands against the steering wheel in impotent frustration at the traffic that proves the most resonant. What's perhaps more remarkable is that Ken Livingstone has never adapted it to promote congestion charging.