Which car error on the screen irritates you the most? – Jalopnik

Earlier this week at the Jalopnik office (aka in our Slack channel) we discussed the new season of “Stranger Things,” which most of our staff agrees is pretty bad so far, and of course the conversation evolved into talking about cars, both those on the show and in other media. “Stranger Things” has always had good cars, but there have also been a lot of nerdy issues with the car casting, like Barb driving a too-new Volkswagen Cabriolet in the first season. That brought me to my question for today: which car error on the screen irritates you the most?

This could be a specific example of something in a certain movie or TV episode, or a mistake you see happening all the time in shows and movies. I always get annoyed when the glamor shots are of a new model car, but if it needs to be in an accident or shot, they use an older generation of the car. I understand you might not want to pay to blow up a new Range Rover, but come on!

Early in the chase, Cruise drives the M3 down a long, dramatic staircase, and instead of wearing the M3’s fancy set of 19-inch wheels, the stunt car has noticeably smaller wheels from a normal 3 Series. I understand that the F80’s stock wheels certainly wouldn’t be able to handle the abuse of jumping down the stairs, but it wasn’t as bad as it seems: they built ramps on the stairs and digitally removed them. There’s still a lot to ask of performance wheels and tires, but I still think it’s an obvious blunder that even someone who isn’t a car enthusiast would notice. At least the M3 has its stock wheels for the entire rest of the scene, even if it is completely destroyed and ultimately thrown through the air. I think the staircase scene is even more annoying to me because Cruise already has his own driving style, and in the more recent films (especially those directed by Christopher McQuarrie, like “Rogue Nation”) the reality of the stunts is emphasized so heavily.

Okay, and you, dear reader? Which car error on the screen irritates you the most? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll round up my favorite answers later this week.