MINI

It goes without saying that movies and TV shows can’t happen without the involvement of people, particularly actors and actresses. After all, without the on-camera talent, production crews would just be shooting landscapes.

But many times, thespians are matched up with props to help tell the story and yes, props can include automobiles. Yet in some magnificent, unforgettable instances, cars manage to transcend their status as mere props and, together with the human star or stars that use them, become icons. Here are 20 such actor and machine dream teams.

When picturing a luxury car in your mind’s eye, what do you see? Is it a mid- to full-size sedan or coupe with handsome, stately styling and a sumptuous, finely crafted interior? That’s the image we envision, but not every automaker has had that same vision over the years. Some manufacturers have – due to desperation, greed, thinking a little too far out of the box or some cocktail of reasons – released vehicles that, while billed as luxury cars, fail to cut the Grey Poupon. Here are 10 such vehicles that have us scratching our top-hat-capped heads.

Aside from chocolate, cheese and timepieces, Switzerland is also known for its neutrality. As such, none of the world’s major auto manufacturers hold a distinct advantage when they roll into Geneva for the global car biz’s annual rite of spring (or late winter, anyway), the Geneva Motor Show. As a result, almost all of the world’s major nameplates (and many aftermarket tuners) have it circled on their calendars as a good venue for debuting new concept and production models. Here are 20 of our favorites from this year’s show.

Though it’s been on the ropes for a while now, Detroit is still alive, and so are the three car-building conglomerates that call it home. And while the home teams have made plenty of fumbles in the past, each one seems to be clawing its way back from the brink with fresh products that appear to be competitive with the four-wheeled wares being peddled by the foreign nameplates.

And what better place to show off those new higher-quality cars and trucks than in Motown itself? Of course the domestics don’t have Cobo Hall all to themselves, and the imports have brought some pretty impressive hardware themselves. And considering competition drives innovation and motivates companies to work harder toward creating better products, it’s no surprise just about every automaker in attendance brought it’s A-game. But if we had to pick the absolute cream of the crop, it would be the following 10 rides.