The 10 best cars to take to a drive-in movie

Let’s face it: regular cinemas always kind of sucked. Whether it was the exorbitantly expensive drinks and snacks, the permanently 16-year-old ushers or the totally hilarious people a few rows back who consider the act of watching a movie to be an interactive experience, they were possibly the worst place to actually enjoy a film.

And recently they've been off the cards for... well, you know why. And we’ve failed to muster a single tear to see the departure of paying 20 quid for a vat of post-mix Pepsi and a tiny bag of Maltesers, ushers with pictures of Dorian Grey in a closet somewhere and the prospect of sharing a room with 150 witless and graceless buffoons, who are now even more diseased than usual. Which is saying something.

What is coming back though, is really something that never should have left in the first place: drive-in cinemas. What better way to swan past all the traditional problems of cinemas and neatly swerve the new, faintly titanic problem of social distancing in a room full of people than loading up the car with an ice box full of goodies and reclining in the insulated, private sphere of your pride and joy? Well, that’s easy – if your pride and joy also happens to be one of these 10 cars.

OK, it’s a concept car from the early Seventies, so it’s going to be on the tricky side of impossible to nab one for yourself. But consider the possibilities if you manage it – or craft up an homage/shameless knockoff: perfect visibility from the glass dome roof, the wedgiest design this side of a door stop and the ability to invoke ‘Giorgetto Giugiaro designed it’, generally 15 or more minutes before anyone was going to ask.

And how would you make one for yourself? Well, that’s not the easiest thing in the world either, we’re afraid. Step one is to source a rust-free Alfasud (a logical impossibility). Step two is to find a way to match the talents of Giorgetto Giugiaro (another logical impossibly). Step three? Impossibly large rewards.

At the very least, this one’s easier to get hold of. But its benefits go way beyond that. We’re often told that, in the future, we’re going to have to do more with less. Bah, humbug and whatever the French equivalent of that phrase is, because the Mehari has been doing more with less since the 1960s, when the prevailing wisdom was to just keep adding more.

Case in point. Or points, because we never use 10 words when 100 will do. The Mehari weighed just 535kg, was made from the same type of plastic that goes into Lego pieces (which must make the Mehari the most indestructible car in the world) and was based on the 2CV running gear, which can be mended with little more than hammers and swear words.

So while it may look like a washtub had a brief rendezvous with a Willys Jeep, the Mehari will sit happily in your garage during the colder months without rusting or seizing and be ready for the warm nights of open-air drive in movies in the summer. We’d take it to classic cinema – maybe Apocalypse Now? Yeah, maybe a little on the nose at the moment.

To explain the Subaru Brat, we’re going to need to explain the Chicken Tax. “But how,” you might be wondering, “does a tax on chickens relate to cars, how is a non-American going to explain American fiscal policy and how is this remotely salient to the topic at hand?

We’re very glad you asked. If you actually did ask. The Americans implemented the Chicken Tax to levy a 25 per cent tariff on light trucks in response to actual taxes on American-grown chickens imposed by the French and Germans. Ah, the old tit-for-tat tax. How very helpful of them.

While it originally applied to other things - like French brandy, for instance - it’s still in now, but only applies to ‘light trucks’  – i.e. pick-ups – that aren’t built in America. And it’s a punitive little tax as well, so its huge rate cuts off the rest of the world from a massive and seemingly unkillable market.

But there are ways and means around things. Companies like Honda and Toyota built factories in America to get around the ‘not made here’ tax. Others - like Subaru in the 1980s, on the other hand - got a bit more creative. If the tax was on light trucks, then why not bolt a couple of open-air jump seats in the back and sell it as a four-seater? The Brat is the answer. And yes, it’s little more than a couple of rear-facing plastic chairs in the tray of a pick-up truck. But think about how you could use this to your advantage in a drive-in.

Now, all we have to say on the matter is never, under any circumstances, ride in the back while the car is in motion, unless you’re absolutely certain that paraplegia is for you. Instead, roll into the drive-in from the (relative) safety of the cabin, then park rear-in. Those jump seats – and the legroom in the cab – just feel made for this.

Ah, Biarritz. A rainy, windswept town on the north Atlantic with exactly one too many spa resorts. But in the Fifties, it was just about the coolest place in the world, a surfing Mecca and French to boot, which adds at least six style points.

It’s little wonder, then, that Caddy wanted to claim back some of the cool that America had bestowed on Biarritz with surfing culture.

And what better way to do that than outfit its ‘personal luxury car’ with all the mod-cons and style that the Fifties could offer? And, at least in the case of the Eldorado Biarritz, neither of these were veiled insults.

Do you know what cinema lacks when compared to, say, the theatre or opera? If you guessed ‘a sense of occasion’, congratulations! You win nothing, because that was about as obvious as wearing a scarf the day after a hot date.

But if you have a classic Aston in your corner – or better yet, corner of your garage – you can bring back much-needed pizzazz (do the kids, or indeed anyone, still use 'pizzazz'?) to the otherwise pretty low-key world of sitting reasonably quietly for two hours while attractive people smack CGI bad guys around on screen.

But if you have the seminal Aston Martin Zagato Shooting Brake, the sense of occasion of your arrival will eclipse any blockbuster you care to mention. And, with any luck, it’ll add the much needed pizzazz (yes, the kids definitely, definitely still say that) to any drive-in.

What happens if you get to the drive-in and you park behind some berk in a towering SUV of some sort? You’ll be sure to miss all the subtleties and nuances of the film.

In this scenario, you have one of two options: find a film that is free from both nuance and subtlety (something from the Marvel Universe should do the trick), or find a car with a seating position that’ll tower above Lord Overcompensation who decided to take his Baja-ready behemoth to a drive-in.

As you might have guessed, we vote for option two, and a car that’s not #blessed, but probably actually blessed: Pope John Paul’s G-Wagen Popemobile. From the pontiff’s pew, you’ll have a clearer field of vision than your average hawk and guaranteed protection from weather, flies and marauding viruses. And also bullets, in case you slight the wrong film franchise in front of the wrong people.

The Holden Sandman is a great many things – a classic car, a brief but intense moment in Australian history, and now much too expensive for what is essentially an old panel van. But it is also the perfect vehicle for the drive-in – especially if you’re going to the movies to not watch a movie.

Up front, there was a choice of engines, from a 2.8-litre straight six to a 5.0-litre V8. In the middle was a four-speed manual gearbox and an interior as sporty as 1970s Holden could make. Up the back? Well, there’s a reason these things were called Shaggin’ Wagons.

Yes, with all the space required for even the least delicate situations, the Sandman is in a class of its own at the drive-in. Not an especially classy class, it must be said, but that’s neatly stitched up by our next choice.

For years, the Range Rover has been a mainstay of well-heeled spectators, thanks to its fold-down tailgate. Sitting there, held up by a comfy steel seat, ruinously expensive suspension and the uplifting feeling that can only come from a sense of superiority is as much a part of British rugby matches as the fact that at least half of the field is called Alastair.  

But we can do better than a standard Rangie for a drive-in movie. And the only thing better than a drop-down tailgate is a drop down tailgate directly in front of self-replenishing bar. At least, that was the sales pitch for the Holland & Holland Range Rover by Overfinch, which was a rolling testament to bacchanalia that promised to refill the beautiful parquetry bar for free for a whole year.

That year is well and truly gone, but we suppose Sir could stoop to sending one’s man out to purchase more Remy Martin ahead of the private screening club that Sir is a part of. Or, pick up the second-hand H&H Overfinch Rangie we saw for less than £15,000 and swing by the off-licence.

And yes, the Holland & Holland part does denote the whole ‘shotguns and ending the life of innocent woodland creatures’ thing, but we’d just fill the gun cabinets up with extra booze and snacks and let the pheasants keep being pheasants and not supper.

OK, so it’s not technically a car. But when has a creative interpretation of the rules ever caused any distress whatsoever? Oh. All those times? Yeesh, maybe we should colour inside the lines more often.

But let’s not consider any of that too strongly, and focus instead on what you can do when you have more space to work with than Voyager 1. Yep, it’s time to bring along whatever paraphernalia a good drive-in experience means to you: a pair of Eames loungers, perhaps, or maybe a mud bath.

Which truck? Beats us. Because they’re for utility and not fun, they’ve pretty much gone unnoticed by us for the past... oooh, how long have we been alive? Pick one that looks to be in working order and, crucially, has a tray in the back for your roller disco/waterbed/hot tub. Yeah, we know how to live.

Come on. This is just too perfect.

And if you’ve not come across the Casual Lofa before, it’s... well, really what it looks like: a road-legal couch. Britain’s favourite gigantic mechanic put it together about 20 years ago and took it around Goodwood, where it promptly caught the attention of the Guinness Records folks, who crowned it ‘The World’s Fastest Furniture’ and kicked off a whole thing.

It’s now been beaten by faster, more modern furniture (I’ll take ‘Sentences I Never Expected to Write’ for 200, Alex) but everything necessary for the best and most unique drive-in experience is right here for the taking.

It’s hardly likely that even someone as cluey as Edd foresaw this kind of serendipity, but, for a perfect car to take to the drive-in, the Casual Lofa is hand-in-glove.