"Vanishing Point": A Car Culture Classic

A couple of weeks back, when writing about Paul Newman's passing, I relayed how I used to hang out at the local movie theater when I was a kid.

Newman's death took me back to lazy days watching movies on the neighborhood big screen, with "Butch Cassidy" being one of my favorites. One movie I'll never forget from those times is "Vanishing Point," which I always thought was so unusual that it had to be something special (and being a 10 year-old kid, I was mostly just trying to figure it all out):

It turns out the "Up to Speed" blog at the L.A. Times did an "all-time favorite car movies" roundup last week, and readers were vocal that "Vanishing Point" hadn't made the cut:

The list we posted last weekend of our 10 favorite car films generated a fair amount of commentary — most of it relating to movies that posters felt were unfairly overlooked.
Up to Speed stands by its original selections, but we also understand the subjective nature of lists, rankings and popularity contests of any sort. And with that in mind, here are the four movies that got the most mentions from our readers:

"Vanishing Point" (1971) -– If, like Spinal Tap, we had gone to 11, this movie would’ve made the cut. Along with “Two-Lane Blacktop” (which did make the list), “Vanishing Point” is the car movie as existential epic -- as one poster noted, “one man, one car, one road: no exit.” (That car, by the way, was a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T.) If Camus had written a script for a car movie, this would have been the result. And it has one of the coolest endings in Hollywood history...

More at the link.