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Hood Ornament Hottie

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Homer: Do you come with the car?
Model: Oh, you! [giggle]
Random other man: Do you come with the car?
Model: Oh, you! [giggle]

Attractive women, usually not wearing very much, draped over cars or motorbikes or doing other poses that highlight the vehicle. It also counts if they're washing said vehicle and there are suds in interesting places...

Common for car and motorcycle magazines, as well as motor shows.

Common outfits include swimsuits (even a Flag Bikini), leather, fur coats or wraps (real or fake), Going Fur a Swim.

A Sub-Trope of Sex Sells.

See also Pit Girls (attractive young women used as eye candy at motor races).

Has nothing to do with being In the Hood.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • One commercial parodied this with a girl in a bikini posing on a car hood for an amiture advertisement. When the car revs up it sucks her into the exposed engine and eats her. The car then burps up her bikini top.
  • Paris Hilton's infamous car-washing ad for the Carl's Jr./Hardee's fast-food restaurant chain.
  • This MX vs ATV Untamed commercial.
  • Subverted by a German radio commercial for radio commercials in which a (decidedly male) speaker announces he'll be publicly washing cars from his car dealership - in a pink bikini wearing a blonde wig. And then goes on to explain that the guy laughing maniacally next to him will be his boss, who bet that he'd be able to sell a certain number of cars extra by advertising on the radio. Guess who lost the bet...
  • Conan O'Brien does similar, washing his -desk-. Fortunately, in normal clothing. Then he starts eating the sponge.
  • Parodied with Subaru ads. Instead of attractive girls, they feature sumo wrestlers, seen here.
  • Parodied again in an ad for Anna's Linens. A man looks out of his window and sees his (male) neighbor washing a car, complete with gratuitous shots of the man's over-sized belly covered in suds and rubbing on the windshield. Turns out it's an ad for curtains.
  • A motorcycle dealership had a model do a photoshoot to promote their cycles. Then, to send the trend up, they had the male employees in the model's clothes and poses. Behold! (Daily Fail warning.)
  • Spoofed on a Super Bowl ad starring model Kate Upton. Instead of her washing the car (as the opening promises), she has some love-struck football players to do it for her.

    Anime & Manga 
  • The Occult Research Club does this while washing a car in the Season Four ending theme of High School D×D.
  • Kanojo No Carrera (My Favorite Carrera) usually has a girl in front (standing, on, etc.) of an exotic car seen in the volume itself.
  • One of the more well-known example of Male Gaze in Maken-ki! (aside from Himegami) stems from this trope. While Chacha's busy washing a car, we get a great shot of her rear end.
  • Red Line: When they're not racing, Bosbos and Boiboi pose and preen so much that it's almost ridiculous.

    Comic Books 
  • The covers of Chassis would often depict the eponymous heroine draped over the bonnet of an aero-car.
  • Robin: In issue #31, Tim and Ariana went on a date to a car show where some of the cars were accompanied by models in midriff revealing outfits. When Tim spots a celebrity and gets Ari's attention she is furious with him thinking he's trying to point out a scantly clad model but he's spotted Ted Grant, a former boxing champion and, though he doesn't mention this bit of course, a member of the Justice Society of America.

    Fan Works 

    Film — Animated 
  • Spoofed in Frozen (2013). When Kristoff's sled is replaced, Sven does a pose on it similar to this trope.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Biker Boyz had one of the motorcycle "clubs" having an annual bikini bike wash to benefit local schools; and while a few of the sister bikers had shown up as well, much head-shaking commenced until the organizer for the hosting club revealed Turbo, just about as scantily clad as the ladies.
  • In The Bobo, a seldom-seen Peter Sellers movie, Britt Ekland's character lounges seductively on the hood of a Maserati in a showroom. The car's new owner admires how she looks on it, unaware she had blackmailed the dealer out of it for herself.
  • The original Bring It On movie has the Bikini Car Wash variation, with the cheerleaders raising money by washing cars. Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku in Bikinis FTW.
  • "Lucille", the girl washing her car in front of the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke.
  • Played for laughs in Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark finds a sharply-dressed, good-looking woman accompanying the car he was about to drive. In truth, she was an US Marshal tasked by a Senate subcommittee to serve him a subpoena.
  • In the background of the arms show scene from Lord of War, one can see models in camo-print bikinis and assault rifles strutting and posing on top of a tank. Presumably a parody, yet there is the fear that it might actually have happened. The main character and his brother, after failing to secure a deal with a respected arms dealer, hook up with two of the girls to blow off steam.
  • Mastizaade: Laila washes a car in a bikini and poses on the hood of a car during a sequence in the "Rom Rom Romantic" song.
  • The stripper protagonist of Showgirls is hired for this, and is not amused when the businessmen assume she's going to sleep with them afterwards.
  • Mikela Banes from the Transformers Film Series is treated this way by her initial boyfriend and by the way she's framed by the camera. She's actually a bit of a Wrench Wench though and actually knows more about cars than any of the male cast.
  • Parodied in the German movie (T)Raumschiff Surpsrise where the male hero imagines the princess being Hood Ornament Hottie doing a carwash and she then starts to shave her legs and brush her teeth. The music is also hilarious.

    Literature 

  • In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Manny steals a picture from one of Rodrick's magazines, showing a bikini-clad woman lying across the hood of a car, and brings it to preschool for show-and-tell.
  • In the Frank Cottrel Boyce book Framed, the protagonist's sister followed in her father's footsteps and became a mechanic because the fact his car magazines subscribed to this led her to believe pretty women fix cars.
  • Similar to the "Lucille" example above, an unnamed woman puts on this show for the contestants in Richard Bachman's The Long Walk. (Pretty sure, anyway. It has been a while...)
  • The end of the Able Team novel "Reign of Doom" has a Nightmare Fuel variant on this trope when an explosion throws Anne Desmarais onto the Zil limousine driven by her KGB boss Zhgenti, and he drives off with her as a gruesome hood ornament.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Business Model from Arrested Development.
  • CSI: In "4 x 4", Catherine and Warwick investigate the murder of a 'convention girl' (a.k.a. a 'booth babe') at the International Vehicle Convention (A Serial Numbers Filed Off parody of SEMA, the Specialty Equipment Market Association).
  • The Cheerios in an episode of Glee do the bikini car wash fundraiser variety.
  • Gossip Girl: Blair makes use of this trope in a season two episode to get Chuck to sleep with her.
  • The final scene of the Knight Rider episode "Topaz Connection" has Michael showing KITT a centerfold of himself with Bonnie posing on his hood in a swimsuit. KITT's response? "Please remove the staple from my fender."
  • Lost Girl. Lauren and Dyson get Distracted by the Sexy sight of Bo washing her car. She realizes what's happening and starts playing up this trope for all it's worth.
  • Episode 13 of Monty Python's Flying Circus has a sequence with attractive young women posing on car bonnets, but the voiceover makes it clear that the advertiser isn't trying to sell the cars.
  • The New Avengers. For plot-related reasons Purdy goes through a carwash clinging to the roof of a car and despite being washed, waxed and blow-dried still ends up looking gorgeous.
  • On New Girl, Jess has to take Cece's place in a car show when Cece gets sick. Hilarity Ensues as Jess tries to keep her balance in a revolving platform.
  • In the 2005 Australian documentary Peking to Paris, one of the vintage cars being used to recreate the 1907 race is used for a lurid photoshoot involving a pretty Mongolian girl.
  • Happens often in WWE, usually in promos for Summerslam.

    Music 

    Music Videos 
  • Papa Roach and Buckcherry's "Turn Me On."
  • The Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson examples below were hysterically parodied by P!nk in her video for "Stupid Girls".
  • Poe's music video for "Hey Pretty".
  • Rihanna's "Shut Up & Drive"
  • Jessica Simpson's similar bit to the Paris Hilton ad mentioned above in her video of "These Boots Are Made For Walking".
  • The quintessential example would have to be Tawny Kitaen on the Music Video for Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again".
    • Relatedly, in Bowling for Soup's song "1985" one of the main character's former hopes and dreams is to "shake her ass on the hood of Whitesnake's car."
  • Just about every ZZ Top video ever.

    Pinballs 

    Video Games 
  • The Trophy Girls in Crash Team Racing are basically a quartet of these. Of course, they eventually become racers and get rebranded as the Nitro Squad in the remake, with Tawna joining them as their leader.
    • Tawna herself evokes this trope in the original game at the end of the Bonus Rounds, looking like a trophy girl presenting the winner of a race.
  • The intro to the first Forza game had one of these. Ramona Cravache and Hailey Harper in Horizon count.
    • Lampshaded by Hailey herself: she mentions she already gets thousands of dollars just for unzipping her race suit on photoshoots.
  • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls: Miyo Harada is a car mechanic with a background in street racing, so multiple cards portray her performing this pose, particularly her first SR and SSR.
  • The female sidekicks in the Need for Speed series after Underground also double as Hood Adornment Hotties. Especially Rachel from Underground 2, played and voiced by Brooke Burke.
  • Reiko Nagase, the mascot of Namco's Ridge Racer series, can be best described as this. She's far from being just fanservice however: according to newscasts in 7 she is the spokeswoman to the United Federal Racing Association, and in some games you can actually race her and she races everything from Ferrari and Bugatti knock offs to the Ford 303 Boss or maybe Michelle Rodriguez's Nissan in The Fast and the Furious. In Type 4 you can even obtain a letter from her if you perform well enough with Pac Racing Club in Grand Prix mode.

    Web Comics 

    Western Animation 
  • American Dad!:
    • Francine became one, briefly, when Stan went into underground street racing in an attempt to spice up their love life.
    • And then there is the much more nightmare fuel-ish instance: Stan & Steve, both having taken lots of estrogen and grown huge breasts (long story), are shown to be washing a car, both being dressed in daisy dukes, and posing provocatively on it.
  • One episode of Chowder features the voice actors washing cars to raise in-show money for animation.
  • Spoofed in an episode of Family Guy where Peter tells the story of his caveman ancestor Inventing the Wheel. When he has trouble marketing it, Cave-Brian has Cave-Lois stand next to it in a Fur Bikini, which instantly makes all the other cavemen want one on the assumption that attractive women will like them if they own one.
  • In a Kaeloo episode where Stumpy tries to give away free cars so people will buy apples from him, he dresses in drag and sits on top of the car. Nobody buys it anyway.
  • Motor Ed tricks Shego into being his hood ornament hottie in an episode of Kim Possible. Shego was... not happy to learn this.
  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey: In "Robo Frog 3000", Mr. Mandrill washes cars like a sexy car wash girl.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Parodied on a mock commercial showing a nerd driving through the desert. He stops at a deserted gas station and three Hood Ornament Hotties come out and start washing his car to the sounds of '80s hair metal. Then the camera zooms on the cleavage of one of the girls to reveal... a crucifix.
      "The Catholic Church. We've made a few... changes."
    • Chief Wiggum poses as a Hood Ornament Hottie for a police calendar in "The Devil Wears Nada".
    • At a car show we see a requisite sexy model posing with a car. A customer asks "Do you come with the car?" She giggles "Oh, you! Tee-hee!" And then another guy comes along, and the ''exact same'' transaction occurs.
    • Subverted to hell and back with the Simpsons/Family Guy crossover: Both Homer and Peter don Daisy Dukes and do a sexy car wash.
  • Wuya from Xiaolin Showdown poses this way with a car she gave Raimundo after he briefly joined forces with her.

    Real Life 
  • High school and college women's athletic teams quite often attempt to raise money with bikini car washes—it works. The girls don't even have to wear bikinis (or any other swimsuits)—tank tops and short-shorts work just as well, considering that the probability of wet tank tops and short-shorts approaches.
  • Go to any car, motorcycle, or boat show. "Booth babes" are everywhere, especially at SEMA note  in Las Vegas, where they'll be advertising everything from turbochargers to car wax.
  • Played literally straight by the "Spirit of Ecstasy," the famous hood ornament on all Rolls Royce motor cars. The spirit herself is modeled after Eleanor Velasco Thornton, the secret lover of John Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu for when the latter wanted a mascot for his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The mascot later became standard on all Rolls Royce motor cars.
  • A Japanese car show had women wearing mini dresses that were trimmed with white feathers, and had bunny ears to give an image of a Playboy Bunny.
  • Allegedly, Michael Bay auditioned an 18-year old Megan Fox for Transformers (2007) by filming her washing his Ferrari.

    Other 


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