The Precious, Precious Car

"Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself."

Tycho: I promised Darklighter I'd bring this baby back without a scratch!
Winter: [shoots off their own hood ornament] Now it's scratched. Get closer!

— Battleground: Tatooine

So there's this total jerk (most likely the protagonist's hateful father, hateful older brother, hateful neighbor or hateful schoolmate), see, and he has a really nice car, most likely a valuable, shiny, red, convertible classic car, sports car, or classic sports car. And he worships the ground it drives on. And he makes one thing absolutely clear to the protagonist: that if they ever once dare to so much as touch it, set foot near it, or even look at it the wrong way, he will rip off their testicles and use them as rollers to paint over the fingermarks they left.

Inevitably, one of three things will happen:

1. It will be borrowed without permission.
2. It will be destroyed or seriously damaged.
3. Most likely, both of the above.

If the one who owns the car is a main character, the trope is Watch the Paint Job. See also It's Going Down. Practically a subtrope of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?. Compare Chronically Crashed Car, Priceless Ming Vase, and Milholland Relationship Moment. Contrast The Alleged Car, a vehicle whose defining quality is being terrible/hated instead of pretty/loved. Destruction will be averted with an Invincible Classic Car.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Happens not once, but several times, in Birdy the Mighty Decode, where Birdy will accidentally demolish any of the cars and subsequent new cars of one of the human minor characters with her super strength.
• Vice-Principal Uchiyamada in Great Teacher Onizuka has a very shiny Toyota Cresta that he loves very much and it gets thrashed over and over again. Multiple times people attempt suicide and just happen to land on the car, it also gets stolen (by students) and driven off into Tokyo Bay. In its final appearance he's gotten savvy and has lashed a mattress to the roof. It gets destroyed in a different way.

Comic Books

• One Archie Comics story featured Reggie showing an excessive, obsessive, amount of concern for his car. As Archie states, "Reggie doesn't own his car- his car owns him!" Reggie gets his comeuppance when he forgets to roll up the windows before a big rainstorm, soaking the interior.
• Ronnie's "tuff" hot rod that Cherry wrecks in "Hot Rod Boogie" in Cherry Comics #1.
• When you see in Mortadelo y Filemón how the "Súper" brags about a shiny new car recently bought by him, you can be sure it and probably him are going to be wasted by those two agents.
• Characters in Sin City love to take care of their cars. Wallace and Dwight's Cadillacs are the two biggest examples. Unfortunately, many of these cars do get wrecked, much to the chagrin of the characters.
• X-Wing Rogue Squadron: In the Battleground: Tatooine arc, Winter and Tycho have to borrow Huff Darklighter's shiny, expensive speeder to chase after some people who shot up a party. While driving, Tycho takes it a bit slow, telling Winter that they promised to bring it back without a scratch. Winter then shoots the front of the airspeeder and says "Now it's scratched. Go!" A few pages later, the speeder is totally destroyed.

Film — Live-Action

• The Abominable Dr. Phibes: When Crow drives off in a desperate attempt to save Dr. Kitaj, he takes the first car he finds, which turns out to be Superintendent Waverly's. It is in less than pristine condition when he returns it, and falls apart (off-screen) when Waverly drives off.
• Flounder's brother's car in Animal House is almost completely destroyed during the Deltas' hasty escape from the nightclub, and the preparations for its use in ruining the homecoming parade serve to finish the job.
• In Ask a Policeman, Sgt. Dudfoot wrecks the Chief Constable's car (i.e. his boss' car) while attempting to fake an accident to explain to the Chief Constable why he has been unconscious. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
• In the first Back to the Future film, Biff Tannen's 1946 Ford Super De Luxe is crashed into the back of a manure truck while Biff and his gang are pursuing a skateboarding Marty. In the second film, having paid a fortune to have the damage repaired, Biff then crashes into the back of another manure truck.
• Barefoot has a variation; in this case, the precious car is an old (but well-cared for) RV that Jay Wheeler's wealthy father owns. When Jay and his Manic Pixie Dream Girl Daisy Kensington are sneaking out of New Orleans, they steal it because it's the only vehicle in the garage with keys. And sure enough, Daisy eventually wrecks it.
• In Bet Your Life, Sonny rents (for an obscene amount of cash) a battered old camper from the owner of a gas station. The owner is reluctant to rent it out as it contains a lot of good memories about his late wife, but eventually agrees. Sonny promises to return it with a scratch. Needless to say, it gets trashed minutes later when Joseph shoots it with a grenade launcher.
• Bumblebee: An obnoxious trailer-trash guy is more concerned about whether an incoming meteor will hit his precious 1971 Plymouth GTX than the fact a meteor is heading toward him. He's immensely relieved when it lands several meters short, much to his wife's irritation. Then, seconds later, Shatter lands on it anyway.
• Casino Royale (2006) sees James Bond damage a hotel guest's SUV when the arrogant owner mistakes him for a valet.
• Agent Malloy's car from Con Air, although he actually shrugged off its destruction.
  Vince Larkin: I know a good body shop in Fresno if it's insured.
  Duncan Malloy: I was bored with that car anyway.
  Vince Larkin: It worked out nicely, then.
• Although we don't really learn about the car's preciousness until after the accident, Fast Times at Ridgemont High has Jefferson's car, a gift from a college football recruitment programme, get thoroughly destroyed when a Quaalude-addled Jeff Spicoli takes it for a joyride with Jefferson's brother.
  Jefferson's Brother: My brother's gonna kill us! He's gonna kill you and he's gonna kill me! ...My brother's gonna shit!
  Spicoli: Well, make up your mind, dude, is he gonna shit, or is he gonna kill us?
  Jefferson's Brother: First he's gonna shit, then he's gonna kill us!
• "The 1961 Ferrari 250GT California" drives the final act of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Cameron's father treasures the vintage Ferrari more than anything, including his own family. Cameron spends much of the movie fearing his father's fury once he figures out Cameron, Sloane and Ferris borrowed the vehicle for a day. Cameron finding a meaningful way to confront his father regarding the vehicle's unexpected additional mileage and destruction is the actual point of the movie.
  Cameron Frye: Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring this car. It is his love. It is his passion.
  Ferris Bueller: It is his fault he didn't lock the garage.
• The 1967 comedy The Flim Flam Man has the eponymous character stealing a young woman's shiny new convertible. One long chase scene later, the vehicle is in ruins.
• In Alan Alda's The Four Seasons, Dave takes obsessive care of his car including not letting his friends eat inside it. It sinks into a frozen lake at the end of the movie.
• Heavily implied in Ghostbusters (2016) with the hearse Patty's uncle sends to the team, then confirmed in the end. He didn't think the Ghostbusters were going to modify it. Or send it to another dimension.
• R.L. Stine really loves his '87 Jeep Wagoneer in Goosebumps (2015). When the giant praying mantis destroys it, he is visibly distraught.
• The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud owned by Paula Powers' parents in Grand Theft Auto (1977). True to the film's tagline, it, like many others throughout the story, were utterly destroyed.
• Walt Kowalski's eponymous car in the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. True to the trope, the car does get 'borrowed' without his consent after the would-be thief stares into the wrong end of a fully loaded high caliber rifle.
• In The Gumball Rally, one of the racers (Jose the mechanic) enters the race by getting a job delivering a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow to Los Angeles. He picks it up at the New York mansion of a rich producer and his butler makes clear that there will be hell to pay if Jose damages it, even giving him orders like not driving the car after six in the afternoon. The car gets heavily damaged throughout the film, including getting keyed and bashed by a bunch of crazed bikers and having most of its paint ripped off by a sandstorm. Jose manages to dodge trouble when the producer is Distracted by the Sexy (by seducing Jose's Wet Blanket Girlfriend) and Jose finally wrecks the car when he punts it in anger and it goes rolling down a hill and hits a truck.
• Doug's father-in-law's Mercedes, The Hangover. In a nice twist, it is revealed to be perfectly fine after the 'what happened last night'. Seconds later, it gets damaged. In a deleted scene, the joke is paid off by the Father-In-Law GIVING it to the protagonists.
• Archie's dad's Pontiac Firebird in High School U.S.A.. When Beau finds out that J.J. is planning to use the car in the drag race, he sends a couple of girls round to seduce Archie and Chuckie into taking them for a ride in it, and then causing them to crash the car by distracting them. The kids then concoct a scheme to persuade Archie's dad that he wrecked the car himself.
• Bad guy Marls owns a very nice Mercedes in Honeymoon Academy, which he is extremely attached to and spends an inordinate amount of time fussing over. After the villains capture Chris and Sean, Marls sends his Minion with an F in Evil Slack to drive them to a remote location and kill them. Instead, Slack, who is a Token Good Teammate, gives them the keys to the Mercedes and lets them go. Upon returning to Marls' house, he lies and says he pushed the heroes over a cliff in the car. Marls is so enraged he throws the snowglobe MacGuffin at Slack. A subversion in that the car is fine; Marls only thinks it's been destroyed.
• At the beginning of Irreconcilable Differences, Lucy is driving her fiance Bink's beloved sports car across the country because she's the only person he trusts with it. Naturally, it gets stolen while she's dancing with Albert.
• Sgt. Murtaugh, driving his wife's station wagon, chasing the South Africans in the opening sequence of Lethal Weapon 2. At the police station, a cop bets money that Riggs & Murtaugh will catch their target first, but once he's told that they're in Murtaugh's wife's station wagon, he wants to back out of the bet. (Naturally, since Riggs is involved, the car becomes The Alleged Car in very short order.)
• The Precious, Precious Car in the 1988 film License to Drive is Les' grandfather's 1972 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, which he left behind while he was going out for the weekend with the family's BMW. The simple plan was for Les to just take his girlfriend Mercedes out for a ride a couple of hours' long. By the end of the film, the Cadillac has been completely wrecked in a demolition-derby ride through Los Angeles, up to and including being stolen by a drunken hobo (who pukes inside of the car) and driving in reverse to the hospital by Les to help his mother deliver a baby (and the car then gets flattened by a falling girder). Grandpa didn't had any better luck himself, either, and he hands the keys to the BMW and the towed remains of the car in the epilogue.
• The eponymous SUV Sharon from the Venezuelan Movie Mi Vida Por Sharon is treated this way. The plot of the movie is all the lengths its owner goes to rescue it from express kidnappers, almost at the expense of his family and the romantic relationships with his ex-wife and actual girlfriend (the man was two-timing with each other, and still both felt more betrayed with his love for his SUV). Although he manages to reconcile with his family and got his car back, Sharon still gets destroyed, at the hands of the pregnant dumped girlfriend, in a explosion that would make Michael Bay smile.
• One Crazy Summer features Teddy's red Ferrari, complete with personalized license plates reading "CUL8R".
• At the beginning of Project X (2012), Thomas' dad tells him not to touch his Mercedes or let anybody else use it. Predictably, it winds up at the bottom of the pool.
• Winston Wolfe's Acura in Pulp Fiction. Fortunately, he's giving it to Vincent, who's similarly attached to his Malibu.
  Winston: I get my car back any different than I gave it, Monster Joe's gonna be disposin' of two bodies.
• In Risky Business, when Joel takes Lana out on a date in his father's Porsche, the car accidentally ends up rolling into a nearby lake.
• The Rock sees both Mason and Goodspeed steal expensive cars from a valet stand - a Hummer and a Ferrari, respectively, both of which get banged up in the ensuing chase. As a bonus, the Hummer's owner is actually admonishing the hapless valet not to put any "dings, dents, or scratches" on the car just before Mason drives off with it.
• In The Shape of Water, Strickland buys himself a flashy new teal Cadillac as a reward to himself, and naturally, Giles accidentally clips it with his van that very day, smashing a headlight and removing the front bumper.
• Starsky's Gran Torino in the Starsky & Hutch movie. Very unusual in that Starsky is a protagonist, and (after being talked into attempting an ill-judged jump) he destroys the car himself.
• Kirk's stepfather's car in Star Trek (2009). Additional material indicates that it was Kirk's father's car, and his stepfather intended to sell it. Out of spite, Little Jim Kirk went on the joyride with it instead.
• Two examples from the Star Wars films:
  • Variation in Return of the Jedi: Lando, about to borrow the Millennium Falcon to go with Wedge and Rogue Squadron after the second Death Star, tells Han he'll bring his ship back without a scratch on it. Han has a feeling that he'll never see his beloved Falcon again. Lando does bring her back, and her radar dish is missing. If that wasn't bad enough, an earlier version of the script had the Falcon getting destroyed in the Death Star's explosion.
    • Solo reveals that when she belonged to Lando, the Falcon was the space equivalent of a luxury yacht. Then Han piloted her on the Kessel Run and shredded the hell out of her. Lando was not happy.
      Lando: I hate you.
      Han: I know.
  • Also, the shiny yellow speeder Anakin commandeered early on in Attack of the Clones? Was the extremely prized possession of the Republic's most corrupt senator.
• Kerr's car from Terminal Velocity (1994) gets driven out of a plane. And Kerr leaps out after it. It does not go well for him.
• In Tower Heist, Shaw's most precious possession is his valuable sports car in his penthouse once owned by Steve McQueen, which, in a fit of anger, Josh Kovacs smashes to hell, declaring "Steve McQueen is my little bitch." Also, it happens to not only be made of solid gold as a hidden emergency treasure trove, but its glove compartment is where he hides his secret ledger of all his fraudulent accounts.
• Two Hands: The Dragon Acko's beloved ford Falcon that he loves more than anything else in the world. Pando makes him loan it to Jimmy to make the delivery, and Acko threatens him with grievous bodily harm if it acquires a single dent or scratch. After Jimmy screws up the job and loses Pando's money, he abandons the car in a lane way, where it is promptly stolen.
• Wild in the Streets: Before Max leaves home as a teenager, he blows up his father's brand-new '58 Chrysler, which his father loves more than any human being.
• All of James Bond's cars are this to Q. It especially applies to The World Is Not Enough, in which it gets sawed in half by a helicopter-mounted buzzsaw. While Bond usually chuckles when the car gets destroyed, here he actually looks sheepish.
• The opening scene of xXx has Xander Cage stealing a politician's prized convertible, then ramping it off a bridge.
• In The Last Starfighter, Alex Rogan's "friend" Jack Blake has a really nice red Dodge Power Ram. Near the end of the film, Alex's Robot Me Beta has to chase down an alien assassin called a Zando-Zan, and the closest vehicle to hand is Blake's pickup. Noticing his truck being taken, Blake yells, "Scratch that paint and you're dead, Rogan!" Beta ends up smashing the Dodge into the Zando-Zan's one-man spaceship in a Heroic Sacrifice, completely destroying both vehicles.

Literature

• Phyllis Reynolds Naylor uses this trope cleverly in one of the Alice books. The teen-age Alice is a passenger in a jerk's flashy new car, and he is driving recklessly at eighty-plus miles an hour. He ignores her pleas to slow down and drive sanely, so she pretends that she's going to puke. The jerk says, "Not in my car!" and stops to let her out to puke. Once out, she wisely refuses to get back in.
• Downplayed in The Alice Network. Finn cares for his car and is protective of it, but he isn't a jerk about it. His love for his car is endearing to Charlie: He tells her that when he became a soldier, most of the other men had pictures of girlfriends or wives. He had neither, so he had a picture of his car.
• Taken to a horrifying extreme in Christine, where the titular car has such a hold on its owner that he'll do absolutely anything to care for and protect it.
• DFZ: Nik's high-end sports car. Some of his old friends are surprised that he let Opal ride in it at all.
• Crowley's very attached to his Bentley in Good Omens. It's his favorite material possession, his full-body glove. It's also his choice of vehicle to what is probably the end of the world, no matter how much hellish flame or high water he has to drive through to get there.
• The Hearts We Sold: The Daemon is very fond of his car, to the point where one of the only times he displays any actual emotion is when he thinks someone might throw up in it and ruin the upholstery.
• The Origin Of The Crabs by Guy N. Smith: Bruce McKechnie is a wealthy Scottish laird whose pride and joy is his expensive Range Rover, which he views as a visible symbol of his wealth and prestige. Needless to say, the giant crabs of the title trash it real good when attacking McKechnie's mansion.
• Ryan from The Perfect Run loves his Plymouth Fury to the point when the villain Mosquito destroys it he immediately declares the current loop a failure and kills both of them with an atom bomb to reset the loop he's in so he won't be in a world where his car is destroyed.
• In Shutter Island, Teddy blows up Dr. Crawley's beloved car in order to create a diversion.

Live-Action TV

• Burn Notice:
  • The Villain of the Week in "Square One" is allowed to drive Jesse's Porsche Cayman under the belief that it was now his. To keep Michael's client from blowing his head off, Fiona tries to make the villain flee, and reassures Jesse that she will only shoot the windhield. The guy backs up in a hurry, rips off the back bumper, and drives off. Jesse says, in an a very annoyed voice, "Just the windshield, Fi?"
  • Another Villain of the Week had a pristine red GTO. Part of Team Westen's plan in that episode involved tossing a pepper grenade inside, then lighting off a coffee can full of thermite over the engine and burning a hole straight through it.
  • And then Fi blew Jesse's Porsche up completely.
• Dennis' Land Rover in Always Sunny In Philadephia, which gets bumped around in a couple episodes, and finally destroyed in the 12th season
• In Chuck, Casey is shown lovingly washing his Ford Crown Victoria. Chuck must later divert an incoming missile by reprogramming it to home in on said Crown Vic. Casey is inconsolable.
• Played for Drama in CSI: NY. In "Cavallino Rampante", a pair of professional car-thief sisters steal a fancy red Ferrari, not realizing it belongs to an international terrorist, and chop it for parts. The man tracks them down and threatens to kill them if they don't return it pronto... with all the original parts back in place. They fail, and he does indeed kill one of them.
• The Dick Van Dyke Show: This is the main premise of "Scratch My Car and Die". Rob has gotten a fancy new car, a Tarantula. Rob dotes on it, admiring it from every angle, driving it and smelling it every chance he gets, and wanting to show it off to everyone. He also gives Laura extensive instructions for keeping it new and nice as long as possible. This makes it worse for Laura when the car gets scratched.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Mawdryn Undead", Turlough convinces his classmate Ibbotson to join him in a joyride in the Brigadier's priceless antique car (a blue 1929 Humber 16/50 open tourer, Imperial model), which they accidentally veer off the road and crash. Being the decent chap that he is, the Brigadier is persuaded not to press charges.
  • In "The Ghost Monument", Epzo is reluctant to jettison the back half of his ship in order to save fuel because he claims there have been ballads written about it. The Doctor incredulously snaps that a tragic opera could be written about their pointless deaths, and persuades him to jettison the back of the ship so they can reach Desolation.
• Ray Vecchio on Due South loves his 1971 Buick Riviera ("The Riv") to the point that he is loath to let anyone else drive it, and is near-inconsolable when it gets destroyed. He actually goes through three identical Rivs over his two seasons on the show, the first two having been blown up in the line of duty.
• Family Matters: An early, Urkel-less Season 1 episode sees Carl bring home a 1936 Ford police car (owned by the Chicago Police Department) he had hoped to drive in a parade. He specifically admonishes the others to not drive the car. Rachel disobeys him and damages the front fender of the car when she bumps into some trash cans. Rachel does what she can to repair the damage, but Carl finds out – the fender falls off the car, Rachel having improperly reattached it – when he leaves for the parade. He drives it that way in the parade, having no other choice, and returns to get his explanation.
• Chi Soo from Flower Boy Ramyun Shop loves his black car and drove it to school. His father stopped him from doing this by taking the wheels; he had a Played for Laughs breakdown in the garage because of this.
• Home Improvement:
  • In the early Season 4 episode "Don't Tell Momma", Tim borrows Jill's car – a customized 1955 Chevrolet Nomad – to get some work done on it, and stops by a construction site on the way to tape a segment of Tool Time. He gets behind the wheel of a crane, quickly loses control and drops a three ton beam on the car's roof, destroying the car! Tim tries to hide the truth from Jill, but she finds out and is very angry.
  • In a later episode Jill leaves Tim's hot rod outside in a snowstorm with the top down, prompting her to wonder if she subconsciously did it as revenge for the beam.
  • A scene in another episode has Tim mention that he once drove a car belonging to one of his brothers into a lake.
  • Later on in the series, Tim gets to watch as the remains of his first car are crushed at a junkyard.
• Inspector Morse's iconic red Jaguar is hit in the pilot - twice! In a later episode it gets covered in Freemasons-themed graffiti by the bad guys, who specifically targeted the car because they knew it would anger him, and he takes it almost more personally than when they subsequently escalate to setting his house on fire.
• Kingdom Hospital: Dr. Stegman's Jaguar, which endures progressively more damage with every episode, and the doctor himself gets increasingly more unhinged with every act of vandalism. And he deserves ''every bit of it.'' The tie-in website, with dynamic pages, even had a page which read: "Parking is available, but don't mess with Steg's Jag."
• MacGyver (1985): In "Three for the Road", Guy Roberts owns an immaculate red '57 Cadillac. Over the course of the episode, the car is gradually trashed due a combination of damage inflicted by the bad guys, and Mac stripping parts off the car to turn into makeshift weaponry. Mac has it fully restored for him at the episode.
• This happens in Only Fools and Horses, and even ties into an earlier plot point too. Del borrows Boycie's Jaguar E-Type (for various reasons), and just when he decides to stop in the road at the end of the episode, the car gets crashed into by a dodgy car with no brakes Del had sold to an Australian guy earlier in the episode.
• Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin is very protective of his car in "Brooks' New Car" and "Taking the Rap for Mr. Boynton".
• Donna of Parks and Recreation is crazy about her Mercedes, and has a breakdown when an errant bullet on a hunting trip breaks one of its windows. However, she is willing to sacrifice it in a ploy for Leslie's campaign tour to succeed.
• The Singaporean sitcom Phua Chu Kang has an episode where the younger Butt-Monkey brother, Phua Chu Beng, gets a new car and desperately tries to hide it from his petty, usually-condescending older brother Phua Chu Kang. It doesn't work, when Chu Kang's employees Bobo and King Kong (who's in on Beng's secret) accidentally spills the beans Chu Kang then tries everything in his power to screw over Chu Beng, including subtly hinting he'll scratch the car with a garden hoe. It leads to Chu Beng trying to drive away only to find out his brother had stolen the engine (!!!).
• In Power Rangers RPM, when Col. Truman refers to the Project Go-Onger van as his prized possession, you knew it was going down. And it did, quite literally: the Monster of the Week planted a bomb on it, causing it to go out of control and right off a cliff. The Rangers bailed out just in time to see it take the plunge. We sadly never got to see the Colonel's reaction.
• The Season 3 finale of Republic of Doyle sees his treasured Pontiac GTO destroyed by a car bomb. His sidekick Des collects the salvageable pieces gets it reassembled at the beginning of Season 4.
• Here's a handy guide: if Kelso makes even a passing reference to his car in an episode of Scrubs, bad things are going to happen to it.
• Temps de chien: Danielle decides to key Manon's car after being fired by her. However, when Manon walks past the keyed car and goes to her actual car, Danielle realizes much to her shock that she keyed someone else's vehicle.
• In That '70s Show, Red Forman is very attached his 1950's Corvette convertible and doesn't let anyone touch it let alone drive it. In one episode, Eric took the car on a joyride while his parents were out of town in order to impress a cheerleader. He accidentally drives the car into a ditch, it doesn't get damaged but it gets covered in mud and he has to clean it before his dad gets home. He succeeds but his cover is blown when his dad starts the car and finds the radio tuned to a different station.
• "Princess", Ziggy Sobotka's Camaro in The Wire, which is an Alleged Cool Car, with a new engine but shoddy body work. The car is commandeered by Cheese after Ziggy fails to make his money back from drugs he bought at an advance, and when Nicky goes to confront Cheese about the issue, Cheese and his friends have set the car on fire for laughs. Nicky manages to use his connections to the Greeks to settle the debt and also demand Cheese pay Ziggy back for the blue book value of the car.
  • In season three, there is a moment between the police and an unnamed drug crew lieutenant where the police applying preassure to dealers to move into the free zones, are set up to tow the guy's car away, and he pleads them not to and promises to move his operation
• Vyv's car in The Young Ones is referred to a couple of times in the series, but is only relevant to the story in the final episode. Then he accelerates from zero to demolishing both the car and a lamppost in about five seconds flat. Just to make things worse it turns out that his pet hamster, Special Patrol Group, was sitting on the radiator at the time.

Professional Wrestling

• Eddie Guerrero and his lowriders. One time when he and Rey Mysterio Jr. were teaming, Rey got slammed onto the hood of Eddie's car. Eddie came over to see what happened, cold-cocked Rey, and embraced the car as if it could feel pain.

Video Games

• Death Rally disables the sabotage option at the Underground Market if the player is going up against the Adversary. Of course, most players beat him by blowing up his car, rather than trying to out-race him, anyway.
  "What? You crazy, man? Nobody touches the Adversary's automobile and lives, nobody."
• Destroy All Humans! 2: In Takoshima, there is a salaryman with an extreme fixation on his new company car, screaming at any bystander who might touch it. So naturally, Crypto destroys it For the Evulz.
• As mentioned above, James Bond's cars. In Everything or Nothing, he is forced to self-destruct his Porsche Cayenne Turbo as a distraction. Just before pressing the button, he looks skyward and says, "Forgive me, Q."
• In a Bonus Stage from the original Final Fight, the player gets points for destroying a seemingly random car. Then a member of the Mad Gear Gang comes in when you're done and breaks down in tears to see his car destroyed.
  • When you play the strikingly similar Bonus Stage in Street Fighter IV with Guy or Cody, the same sequence plays out after you've completed the stage, complete with the same soundbyte.
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Underground racing circuit plus bazooka = win for the player.
• Hades gives Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy Theseus a tricked-out chariot when you fight him with Extreme Measures 3 on. He quickly becomes attached to his new ride, berates you for damaging it, and if you destroy it in battle he may call on the gods of Olympus to avenge his beloved chariot.
• Harvester: Mr. Johnson is very protective of his vintage Tucker. Naturally, as one of your tasks for the Order, you have to scratch it up.
• In Parasite Eve 2, Aya has a muscle car she had restored, customized and named Carrie. Predictably, it gets wrecked by a group of impish monsters. She practically goes through a period of mourning.
• In one mission in Sleeping Dogs (2012), Wei is asked by a fellow Triad member to pick up his girlfriend for him while he and a bigwig talk shop, and lends him his sleek white sports car to do so. Unfortunately, said girlfriend's rich, attractive, thrill-seeking friend is there too, and with some flirting manages to talk Wei into taking the car to a street race. One that unknowingly crosses an active crime scene and draws a lot of police attention...
• Sully, the leader of the Orphans in The Warriors, can often be found at Frank's Autobody tinkering with his car. When Cleon confronts him after Sully bragged about intruding on the Warriors' turf on the radio, Sully and his men hide behind a locked gate and then taunt Cleon further. Cleon retaliates by having his "youngbloods" (rookie gang members) smash Sully's car with their fists, their feet, and giant sledgehammers. The sequence ends with a Big "NO!" from Sully.

Webcomics

• 21st Century Fox: Jack's Thunderbird, which later gets hit by a hurricane.
• Altermeta: Josephine has a late model Mustang that she's still too young to drive.
• Averted and discussed in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: Commander Badass owns a lovingly restored '58 Chevy, and doesn't mind Jared backing it into a wall, since it gives him an excuse to work on it again.
  "See, th' problem with project cars is once y'finish 'em the fun is kinda used up. May's well hand 'em off to a teenager every now 'n' then."

Western Animation

• Owned by a Jerk Jock in an episode of Batman Beyond. When he bullies a wimpier classmate, the wimp snags his dad's humongous construction 'bot and crushes it like a beer can.
• Kevin's car in Ben 10: Alien Force. The abuse it is subjected to throughout the series (and Kevin's subsequent freak-outs) is a Running Gag.
• In one episode of Invader Zim, Gir possesses Zim's house, transforms it into a quadrupedal mecha, and rampages across the city trying to get his favorite tacos. One of the casualties is a brand new car belonging to a man who just moments before was gushing to someone on the phone about how amazing his car was.
• On King of the Hill, Boomhauer used to have one of these in high school; until Hank, Bill, and Dale took it for a joyride and accidentally drove it into the old quarry. They had kept it a secret from him for all these years.
• Mr. Wolffe gets a car like this in an episode of Rocko's Modern Life. It gets completely totaled after it's safely put back in the garage.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "The Italian Bob", Homer and his family get sent to Italy to pick up Mr. Burns' new Lamborgotti Fasterossa sports car. While tooling around Italy, the car is crushed by huge wheels of Mortadella and cheese.
  • In another episode, Superintendent Chalmers has a meltdown when someone defaces his brand-new Honda by stealing the hood ornament.
  Chalmers: What's the point of having a Honda if you can't show it off?
• Teen Titans gives us a full episode where Cyborg builds a high-tech sports car from the bottom up, only to have it jacked by a couple of hoodlums, given an unwanted flame paintjob, then snatched again by the even more careless Gizmo. Cyborg finds the little pipsqueak and protests in horror at the sight of him munching down on fast food inside the car.
  Cyborg: He'll get ketchup ON THE SEATS!!!
  • Sadly, his ride gets torn apart as he tries to get it back, and then utterly ruined when it crashes into a police transport. Worse, the recently-captured Overload was sitting inside the truck, and promptly combines with the wreckage, morphing it into an evil version of the original car, egging Cyborg on by boasting that he'll have to waste the car to beat him. Cyborg says it's not his car anymore while priming his Sonic Cannon, then blasts it into oblivion. Afterward, he builds an identical replacement... which gets nothing but further abuse in later seasons.
• Knock Out in Transformers: Prime is his own Precious, Precious Car, being the unusual car-mode Decepticon. He's incredibly vain and takes cosmetic damage very seriously.
  "No! Not the paint job!"

---