Enthusiasm for cars incubates within the greater popular culture. Movies, TV shows, streaming series, TikTok videos, and YouTube digressions on the relative merits of hybrid technology in Formula 1 and/or Iron Chef competitions… they all influence us. But it’s movies that persist the longest. And some of the most beloved? They suck. Or at least they’re not as good as they’re imagined to be.Some car movies are appreciated appropriately. John Frankenheimer’s 1966 epic Grand Prix is accurately criticized for dramatic inertness and praised for its groundbreaking camera work. Most of Steve McQueen’s passion project, 1971’s Le Mans, is boring, but somewhat redeemed by the last ten minutes of Porsche vs. Ferrari racing madness. And Fast Five, released in 2011, is a ludicrously entertaining movie about an even more ludicrous robbery. They have the reps they deserve.But… some car movies don’t deserve the automotive love nostalgia grants them. They are, in a word, overrated.These aren’t overrated in the sense that movie critics hate them. They’re overrated by car freaks who love them despite their massive flaws.Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)The original Eleanor Mustang being stolen from the International Tower condo building in Long Beach by star/director/producer/stunt driver Toby Halicki as "Maindrian Pace."The story behind the making of the original Gone in 60 Seconds is better than the movie itself. H.B. “Toby” Halicki, whose junkyard antics were already notorious in Southern California’s South Bay region, starred in the movie, did much of the stunt driving, haphazardly directed it, sort of wrote it, and distributed it himself. That meant he made a ton of money.car jump during a chase scene with spectators watchingBut the movie is terrible. The dialogue is ridiculous; no one who appears in it could act, any decent shots in the film were probably accidental, and the action is absurd. Throw in some cringey racial stereotyping (even by 1973 standards), and the fact that the main action stops for the political leaders of the city of Carson to pimp their town, and it’s unwatchable, amateurish dreck.Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)Worst CGI ever.It’s not a remake of the original, but it still manages to carry forward the original’s fulsome spirit of suck. Yes, the acting is okay—Nicolas Cage, Robert Duvall, and Angelina Jolie all have Oscars for appearances in better films—but the plot is still dopey, and the action isn’t well shot. There’s never any sense of real danger, no sensation of speed, and, well, nitrous just doesn’t work that way. Also, the menace of the villain is represented by his passion for… carpentry?There’s also the matter of the jump that ends the movie. It’s so agonizingly, awesomely, atrociously fake. It’s quarter-baked computer graphics that’s inexcusable. The surfaces of the car aren’t plausible, the physics of the jump itself are stupid, and it’s a disappointing coda to a disappointing movie.All that plus the fact that it started a craze for turning perfectly ordinary 1967 and 1968 Mustang fastbacks into shady replicas of “Eleanor,” and it is all regrettable.The Cannonball Run (1981)Even the presence of a Lamborghini Countach can’t save a movie.Brock Yates has always been a personal hero of mine. He’s one of the best writers ever to scribble for car magazines, and early-teen me was totally enraptured with the idea of the Cannonball Baker Memorial Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. So, I wanted this movie to be great. I would have settled for good or even merely okay. But it’s awful.Yates wrote the script, but apparently director Hal Needham and star Burt Reynolds didn’t pay much attention to it. “(T)he whole movie thing has never been a source of great pride for me,” Yates recollected in 2002, “in that Burt Reynolds, who starred in the picture, butchered the original script I had written for the late Steve McQueen, and the result, while a massive moneymaker, was lashed by the critics. But like the old joke about Pierre the Bridge Builder, The Cannonball Run is indelibly inscribed on my so-called career portfolio, and few conversations with strangers pass without the subject of the picture arising.”All the humor is forced and obvious, there are constant continuity errors between scenes and vehicles, and none of the action is gripping. I have some affection for the opening scene of a Countach outrunning a Nevada Highway Patrol Trans Am, but even that gets ruined when the film is sped up to make the Lamborghini seem faster than it is. No character seems to care about the race, there’s no dramatic development, and the cast all seemed to be drunk.A more recent photo of the Lamborghini Countach used in Cannonball Run. It never looked this good in the movie.I admit that there are some compensating virtues. First, Dom DeLuise is hilarious when he becomes Captain Kaos, and Jack Elam is kind of great as Dr. Van Helsing. And there’s no escaping the gravitational attraction of Adrienne Barbeau and Tara Buckman in the Countach. But all that hardly makes up for the self-satisfied, celebrity circle jerk vibe that runs throughout this movie.Also, though The Cannonball Run is terrible, The Cannonball Run II is much, much worse.Two Lane Blacktop (1971)Great car. Incredibly weird movie.The April 1971 issue of Esquire Magazine (which is now owned, like Road & Track, by Hearst) published the screenplay for Two Lane Blacktop because, the editors there declared, it was the “first movie worth reading.” Those editors were right. It’s better to read the screenplay than watch the movie.Every action in Two Lane seems designed to alienate the viewer. No character shows any emotion, there’s barely a plot, and the movie ends arbitrarily. It’s hard to believe that anyone around in 1971 enjoyed it at all. Still, that ’55 Chevy is a killer, and this is the only movie that includes a scene where the characters shop for Quadrajet carburetor rebuild parts. Also, almost inadvertently, director Monte Hellman captured a chunk of otherwise long-forgotten action at Midwest drag strips and car hang-out spots. If only something interesting had happened there.The Fast and the Furious (2001)It’s okay to root for the train.A quarter-century ago, the automotive world was so hungry for validation that The Fast and the Furious was a massive hit. But at its heart, it’s so dumb.Think about this. The most dangerous way to hijack a truck would be while it’s still moving. After all, the truck’s driver can always swerve or brake or do all sorts of things that would kill the thieves trying to board the beast while it’s moving. Even more insane to drive a Honda Civic under the trailer to set up the boarding. Hijackers are much better off waiting for the truck driver to stop for a burger or bathroom break, or whatever. But in the Fast and Furious world, it’s always the most dangerous and least-likely-to-succeed tactics that are tried.It’s also silly that using nitrous makes the floors of Mitsubishi’s pop rivets drop to the pavement. And there’s no way that Eclipse was a “ten-second car.”What’s worst about The Fast and the Furious, however, is how it’s aging. It takes so much for granted in 2001—stuff that I, frankly, also took for granted—that is silly today. After all, they were stealing VCRs from those trucks. Makes me feel old.There’s a lot of big, stupid fun to be had in many of the Fast and Furious movies. I still love Fast Five, even though towing a bank vault with Dodge Chargers is insane. Tokyo Drift seems better every passing year… and I can’t quite figure out why. By the time the films were launching a Fiero into outer space, however, I had checked out.