The 6 Coolest Cars From Breaking Bad

The hit AMC drama "Breaking Bad" aired for 62 episodes over five seasons from 2008 through 2013. The series starred Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking methamphetamine after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Aaron Paul had his breakout role as Jesse Pinkman, Walt's former student who introduces him to the drug business. Other series stars included Bob Odenkirk as "criminal lawyer" Saul Goodman, Jonathan Banks as henchman Mike Ehrmantraut, and Anna Gunn as Walt's wife Skyler. 

Transportation coordinator Dennis Milliken worked closely with series creator Vince GiIligan to match each main character to an appropriate vehicle, and these pairings resulted in a selection of cars that ran the gamut from totally inconspicuous to fast, loud, and flashy. "I'll send [creator Vince Gilligan] dozens of pictures, and eventually we narrow it down to what he thinks the character should be in," Milliken told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. For this article, we're excluding the infamous Fleetwood Bounder RV that Walt and Jesse use as a mobile meth lab to focus on the coolest cars and SUVs used by the characters as daily drivers.

Walt was initially assigned a drab Pontiac Aztek in an effort to portray him as boring and downtrodden, right down to the mismatched rear wheel and fading paint. The wonky SUV was regarded as ugly when it was first introduced in 2001, and the Pontiac Aztek was called a failure by many. The car's odd styling landed it on a Time list of the 50 worst cars ever made, but the Aztek may have simply been ahead of its time. 

Pontiac ditched the weak-selling model three years before the "Breaking Bad" pilot aired, but its starring role gave the much-maligned Aztek some new fans. By the third season in 2010, the Aztek had the highest share of buyers aged 18-34 of any other used car in the country at 33%, according to Edmunds. It remained in Edmunds' top ten vehicles for millennial car buyers for four of the next five years.

Walt's Aztek doesn't make it to the end of the series. After its involvement in the last of a long string of mishaps, the Aztek is nothing but a reminder of bad days for Walt, so he sells it to his mechanic Benny for $50.

Just after selling the Aztek, Walt takes his namesake son (RJ Mitte) to a dealership, where the two do some new car shopping. Walt Sr. opts for a black Chrysler SRT-8, while his son chooses a red HEMI-powered 2012 Dodge Challenger in the same trim. It's nearly identical to the Challenger SE Rallye that Walt buys in Season 4, Episode 6. He only has that car long enough to bring it home, where Skylar tells him it's too conspicuous a purchase for a methamphetamine manufacturer.

She also objects to the second Challenger purchase, particularly when it seems to bring out an aggressive side in her son. Walt tries to convince her that the two new leased cars fit their story as successful owners of multiple local car washes, but the rift between Walt and Skylar remains. Walter Jr. gets to keep the car, though — a model that Kelley Blue Book currently values at about $17,000.  

At the beginning of "Breaking Bad," Jesse drives a red Chevy Monte Carlo lowrider with hydraulic suspension. After it's damaged in a shootout, he switches to a less conspicuous Toyota Tercel station wagon that he drives for the rest of the series. It's a four-wheel-drive model, a version that first appeared in 1983. Depending on which source you consult, Jesse's wagon is either from 1983, 1984, or 1986, but it's clear that his is an automatic transmission model and not a six-speed SR5. The ability to drive one-handed is what allows Jesse to throw his money from the moving car in Season 5, Episode9, "Blood Money."

Aaron Paul had a chance to take the car home with him after the show wrapped, though it ultimately wound up in other hands. In 2013, Jalopnik reported that the same car he drove on the show was put on eBay by Mike Faris Auto Wholesale in Albuquerque, with some of the money from the sale going to a non-profit that runs drug treatment programs. According to Complex, Boxed.com CEO Chieh Huang won that auction with a bid of $4,700.

Skylar White drives a 1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer for the entire series — a beautiful red example with pristine wood-grain paneling and trim covering most of the sides. Skylar's Jeep is from the last year of the original Grand Wagoneer. It was then put on the shelf until the 2022 model year. 

Skylar's 1991 model is the perfect match for her no-nonsense demeanor and the daily responsibilities of holding the household together while her husband channels "Scarface." Unlike Walt's Aztek and Jesse's Monte Carlo, Skylar's Grand Wagoneer survived the series intact. In 2013, MotorTrend reported that the SUV used in the show was going up for auction via ScreenBid with a starting price of just $7,125, complete with oil leaks and flaws in the paint. Skylar's Grand Wagoneer sold for $11,250, which equals about $15,000 today when accounting for inflation. That's still a bargain, as JD Power places the value of that model between $16,200 and $53,800 depending on condition.  

Throughout "Breaking Bad," Saul Goodman drives a white 1997 Cadillac Sedan DeVille with the vanity plate "LWYRUP." This may be the most perfect car/character pairing in the series, as Saul and the '97 Caddy both broadly straddle the line between style and substance. Saul's ethics are nonexistent and his clothes are ridiculous, but he is remarkably good at his job of defending the guilty. The 1997 DeVille had a fresh design inside and out and advanced-for-the-time features like road surface detection, but at its heart was Cadillac's complex and problematic Northstar V8 engine. 

In the prequel series "Better Call Saul," we learn that the Caddy was a replacement for Saul's battered 1998 Suzuki Esteem, which met a similar fate as Jesse's Monte Carlo. The Autopian's Jason Torchinsky claims that a friend of his bought Saul's Esteem for $4,000, which is more than a thousand dollars more than Kelley Blue Book's fair purchase price for the 1997 De Ville. That's a shocking reversal of fortune for Saul's two rides, although less surprising when you learn that the $4k Esteem was an early-season film car and not the bullet-riddled later specimen.

In "Breaking Bad" Season 5, Walt hires neo-Nazi exterminator Todd Alquist (Jesse Plemons) to help him and Jesse rob a train of 10,000 gallons of methylamine. Todd later replaces Jesse as Walt's cooking partner and takes Jesse captive in Season 5, Episode 14, "Ozymandias." Throughout this stretch, we see a few glimpses of Todd's 1981 Chevy El Camino, a  coupe/pickup hybrid that was first introduced in 1959. Jesse kills Todd in the "Breaking Bad" finale and steals the El Camino to flee the Nazi compound. Jesse and the car's story play out in 2019's "El Camino: a Breaking Bad Movie," which also shows Todd in a series of flashbacks. 

In the sequel film, Jesse's salvage yard owner pal Old Joe (Larry Hankin) detects a tracking device on the El Camino, indicating law enforcement is probably on their way. Jesse and former meth-dealing buddies Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) then hastily arrange to swap vehicles so Jesse can escape to Alaska. In one of the movie's flashbacks, we see Todd and Jesse use the El Camino to dispose of the body of Todd's murdered housekeeper, a sequence that reinforces the depth of Todd's psychopathy. Jesse murdering Todd and taking his prized classic are fitting bits of revenge against a man who kidnapped and tortured him, but the fictional El Camino's fate is left up to the viewer's imaginations.