The 5 Most Important Cars In Pulp Fiction

"Pulp Fiction" hit American theaters just over 30 years ago, and it helped resurrect John Travolta's acting career as well as establish Quentin Tarantino as a filmmaking juggernaut. Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson starred as Los Angeles-area hitmen Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield in a star-studded cast that also included Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel. Travolta, Jackson, and Thurman earned Oscar nominations for their performances, and Tarantino picked one up for Best Director. 

The Southern California setting gave Tarantino the chance to highlight car culture throughout the film, including a memorable scene in a '50s-themed diner called Jackrabbit Slim's, where modified classics are used as booths. Earlier, boxer Butch Coolidge (Willis) steals a Harley-Davidson chopper after narrowly escaping peril, but for the purposes of this article, we're going to focus on the five most significant four-wheeled vehicles in the flick that earned a spot on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time.

Early in "Pulp Fiction," Butch wins a fight he was supposed to have thrown, killing his opponent in the process. He flees the venue in a taxi driven by Esmerelda Villalobos (Angela Jones), who informs him that his opponent is dead and ferries him to safety. Her cab is a late 1970s Checker A11, a staple in taxi fleets from the era. Checker's history is a true American rags-to-riches story. The company was founded by  Morris Markin, who came to Chicago from Russia in 1912 and worked as a tailor's apprentice. 

When his boss died, Markin purchased the business on credit from his widow and soon landed a contract to make uniforms for the U.S. Army. He parlayed the money from that agreement into a deal for two existing car manufacturers and merged them to create Checker early in 1922. The A11 and A12 enjoyed an almost two-decade run, with the cabs being featured on TV shows like "Taxi" and in films like the 1988 Bill Murray comedy "Scrooged." Markin died in 1970, but his company lived on until 2009, 10 years after New York City garaged its last Checker cab.

After he makes it safely to the hotel where his girlfriend Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) is waiting, Butch returns to his apartment to retrieve a pocket watch given to him by his father, whose own father owned the watch and was killed in service in Vietnam. During the mission to fetch the heirloom, Butch encounters Vincent in his apartment, ambushing and killing the henchman. Minutes later, Butch is spotted by crime boss Marsellus Wallace, the criminal boss he had double-crossed by not throwing the fight. Wallace crosses the street directly in front of Butch's 1980 Honda Civic, carrying a box of donuts and a cup of coffee. 

Butch runs him down but is immediately broadsided in the intersection by a late-'70s gold Chevy Camaro. The Honda is totaled, and a bloodied Butch is chased into a gun shop by Marsellus. If you've seen the film, you are no doubt familiar with what happens next. According to the Internet Car Movie Database, Tarantino had chosen an old Civic as Butch's ride for personal reasons. The site quotes a claim from several books that the director drove an old Civic during the years before he became a Hollywood success, and those tales are lent credence by the fact that the same car also appears in "Jackie Brown: and "Kill Bill Volume 2." It's not the only "Pulp Fiction" car to which Tarantino had a personal connection, but more on that in a bit.

In the goriest scene in "Pulp Fiction," Vincent accidentally shoots an associate named Marvin (Phil LaMarr) while the three men ride in Jules' 1974 Chevrolet Nova. The contents of Marvin's skull are blown across the car's headliner, rear seat, and the inside of the rear window, and Jules and Vincent call on the services of fixer Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel) to help them clean the car and dispose of Marvin's body.

The sequence includes an appearance by Tarantino, playing a friend of Jules who hosts the cleanup effort in his Toluca Lake garage. Julia Sweeney — who was still a "Saturday Night Live" cast member at the time — appears as Raquel, the daughter of the salvage yard owner who destroys the Nova. Although its on-screen operational life was short, the Nova hosted one of the film's most memorable scenes and served as a vehicle (pun very much intended) to deliver perhaps its most interesting character, Winston Wolf. 

Wolf's personal ride is a silver 1991 Acura NSX, a sports car that makes the 30-minute drive from his hotel to Vincent and Jules in exactly nine minutes and 37 seconds. Wolf's Acura was a first-year model that was sold outside the United States as a Honda. Winston Wolf would have had no problem with the car's original price of around $60,000, which equals more than $148,000 in 2024 dollars. That's enough to buy 125 average-condition 1980 Honda Civics, according to the current value for those cars cited by JD Power.

The NSX evolved into an impressive performer over its two-generation lifespan that extended through 2022. The latter version had a revolutionary hybrid drivetrain with a mid-mounted 3.5-liter V6 gas engine at its heart. With all-wheel drive and a nine-speed automatic transmission, the second-gen NSX was good for 0-60 times in the neighborhood of three seconds range. Winston Wolf's 1991 model would have been capable of a more reasonable 5.9-second  sprint, although Japanese market models had shorter gear ratios that cut that time to under five seconds. The NSX earned immediate praise for its civilized on-road manners and polished interior, qualities that would have appealed to the refined nature of a man like Wolf. As for the car used in the film, it appears to have disappeared into the wind.

Vincent Vega's cherry-red 1964 Chevy Malibu landed a spot on our list of the most memorable movie convertibles of all time, thanks in part to its fascinating backstory. Vincent crashes the car on the front lawn of his drug dealer Lance (Eric Stolz) after Mia Wallace (Thurman) suffers an accidental overdose. An adrenaline shot through the sternum revives her (and jolts the audience awake), but the Malibu is yet another of the film's vehicular casualties.

The Malibu belonged to Tarantino, who bought it from a friend in 1989 after selling the script for "True Romance." It was stolen sometime in 1994, either from the set or just after the film wrapped.

San Leandro, California resident Bill Hemenez bought the Malibu in 2001 and spent more than $40,000 restoring it. 12 years later, police spotted the car in his driveway and let him know it had been stolen and belonged to Tarantino. At that time, he was unfamiliar with the filmmaker or his work and had to rent the film to see his car as a Hollywood star. Because the thieves had switched the VIN, he was unaware it was stolen. He was happy to give the car back but was never compensated for his investment. "At least I get to say that I got to drive the car John Travolta drove," he told Yahoo! Autos. "How many people get to say that?"