It’s the season of pumpkin spice (cinnamon) and ghosts (apparitions of the dead, like Adrian). Yes, Halloween is upon us, and that had us thinking—what are the scariest cars out there?
Now, I could trawl though horror movies for a bunch of “scary” cars driven by murderers and torturers from fiction, but that wouldn’t be very interesting. To me, specifically, because I’m not interested in horror movies. But it would also be boring for you, because movie cars aren’t actually scary.
Instead, I want to talk about cars that are actually scary, in very real terms. The ones that put you on edge. The ones that give you that sickening chill in your chest the very second you see them. These cars are not only terrifying, but they’re very, very real. Don’t worry, though, we’ll start out slow. The scariest ones are at the bottom.
The Unmarked Police Car
You’re feeling good. You’re out on the open road, there’s nobody around, and your favorite hype song just came on the radio. You flick a quick glance in the rear view—all clear. You drop the hammer and feel the thrill as the needle smacks the redline. This is what it’s all about, until…
…you round the kink in the road. There’s a black sedan parked awkwardly on the shoulder, and its facing in your direction. You’re already panicking, off the throttle and trying to slow down as inconspicuously as possible. The headlights flick on, it rolls forward, and as you pass…Â it rips a turn and flicks on to the highway behind you. You know its over before the reds and blues hit your mirrors. You’re in the shit now.
Many drivers have been caught out by an unmarked car at a moment of indiscretion. In Australia, thousands fell victim to unassuming Holden Commodore sedans with an extra antenna or two on the back. In the US, a seemingly-civilian Crown Victoria might have snagged you in decades past; today, it’s more likely to be some kind of bulky black SUV. Meanwhile, a handful of states get around restrictions on unmarked police vehicles by instead creating so-called “ghost cars”—police cruisers with white-on-white or black-on-black decals that are difficult, but not impossible, to see.
Regular police cars are bad enough. The unmarked ones are so much scarier. You know if one of these is rolling up on you, you’re about to have a bad time.
A Busted-Ass Nissan Altima
Nissan built the Altima to meet a market need. People needed simple, humble transportation with five seats, a trunk, and performance on a par with a bowl of oatmeal. What they created by accident was of the fastest vehicles on the road. It’s all thanks to a certain type of driver that is drawn to these things like a moth to the flame that will eventually claim its life.
The reason the Altima is to be feared all comes down to finance. As covered by Hello Road, Nissan Altima drivers have some of the worst credit scores out there. Basically, this was the car to buy if you have poor impulse control, no money, and no understanding of consequences in even the simplest form.
That’s why these cars need to be treated with caution. A clean Altima with all its windows intact, parked outside a supermarket? Probably not a huge risk. A Nissan Altima doing 90 in the emergency lane with a headlight punched out and a cloud of dust, oil smoke, and debris billowing in its wake? That’s Satan’s chariot incarnate. If you value your life, get the hell out of harm’s way.
The Red Bull Racing RB20
Red Bull Racing spawned from the ashes of the hopeless Jaguar team, and became World Championship winners within a decade. They’ve since collected many titles more, and remained at the pointy end of the grid consistently over the years. In 2024, they hit the Formula 1 grid with their latest contender, the RB20. It might look like a regular race car, but in the wrong hands, it’s a fearsome thing.
Those hands would be those of Max Verstappen, Red Bull’s lead driver and current championship leader Verstappen has made endless headlines of late with his shove-em-off driving style and unrepentant attitude. On Sunday, he brought the same moves to bear against championship rival Lando Norris. barging the McLaren driver off the circuit as he attempted to hold on to second place early in the Mexican Grand Prix. It’s not the first time the two have come to grief, either. The Austin race was just as bad, and Norris even ended up with heavy damage after a similar incident back in Austria.
Amazing battle between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris on lap 10!#F1 #Formula1 #MexcioGPpic.twitter.com/27Jo2x7Czs
— Extreme Cars (@extremecars__) October 27, 2024
Thus far, Max and the RB20 have been unchained, free to wildly thrash across the circuit with little heed for the safety or racing lines of others. That could be changing, with Verstappen subject to multiple heavy penalties in Mexico. The question on everyone’s minds—will F1’s stewards tame this aggression, or will Verstappen be back to his worst in Brazil? For now, the RB20 remains a dreadful sight for those that must try to pass it.
That Car Parked Outside Your House
You’re a good citizen. You work a good job and you bought a good house. You’ve got your little bit of land in this world and you take pride in looking after it. Only, some jagaloon has broken the golden social contract of the suburbs. They’ve parked in front of your house.
That’s your bit of road. That’s for your cars and your friends. Who is this interloper? This blow-in from out of town? This deranged, probably violent freak who is probably casing your house and planning to rob you and your neighbors? It’s an outrage!
You’ve already left three notes at ever-increasing levels of passive aggression. You never see the car come, you never see it go. You only see that it moves, now and then, parking in ever so slightly different parts of your territory. You know they mean to do you harm. You just don’t know when. You kiss your wife goodnight, but you don’t sleep. You peer through the curtains and see it parked there, taunting you. Tomorrow, you’ve decided, you’re going to buy a gun.
That Van Parked On The Grass
You’re out for a walk in your neighborhood, taking Rover for a stroll. It’s a crisp evening, and you shudder as the wind whips up, clutching your arms closer to your body for warmth. You’re coming up to that dodgy house that’s always got a bunch of cars parked on the grass. You catch a glimpse of something moving as you pass by. You hurry along, eyes dead ahead. Rover’s barking and tugging at his leash now, trying to pull you back. He saw what you saw. There’s a girl in the van. She’s banging on the glass. She looks scared. She wants out.
Without missing a step, you tug Rover along. It’s a bad neighborhood, you think to yourself, as you zip your jacket up further and brace against the cold. Best mind your own business.
BONUS SCARES From The Gang:
Adrian, Your Goth Uncle
The car you went and looked at, but didn’t buy, andis then parked outside your flat a few weeks later. That’s scary. That happened to me.
… Also the car that follows you for so long because they are upset with your driving so you have to pull up next to a police car. That also happened to me.
Mark, Shitbox Showdown Referee
Scariest car I’ve ever encountered was a 1980 Ford Mustang, two-tone blue and white, with a 200 ci inline-six and an automatic, owned and maniacally driven by my friend Jon back in college. Did you know a Mustang of that age could do 110? Yeah, the cop was surprised too. I think he let Jon off with a warning because he thought there was something wrong with his radar gun.
I made the mistake of driving it once. The brake pedal did nothing until the last 1/4 inch of travel, at which point it locked up the rear wheels. It had no heat. The steering wheel was pointed at about 10:00 when it was going straight, and yet it pulled to the left. And sometimes you had to two-foot it at stoplights to keep it from stalling, but other times the gas pedal would just stick at whatever position it was at.
It did nothing at all well, but kept doing it for two years, during which time I think the hood was opened twice, both times by me, to make sure the damn thing had oil in it. And yet, it just kept going, like Michael Myers. Nothing could kill that car.
Laurence (He’s Australian)
Scary out my way is seeing a BMW 5 series or X5 west of Dubbo. Guaranteed to be a cop, nobody out here owns them otherwise.
Image credits: Hello Road via YouTube screenshot, Sanch684 CC BY-SA 4.0, Liauzh CC BY-SA 4.0, Lewin Day
The last time I was in Europe, the absolute worst and scariest drivers were universally driving BMW X6s. The ultimate douche canoe.
Here in Norway,and it’s probably the same everywhere else too,the scariest cars are the EVs. With their abundance of torque and reckless drivers they can jump at you from across an intersection or cut you off in the blink of an eye. Teslas seem to be the scariest,but be aware no matter what type they are.
Laurence is right.
The ones that have resulted in the most code brown moments for me aren’t based on a specific model, but a driving style. Specifically the a-holes who drive 10 under and speed up to 20 over as soon as you reach a passing zone. Pulling out to pass someone you think you’ll be around quickly, only to discover they floored it as soon as you hit the straight road always gets my heart racing.
It’s one of the few things that causes real road rage for me. I get annoyed with plenty of drivers, but mostly it’s good-natured. When someone tries to hang me out to dry like that I get legit angry though. It’s super dangerous to drive that erratically.
I hear people say this a lot, but I’ve rarely ever experienced it.
I agree—but I’d still drive that puppy
The scariest cars I see have a specific peculiarity unnoticeable by most people. I usually come across these parked in my neighborhood while I’m out walking our dog. They’re completely normal commuter cars with busted wheel lugs. Not missing lug nuts, mind you, but completely sheared off lugs with the remaining ones torqued to a force impossible to intuit. I can’t help but think about how they’re one Midwestern pothole away from sending a 40 lb. alloy and rubber projectile through someone else’s windshield.
Chevy trailblazer owners (non SS). They always seem to be on pills or something seeing as they drive like theyre sleeping.
About a decade back I commented to my BIL that Trailblazers were the new Jetta in terms of complete disregard of traffic laws and everyone around them.
Glad im not the only one! Just a couple weeks ago i was watching one play pinball with the curb, before ultimately full-on launching it onto the sidewalk. Thank god nobody was on that sidewalk at the moment.
Back in the 90’s the Quebec provincial police had the sneakiest unmarked car:
A first gen Hyundai Sonata with a ski rack, including skis, with the hazards on. The radar and light were mounted to the ski rack.
Used on Autoroute 10, the highway from Montreal to the big ski areas in the Eastern Townships & Vermont.
A broken down early Hyundai with a ski rack on that highway drew zero attention from drivers
That’s genius.
One of those landscape maintenance guy pickups with the bed racks bristling with bungie-attached rakes, shovels, weed whackers and leaf blowers. Not to mention an open tailgate and a pile of lawnmowers, plus about 6 guys stuffed into the cab. Just watching that shit show clatter over speed bumps gives me agita.
YES!!!!
Second place to the Food Truck with the wobbles..
We have a ton of those around here. I just experienced a real nice convoy of two in front of me, including the infamous profesional bungee cord straps. One of them went over a bump and the dirt from the beat to hell trailer was now all over the road. Same person proceeded to roll coal all over my car smh.
Drive a diesel, I don’t care. Put every “don’t tread on me” and trump sticker, I don’t care. Just don’t be a jackass.
Thinking that kerb in front of your house somehow “belongs” to you is so weird. Who thinks that?
People who own their homes
They own the home, not the street in front of it.
Actually, they do own the street, to the center of it. The lane, curb, gutter and sidewalk (if there are any) are easements, but part of the lot that is shared with the world. When a real estate agents calls it a “desirable corner lot”, they are full of crap. That house has twice as much of its lot reduced because of the easements.
You can’t prohibit people from parking on the side of the street, but it is creepy when they do it next to your house.
Okay, then maybe that’s different in your part of the world. Our property goes to the edge of the building (there is no front yard in our case); the sidewalk in front of it doesn’t belong to us, much less the road. We do have an obligation to keep the sidewalk functional in winter (have snow and ice removed from at least a path 1 metre wide), but it’s not ours.
Interestingy enough, our balconies actually hang over public land, but that’s really unusual. I don’t know how that happened.
It’s a distinctly American thing. Especially in the suburbs, where it is sort of weird to have someone park in front of your house when most homes have 6 off-street parking spots and 3 on-street parking spots out front. It’s weird to find a random car out in front of one of those, because to be fair… why is it there?
Personally, I always poke fun of this, much like Lewin was, but yes, a lot of people in this country are surprisingly territorial for a country that has plenty of space.
I live in the country. If someone parks in front of my house on the street, something shady is going on.
The lifted pickup truck with spaced-out wheels and a bunch of gun stickers on the back windshield. It won’t get up to speed anytime soon, but once it does it’ll be tailgating everybody.
And its stopping distance will be far longer than any normal car. At least if an altima rear ends me, it will be hitting the rear bumper, not coming through the rear hatch 2 feet from my daughter’s head. The last close call we had, I came around a corner on a 65mph highway, and stopped for a school bus, and the tailgating truck with a trailer behind me had to swerve onto the shoulder to avoid hitting us even though I only had to use about 50% braking to stop. I wish that DOT would release some sort of device I could buy and add to my car that would send a projectile through the grill of these tailgaters and disable them, and be legal to use.
I wish they would just ban that crap on public roads, and enforce it by crushing the things.
Ironically, the guys who drive them pretend to believe in “law and order”.
My honorable mention in the Altima category would be an early-aughts Corolla with badly “purpling” window tint and a number of hubcaps fewer than four. I feel like I see a lot of them on my commute, and they’re usually going too slow or weaving over the line on the driver’s side or both.
I also give a wide berth to any car with those stick-on fender vents. If the owner’s making decisions that bad OUTSIDE the car …
And after one sideswiped me in traffic a few weeks ago, I’m avoiding all first-gen Cayennes.
OK well EVERY police car is undercover now. They’re all blacked-out Exploders with lettering on the side that is completely invisible unless you are right up to it. You really have no idea they’re on you until it’s way too late. I think they like it that way.
I pine for the days when you could spot a black-and-white Diplomat or Caprice a mile away.
And Adrian, when someone follows you like that, give ’em the old Axel Foley treatment. Works every time.
Roof racks are my easy tell. Apparently, some civilian ones don’t have the rack, but it’s a safe bet to slow down
Even that’s not reliable. Most of the patrol cars around here have strobes in the headlights, grille, and a strip just inside the top of the windshield. Nothing on top to give it away!
I wasn’t being clear: the Explorers used by police in this part of Virginia do not have the standard roof racks that the majority of the civilian models do
In my area some police have pickup trucks. They are marked, but you can’t tell it’s law enforcement unless it passes you. Some departments have white Corollas and silver/grey SUVs that are not marked, but have the lights that you can not see until they are turned on.
At least around the tampa bay area, anything with Disney stickers. They are guaranteed to be paying zero attention to anything around them.
The worst driver I have ever seen was a toyota camry dragging a front bumper with a punisher+thin blue line with mickey mouse ears sticker.
It had to be performance art or something because the aggression they drove with was impressive, juking people out of the way, middle finger out the window, etc.
I live in Tampa Bay too (Dunedin). It seems that Disney stickers are no prerequisite to paying zero attention.
The gold Nissan Altima with faded flame decals on the side that drives the area I drive to during my commute. It’s either full throttle or screeching brakes.
You sure those are decals? The car might be permanently on fire.
A jacked up Jeep or Brodozer w/ extended wheels and huge flags/decals on the back.
And closing on your back bumper when you’re doing 80.
Yeah, this. It’s Torch’s “poor external safety” with a vehicle class that has poor driving dynamics, getting it in more trouble than it should. They’re tall and block your vision at stop-signed intersections. And they’re going to blind you through your rearview mirror because the headlights are higher than your roofline. This is to say nothing about stereotypes of the cultures that favor them and what it would be like to be on the wrong side of that.
There’s one similar to that in my area. s10 or some kind of smaller than the current titanic gen 4wd thing. Is has been jacked to the stars (looks to be 18-24″), wears pretty wide maybe 18″ wheels on what must be 4-5 inch spacers, and wide 50 series tirss to match, the inner sidewall actually clears the body by an inch or so. Some kind of weird halo neon lighting around the brake backing plates. Of course, dual chromed semi style stacks, although it sounds like a strangled 4 cylinder or maybe v6 dark tint windows, blue puddle lights and purple under the rear bed, canada flags on whips attached to the tailgate posts. All this glory painted in mottled black, gray, brown shades of primer over faded blue. It’s truly an abomination weaving and dodging down the road.
Good to know I drive a terrifying car. Even spookier? No Jatco CVT!
Toyota Camrys with a Pep Boys wing and black badges. The driver wanted an Evo or STi, but their parents gave a hard no to buying them a death missile. Their mission is now to turn that Camry into a death missile.
Any brand-new white Tahoe with promotional decals for anything ranging from “Mobile Margaritas” to “Self Care” to “CBD products”. There’s no demographic that seems more intent to murder me than this.
The right lane on the highway is the passing lane. The bike path crosswalk does not exist. TikTok is best used while driving. Remember nobody matters more than yourself.
I assume once one of these takes me down, a small dog will hop out of the car and being nibbling at the face of my corpse.
Edit: Wait, is that a Staria van? Dude, I don’t care if the land it’s sitting on is glowing green, and there’s demonic screaming coming from inside, I’m going to check out that Staria van.