THE SHIFT Stories from Car Culture
The Cars that
Set Pixels on Fire
How Video Games Created Automotive Icons
By Amir H. Erfani
Gaming Editor, THE SHIFT
Video games are a powerful medium.
Most of us carry memories from the games we grew up with, whether it was missing that same jump in Mario for the hundredth time, trying to beat a best friend in Mortal Kombat, or taking Guitar Hero far too seriously in pursuit of a perfect run through Metallica's "Fade to Black."
Good times, and for someone who now makes video games for a living, influential ones.
But I wasn't only a video game enthusiast. I was always a car enthusiast too.
Some of my earliest memories involve my mother teaching me colours by pointing at the cars passing through our neighbourhood.
Because of that, certain colours became permanently attached to specific models in my mind.
Blue was a Cadillac Eldorado.
Yellow was a Chevrolet Camaro.
Red was our neighbour's Pontiac Trans Am, its giant phoenix decal shining on the hood like an eternal symbol of coolness.
That was before Ferraris eventually claimed ownership of every shade of red in my mental car catalogue.
That passion led me to automotive design for a few years before it eventually became a hobby rather than a career.
Instead of designing cars, I found myself building 3D models of my favourites, an unexpected path that later connected perfectly with my passion for video games.
Eventually, I realised that if I wasn't going to create cars out of metal, glass, and leather, I could still create them out of polygons. I followed my dream of becoming a game developer, and while I haven't made a racing game yet, the dream is still very much alive.
Naturally, I've always paid special attention to cars in games. Some virtual cars become more than vehicles, they become icons that stay with us long after we've put the controller down.
This article is a love letter to three games that delivered some of the most memorable cars in gaming history.
They inspired me as both a car enthusiast and a game developer, and perhaps they'll spark some inspiration in you as well.
So buckle up. We're about to revisit three of the very best.
Amir H. Erfani, Gaming Editor at THE SHIFT
The Dark Knight's Ultimate Machine
Number Three:
Batman: Arkham Knight
What could possibly be cooler than driving the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham?
The Batmobile has always held a special place in my heart because it isn't just a car. Its design, identity, functionality, and presence are inseparable from the character it belongs to. And when that character is Batman, the possibilities are endless.
Designing a new Batmobile has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. Imagine being part of that team. It's the ultimate concept car. There are no regulations to satisfy, no production constraints to consider. Quite the opposite.
You're encouraged to push the limits and create something outrageous, intimidating, and unforgettable.
My favourite Batmobile from film remains the one from Tim Burton's Batman. In fact, it was the very first car I ever attempted to model in 3ds Max when I was a kid. But when it comes to video games, nothing beats the Batmobile from Arkham Knight.
It delivers everything you'd expect from Batman's legendary ride. It launches Batman into the sky on demand, transforms into a tank, and can rotate its wheels to move sideways during combat. At one point, you're not simply driving a car, you're engaged in a tense battle against another tank in the middle of Gotham. I still remember the stress of trying to evade it through the city's streets.
You don't even need to be a video game enthusiast to appreciate Arkham Knight's Batmobile. You simply need an appreciation for exceptional design and craftsmanship. Nearly a decade after its release, it remains one of the most memorable vehicles ever created for a game.
It earns my third spot with ease, and every time I think about it, I feel the urge to reinstall the game and take another drive through Gotham.
What a game. What a car.
game scene from Batman: Arkham Knight
Paradise Found
Number Two:
Burnout Paradise
Where do we even begin? The title says it all: Paradise.
Few racing games have earned that word quite like Burnout Paradise. It holds a special place in my heart for many reasons, but above all else, for the way it turned destruction into an art form.
The game features nearly 150 vehicles from entirely fictional manufacturers.
For an automotive designer, that's paradise in itself. Without real-world brands to protect, the developers were free to create everything from muscle cars and hot rods to supercars and exotics, then send them hurtling into walls at terrifying speeds. It was a playground where creativity came before caution.
Burnout Paradise also boasts one of the greatest openings in gaming.
The moment Paradise City by Guns N' Roses kicks in, you know exactly what kind of ride you're in for. Combined with its outstanding rock and punk soundtrack, every race feels like the final chase scene of an action movie.
I spent countless hours tearing through Paradise City, addicted to the game's blisteringly fast handling and its legendary crashes. Miss a corner, and your car doesn't simply crash, it explodes into a symphony of twisted metal, shattered glass, flying body panels, and cinematic camera angles.
The impact, the sound design, the slow-motion aftermath... it was an automotive ballet at 200 kilometres per hour.
As strange as it sounds, Burnout's crashes influenced my own creative work.
A pristine car render can be beautiful, but a wreck tells a story. The bent fender, the shattered windshield, the scraped paint, every dent becomes evidence of a moment that just happened. Inspired by Burnout, I started creating crash scenes of my own, deforming 3D models and painting damaged textures by hand.
I became fascinated by the storytelling hidden within destruction.
One artwork in particular, a crashed Audi scene inspired directly by Burnout, ended up being shared with the game's developer, Criterion Games.
To my surprise, they replied.
Later, that same artwork was purchased by a vehicle safety company and appeared on billboards in Chicago.
For a hobbyist working on personal projects, it was a surreal experience, and one that traces directly back to Burnout Paradise.
Very few games can claim that kind of influence.
In many ways, Burnout Paradise deserves the top spot on this list. The only reason it doesn't is because the game waiting at number one features perhaps the most iconic car in video game history.
Even today, I still find myself booting up Burnout Paradise just to tear through the city, chase another adrenaline rush, and witness some of the most spectacular automotive stories ever told in real time.
Burnout Paradise game scene
The Mona Lisa of Racing Games
Number One:
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
The Mona Lisa of racing games.
That's the only way I can describe Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
More than twenty years later, countless racing games have come and gone, yet very few have managed to capture the same magic. It wasn't just a great racing game. It was an experience.
The Need for Speed series had already built a reputation for innovation, arcade-style racing, and dream garages filled with automotive legends.
For many enthusiasts of my generation, it was our first introduction to exotic cars.
I still remember watching showcase videos of Ferraris and McLarens in Need for Speed II, and later losing myself in the automotive love letter that was Porsche Unleashed.
But Most Wanted was something else entirely.
Need For Speed
Chasing the Blacklist
For the first time, a racing game delivered a story that genuinely pulled me in. It felt like stepping into a Fast & Furious movie, only this time I was behind the wheel.
The progression was addictive, the racing was exhilarating, and every victory felt earned.
The game excelled in every department.
Its car selection was perfectly curated.
Its customization tools were deep enough to make you spend hours fine-tuning every visual detail.
The open world was packed with memorable routes, shortcuts, and environmental traps that could be used to outsmart pursuing police cars.
And when those police chases began, few gaming experiences could match the rush. Survival depended entirely on your driving skills, quick decisions, and knowledge of the city.
Need For Speed game scene
The Car That Became a Character
Then there was the car.
The BMW M3 GTR.
Few vehicles in gaming history have achieved the same level of icon status. The wide bodywork, the aggressive stance, the silver-and-blue livery, the sound, the story behind it, every element came together perfectly. It wasn't simply a reward or a vehicle selection. It was the face of the game.
What made the M3 GTR even more fascinating was that it wasn't purely a work of fiction. The car was based on BMW's legendary E46 M3 GTR race car, a machine created to dominate the American Le Mans Series in the early 2000s.
To satisfy homologation requirements, BMW produced a handful of road-going versions powered by a rare V8 engine, instantly turning the M3 GTR into one of the most elusive chapters in BMW M history.
Long before many enthusiasts learned the story behind the real car, Most Wanted had already transformed it into a legend.
Even today, it's impossible for me to look at that M3 without hearing "I Am Rock" start playing somewhere in the back of my mind.
What makes the M3 GTR special is that it transcended the game itself. The best video game characters become instantly recognizable silhouettes.
Think of Sonic.
Think of Ezio Auditore.
In the automotive world of video games, the BMW M3 GTR belongs in that same conversation.
It isn't just a car.
It's a character.
BMW M3 GTR in Need For Speed
More Than a Game
My fascination with Most Wanted eventually led me to reach out to Habib Zargarpour, the game's art director and one of the key figures behind its visual identity.
Learning about his career was inspiring in itself. He studied industrial design, worked across games, film, and visual effects, and was later nominated for two Academy Awards.
Suddenly, it made perfect sense why the game felt so carefully crafted.
There was genuine artistic vision behind it.
No game has influenced me more, both as a car enthusiast and as someone who would later build video games for a living. Its impact can be found everywhere in my creative journey, from the way I look at automotive design to the way I think about interactive experiences.
Many games have tried to take its crown. None have succeeded.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted remains, in my eyes, the greatest racing game ever made.
What a legacy.
Habib Zargarpour Senior Art Director at Electronic Arts (EA) from 2003 to 2009
Somewhere Between Cars and Pixels
Thank you for reading this love letter to three remarkable games and the automotive artistry behind them.
Writing this article reminded me of how many more stories remain untold. Every car has a story. Every game has one too. And somewhere between the two lies a space I've always loved exploring.
For a long time, I thought walking away from automotive design was a compromise. Looking back, I realise it wasn't.
The passion simply found a different road. Instead of sheet metal, glass, and leather, I found myself working with pixels, polygons, and virtual worlds. The same fascination with design, storytelling, and craftsmanship was there all along.
Art doesn't belong to a single medium. It travels. Sometimes it becomes a car. Sometimes it becomes a video game.
Sometimes it becomes the memory that inspires both.
I sadly lost the person who first taught me colours by pointing at passing cars. If I could share this article with her today, I'd tell her that I learned much more than colours. Through those cars, I learned to appreciate design. Through design, I discovered creativity. And through creativity, I found a lifelong passion for making things.
So in a way, this article began long before I ever played any of these games. It began on a neighbourhood street, watching cars go by and learning that blue could be a Cadillac, yellow could be a Camaro, and red could be something unforgettable.
Thank you for taking this ride with me.
I hope you enjoyed revisiting these games as much as I enjoyed writing about them. They may have been built from pixels and polygons, but the emotions they created were every bit as real as those inspired by the cars themselves.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that passion doesn't always take the road you expect. Sometimes it leads to a design studio. Sometimes it leads to a game engine. And sometimes it brings both worlds together.
For me, that's where these stories live, somewhere between cars, games, design, and memory.
And it's a place I'll never stop exploring.
Editorial Note:All game-related images featured in this article are used for editorial purposes in connection with commentary, criticism, and cultural discussion. All trademarks, copyrights, and intellectual property rights remain the property of their respective owners.
From the Need For Speed Game Trailer
