Signature Team Transport

Taking them everywhere since The '60s.

Some teams have their own outfits, others have a Team Pet, and then there's these guys and their (usually) Cool Car. This vehicle is the team's metallic pet: Most of the time, it will sport the team's or character's logo, have its own affectionate surname and be seen in almost every episode.

The transport is typically relative to the setting, and scope of the story. In a sea/space faring series it may be the team's main/mothership. A group of teenagers probably has a van they can all fit into. A solo adventurer probably has some type of one-seater.

For most characters, that one car is part of the team/family, and they don't care if it's a rusty old pile of scraps. In science fiction, if the vehicle has a sufficiently advanced AI/navigation system it can double as a Robot Buddy. In fantasy it may be a (named) horse, or mythological creature in which case it can double as a Team Pet.

It's not unusual for The Lancer or otherwise the 'coolest' member of the team to get a personal vehicle (see Cool Bike) that rides alongside the main car just to emphasize just how cool they are.

Sister Trope to Theme Mobile, where the vehicle sports the team colors but isn't iconic/emotionally linked to the character/team. See also Global Airship, which is usually a Signature Team Transport for a party of RPG heroes.

Compare Hero's Classic Car for an individual character.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Captain Harlock, his crew and his Arcadia .
• Until Dragon Ball Z came along, the Magic Cloud was this to Goku. Then there's Frieza's flying seat. He only left it when there was literally nobody else left to fight the heroes.
• The Familiar of Zero has Tabitha and her familiar, a dragon, Saito and the WWII plane...
• Almost every single crew in One Piece has his own ship with their customized Jolly Roger, the most obvious example being the Strawhats' ship, the Going Merry and later, the Thousand Sunny. There's also Aokiji and his bicycle. That he uses to cross the seas. Better not fall off...
• The Mysterious Cities of Gold has The Condor. It's even mentioned in the theme song.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has the angel's Hummer "See-Through" and the demon's limousine "G-string".
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (aka Battle of the Planets): G-Force had the Phoenix, a ship which contained four smaller vehicles and could change into a fiery bird-shaped craft.
• Speed Racer and Racer X had the Mach 5 and the Shooting Star, respectively.
• Tenchi Muyo!: While not customized, Ryo-Ohki blurs the line between this and Team Pet.
• The Dai-Gurren in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann serves both as this and as the team's headquarters.
• Zoids: Chaotic Century: When Moonbay was introduced, her Gustav would become this. Near the end of the series, it would be the Ultrasaurus, again with Moonbay as the driver.
• Zoids: New Century: The Blitz team would ride around in the Doc's custom transporter, the snail-like Hovercargo. Other teams would utilize Gustavs or Whale Kings.

Card Games

• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, The Gigant Carrier is a transport vehicle that carries the Gearunits (Geargiaccelerator, Geargiattacker, Geargiarmor, and Geargiarsenal).

Comic Books

• The Bat-vehicles for Batman and the Bat Family, especially the Batmobile. Robin, meanwhile, is typically seen with a motorcycle, though Tim had an armored red sport car called the Redbird.
• The Fantastic Four have the Fantasticar, a huge jet that can be separated into four smaller ones.
• Gaston Lagaffe's death car. That thing is responsible for at least half of global warming. AT LEAST.
• Silver Surfer's surfing board.
• Watchmen: Nite Owl II has "Archie", an owl-themed aircraft that recalls his old days as a vigilante.
• The Blackbird from X-Men. The original was literally a modified Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, illustrating that Professor X is both ridiculously wealthy and incredibly well-connected, because Lockheed never sold such planes to anybody except the US government.
• Wonder Woman has the invisible airplane, which she continues to use even though she can fly on her own.
• The Avengers have their Quinjets.
• The second Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) has his "Bug", a beetle-shaped airship.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The Cool Plane USS Argo which featured prominently in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) eventually reappears, acting as the main flagship, on which resides the same key Monarch brass who used it in the film plus the Russells.

Films — Animated

• Aladdin's magic carpet, who also doubles as a character.

Films — Live-Action

• Back to the Future: Doc Brown's Delorean. And later, his train.
• Brassed Off: When the band travels to the Albert Hall for the final of the brass band championships, their coach is absurdly decorated with streamers and balloons in the band colours, and a huge banner saying "Good luck Grimley".
• The Ghostbusters' car with their logo on each side, "Ecto-1"
• Star Wars Episodes IV through IX feature the Millennium Falcon. Except for Luke, who prefers his trusty old X-wing.
• Tallahassee's tendency in Zombieland to paint a 3 on any car he chose to drive.
• The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) have the Milano, one of a class of ships used by the Ravager clan Peter grew up with. Future films in the MCU sees the team flying a larger vessel of similar design, the Benatar.

Folklore

• Santa Claus' magic sled and his reindeer (they all have names, the most well-known being Rudolph).
• Just about any deity with access to a set of wheels has a customised personal vehicle. Apollo's fiery chariot of the sun; Ares' chariot drawn by the terrible horses Phobos and Deimos; Thor's goat-drawn war-wain; the Chariots of Fire of the Judeo-Christian angels; right down to CuChullain's personal war-chariot in Irish mythology, horribly festooned on every surface with blades, hooks, and barbs.^note In the hands of imaginative Victorian amateur historians, the source of the otherwise mythical blades on Boudicca's hub-caps.

Literature

• The Dreamside Road has the Aesir. It’s a flying and amphibious camper, distinct enough that just seeing it informs everyone that Wayfarer One has arrived.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: Walter Denton usually drives Miss Brooks to school in his jalopy.
• Almost every single Super Sentai show will have a team Mecha made of each character's own vehicle:
  • Engine Sentai Go-onger had the camper Ginjiro, which had their name written on the side but isn't otherwise super-special.
  • The old-school sentai series really liked to travel in style, with the mechs stored on a giant airbase. However, sometimes it wasn't a signature transport as much as a flying hangar that only appeared to release the bots.
  • Power Rangers does this trope more due to Merchandise-Driven. There's about always at least one vehicle that wasn't in sentai, and sometimes it's big, like the Mobile Command Center in Power Rangers Ninja Storm. The most awesome must be the SHARC (Special Hydro-Aero Recon Craft) which can travel on air or water as the name suggests. The Rangers often arrived by leaping down from it in a circle formation.
• The A-Team has its signature black van with red stripes, owned by B.A. Baracus. This is deconstructed, as the A-Team are wanted fugitives and their iconic vehicle allows the authorities to easily identify them.
• Angel:
  • Angel's black Pontiac GTO convertible.
  • Gunn had his own for his team, his Ford F250, the War Wagon.
• Batman (1966) had several. The Batmobile, Batcycle, Batcopter and Bat-boat.
• Chuck: The compact cars driven by Chuck and others are technically owned by the Buy More and have the "Nerd Herd" logo on them.
• Doctor Who's TARDIS, and the Third Doctor's "Bessie", a 1910's vintage car that he hyped up with a few (awesome) gadgets.
• The Dukes of Hazzard have the General Lee
• Farscape had Moya, who as a Living Ship was a character in her own right.
• Firefly has the eponymous Serenity. For land transportation, they used a front-end loader/quadracycle mashup called the Mule.
• In F/X: The Series, the crew has their "Fx" van.
• The Green Hornet and Kato have their tricked car, the Black Beauty.
• Knight Rider: KITT doesn't quite qualify as this, being a member of the team in his own right and in fact arguably more valuable than Michael, but the 18-wheeler that served as a Base on Wheels does.
• The red Ferrari in Magnum, P.I. Robin Masters actually owns it, and there's often plot complications when Higgins takes away the keys, but it's still effectively Thomas Magnum's car. There's also TC's iconic striped Island Hoppers helicopter as seen in the opening credits, which Magnum and TC frequently (and in TC's case, reluctantly) use during Magnum's investigations.
• Every series of Star Trek has its own primary starship, though on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the Federation's small Runabout-class starships are given as much or more screentime as the team's main starship, the U.S.S. Defiant.
• Mr. Bean's apple green compact car, which gets trashed in almost every episode.
• In the first season of The Mod Squad, they had Pete's Woody. It would get wrecked early in the second season.
• The Munsters had their Cool Car, the Munsters Cocah.
• The Partridge Family had their iconic Mondrian-inspired tour bus.
• Starsky & Hutch had Starsky's red Gran Torino, which Hutch nicknamed "the striped tomato".
• Supernatural has the Impala, which is almost a member of the family
• Eric Forman's 1969 Vista Cruiser station wagon in That '70s Show.
• The Goodies had the "Trandem", a bicycle-built-for-three which they invariably mounted and fell off before riding off on the adventure of the week.
• Psych had "The Blueberry", a blue 2002 Toyota Yaris. It was technically a company car that belonged to Gus, but since Shawn only had a motorcycle (that seldom showed up after the first season) and the police usually used interchangeable cruisers, it was easily the most distinctive car on the show, and the unofficial transport of the Psych Detective Agency.

Video Games

• Mega Man (Classic):
  • Rush fulfills all three roles by being Mega's one seater transport, Team Pet and Robot Buddy. Though in a series where all the main characters are androids the last bit is debatable.
  • Dr. Wily's Wily Saucer. Though initially part of the doctor's final boss weapons, it later became regulated to an escape/transportation vehicle and, with the exception of Mega Man 8 has remained consistent in appearance.
• The Blue Falcon for Captain Falcon in F-Zero. (Most characters' vehicles would count, but we see Falcon using it in other games such as Super Smash Bros.) In the Smash Bros. series he also have the Falcon Flyer.
• Golden Sun has the Lemurian ship used to travel from continent to continent.
• Corki's plane in League of Legends.
• Each Mass Effect game has its own transport vehicle to get Shepard from the Normandy to the surface: the Mako in 1, the Kodiak in 2, and the upgunned UT-47A Kodiak in 3. Of course, the Normandy itself applies, going through a different iteration in each game (The SR-1 Super Prototype in the first game, then the Mid-Season Upgrade SR-2 and 3 in the succeeding games).
• Samus's Gunship in the Metroid series.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Wario has his purple Wario Car in the Wario Land series and a motorbike in the WarioWare series, both of which have appeared in Mario Kart
  • Bowser has the Koopa Clown Car, which his army occasionally uses variants of. In particular, his son has a variant known as the Junior Clown Car which he uses far more often (and has many more tricks and weapons).
  • Rosalina is never far from the Comet Observatory.
• The Gold Saucer Buggy and later the Highwind airship for AVALANCHE/Team Cloud in Final Fantasy VII.
• The Corvega Motors Highwayman (the only working car in the wasteland!) for The Chosen One's team in Fallout 2.
• The Great Fox from the Star Fox series, had several emotional moments such as when it was in disrepair in Star Fox Adventures, and how they had to destroy it after it was upgraded in Star Fox: Assault.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The Gummi Ship transporting Sora and company across the Disney worlds, but specifically the Highwind models.
  • The Keyblade Gliders from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link is typically associated with Epona, or other unnamed red furred, white maned horses. Though some Links get their own transports depending on the game such as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker's The King of Red Lions or The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's The Crimson Loftwing.
  • Ganondorf also has The Black Gerudo Stallion.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The Tornado. Though the plane is Sonic's, Tails usually flies the biplane while Sonic stands on its wings to get where they want to go. Playing as Tails (or Knuckles) in the Genesis games will put Sonic at the controls, however.
  • Meanwhile, Dr. Eggman has the Egg Mobile, which doubles as the cockpit for most of the doctor's giant machines.
• Persona 5: Morgana can turn into a van, which serves as the Phantom Thieves' primary transport for getting through Mementos and escaping from Palaces.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and the expansion, Enemy Within) has the Skyranger (codenamed "Big Sky") that transports your entire army to each of its destination, one squad at a time, one mission at a time. Deconstructed, with a dash of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, when (due to having one Skyranger) you can only go to one crisis zone at a time while ignoring others (resulting in an increase in panic).
• In Knights of the Old Republic, the Recruit steals the Ebon Hawk blockade runner from an arms dealer on Taris and uses it to flee the Sith fleet. The Ebon Hawk is designed to evoke the Millennium Falcon, and functions as a Hub Level for traveling between planets, switching party members and having conversations. The Hawk returns in the sequel, albeit sans most of its hull and almost all the crew until it is repaired, where it serves the same function as the first game.
• Each playable class in Star Wars: The Old Republic gain their own personal ships after clearing story missions on their hub world. There are six vehicles total, with Jedi classes and Sith classes sharing the same model.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: The I.M.Pmobile, a run-down old van with the I.M.P.'s logo painted onto the side of it.
• Red vs. Blue: The Red Team had their M12 LRV Warthog and the Blue Team had Sheila.

Web Original

• Since the Amazing Three of the Whateley Universe are an Expy of the Fantastic Four, they have their own building and their own transport, the famous Techno-Trike.
• Cheat Commandos has the Action Figure Storage Vehicle, a parody of Merchandise-Driven Saturday morning cartoons.

Western Animation

• The Scooby-Doo gang and their Mystery Machine. The van's exact model has changed over the years, but it almost always sports the famous green-and-blue paintjob^note The "classic" model (in the trope image) appears to be most like a 1961-1966 Chevy Sportvan, while later models resembled a 1980's Chevy G-Series van or a Chevy Astro Minivan. Contrary to popular belief, it's never been based on a VW Minibus..
• South Park spoofs this in the episode where nu metal band Korn take on the roles of the Scooby-Doo gang, investigating the terrible haunting by Pirate Ghosts in South Park, Colorado. Their band bus had a suspicious resemblence to the Mystery Machine.
• Rugrats: As of The Movie the kids would sometimes ride around in the Reptar Wagon. They also occasional rode on Tommy's dog Spike as if he were a horse.
• Beverly Hills Teens:
  • There's the Teen Club Stretch Limo, which has a hot tub in the back.
  • Larke Tanner usually drives solo in her Pink Ferrari.
• The Trio from The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin have the Airship.
• Appa from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Planeteers are most often seen in the Geo-Cruiser.
• Inspector Gadget has the Gadgetmobile, AKA the Gadgetvan.
• Kidd Video had that cool car-vehicle thing in which they rolled around the Flipside, that served as a mobile home.
• The titular vehicle in The Magic School Bus.
• The Dethcycle from Metalocalypse.
• The Simpsons have two cars, the pink one being Homer's and the orange one Marge's. Also, Otto is almost always seen with the School Bus.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have the Party Wagon or Turtle Van (a converted T2 Bus) and the Turtle Blimp, both with their logo on it.
  • One of the few things kept from The Next Mutation series was giving Raphael a personal motorcycle.
  • The 2003 series reimagined the Turtle Van as the Battle Shell (a converted armored truck), and Raph's bike as The Shell Cycle. It also gave them a bunch of other vehicles like the Sewer Slider (hovercraft) and Turtle Tunneler (drill). As the series went on they kept acquiring and building more including a submarine, helicopter, and a train. All of these vehicles were destroyed halfway through season 4, probably because they had way too many to keep track of. It was eventually limited to another new version of the Battle Shell (a converted moving van) and the helicopter.
  • The '07 movie also implies that the Turtle Van has since been re-appropriated into Cowabunga Carl's van since they stopped being crime fighters. Raph still rides a motorcycle as Nightwatcher.
  • The 2012 series re-imagines the Turtle Van again as The Shellraiser (a converted subway car). They also have interlocking and detachable go-karts called Patrol Buggys, and Raph has a Stealth Bike.
  • Rise once again reimagines the Turtle Van, this time as the Turtle Tank, a converted moon buggy. The sides can detach into motorcycles referred to as Shell-Hogs.
• Each racing team from Wacky Races has its own car with a unique design and gadgets along with a distinctive name.
• The Thundertank from ThunderCats.
• The Transformers: Being able to transform into airborne vehicles, the Decepticons don't need much in the way of transportation. But whenever interstellar travel is required, they can rely on Astrotrain (who can transform into an improbably large shuttle) to get them to where they need to go.
• The Team from Young Justice (2010) typically flies around in Ms. Martian's bio-ship. Eventually Superboy gets his own vehicle when Sphere transforms into a flying motorcycle.
• Dojo, the team's 1200 year-old shapeshifting dragon from Xiaolin Showdown has a giant flying form that the team usually flies on at least once per episode. To a lesser extent: the Silver Manta Ray that's used whenever Dojo is unavailable for some reason.
• Wonder Pets!: the Flyboat
• Justice League have their Javelins.
• The Planet Express Ship in Futurama.
• G.I. Joe: Renegades: In keeping with the show's similarities to The A-Team, our heroes basically lived out of a huge van called the Coyote. Since it was designed by Cobra, it came with camouflage and its own plasma weapons.

Real Life

• Standard practice for the leader of most national governments. They're almost always built by a domestic automaker, and are usually a more powerful, armored version (with other modifications) of a mass-produced vehicle available to the public, occasionally with custom trim to differentiate it from the rank-and-file.
• The United States Presidential state car, colloquially known as "Cadillac One" or simply "The Beast", is a limousine designed from scratch and built on a truck platform specifically for the US President; unlike the vast majority of state cars around the world, it has no civilian or even rank-and-file military counterpart whatsoever. In the air, while technically, "Air Force One" refers to any airplane that the President is currently in, the planes normally taking the role are heavily modified Boeing VC-25s ^note a militarized version of Boeing's iconic 747 with custom livery◊.
• The Popemobile.
• The Richthofen brothers' red fighter planes are one of the examples (the less well-known Lothar von Richthofen had his planes painted red with yellow, and after his brother's death black, tail).

---