According to You: What is your favorite sleigh from a Santa-themed movie?

Last week I asked the Hagerty Community to name Christmas movies in which Santa drives a sleigh that might be interesting to a car enthusiast. My reasons are selfish: I want to be something other than wholly bored during a holiday movie, and nothing perks me up like a cool, unique, or appropriately chosen car.

My recommendation of Bad Santa from last week’s According to You is clearly not a good idea for general audiences seeking Christmas cheer. Turns out the Hagerty Community went even deeper, because the best bits of automotive holiday media may not even be in movies. Have a look—it’s clear that the holidays are what you make of them!

Elf (2003)

@hyperv6: Elf! I am more traditional [than my Bad Santa recommendation —SM] but with a twist.

Keep it classic

Perhaps our very own DUB6 puts this question into proper perspective. Santa doesn’t need a car as his sleigh; there were very few cars in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and perhaps that’s the way it should be. Cars aren’t everything in this world, right?

@DUB6: I’m not really a big movie-watcher to begin with, and even less so during the holiday period, when I’m typically busy minding livestock and spending my spare time with family. Not even sure I’ve ever watched a “Santa-themed-movie” except for Miracle on 34th Street as a kid. Did that even have a sleigh in it? I think so. If it did, I’m sure it was very “traditional,” so that’d be my pick.

Those Mercedes commercials

While I technically wanted movie recommendations, I can’t deny how festive (and vehicularly satisfying!) manufacturer commercials are during the holidays. If you’re watching a movie with commercials, well, I can’t argue with dropping everything to watch them:

@Chris: Not a movie—but the Mercedes-Benz ad, run seasonally, where Santa has the hot red convertible and the reindeer have the utes and sedans in silver, is well-done.

@DUB6: I always liked those commercials. A few years ago, a group of us were invited to bring our cars to a local holiday parade. There were 10 cars. It was a total coincidence, but the “freakiest” hot rod took the lead and ran the center line, then eight cars lined up two-by-two-by-two-by-two behind him, and I pulled into the center behind them with my bright red coupe. Only later did we realize that we had done a mashup of Rudolph out front and the M-B ads!

Christmas car-commercial parodies?

@Sajeev Mehta: Since we opened the door with Christmas-themed car commercials, the Lexus spoof commercial on Saturday Night Live was a pretty hilarious take on going into debt for the holidays. Truly that was a December to remember!

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

I completely forgot about the Ford Taurus wagon–based Family Truckster from this movie, and it is clearly playing a bigger role than the Taurus SHO that Tim Allen drove in The Santa Clause.

@Roger: Santa didn’t drive it, but I love the Family Truckster in the Christmas Vacation movie.

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