Before we begin, let us be clear that there are no spoilers to Top Gun: Maverick, promise.
Imagine you are Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. You are an aviator, Captain and flight instructor in the US Navy, although, as we’ll discover, your career path hasn’t gone entirely as expected. Still, you’ll have amassed some toys along the way, and possibly a massive great hangar to store them in. Over to Joe Kosinski, director of Top Gun: Maverick, 2022’s hottest and most keenly anticipated movie.
“It’s a little Easter egg. It’s the ultimate man cave,” he tells GQ of the space we find Tom Cruise’s character occupying early on. “What would Maverick have in there? What are his interests, a great old sports car he would be working on, obviously the P-51 Mustang which is actually Tom’s plane, the selection of bikes, from the ’86 Ninja to the most modern version of it. It was kind of a boyhood fantasy to build that garage and put every cool thing we could imagine…”
Here's every car and motorbike they came up with for Top Gun: Maverick. And yes, the Brown G-1 flight jacket and Ray-Ban aviators make an appearance, too.
Porsche 911 S (1973)
For many, the 911 isn’t just a sports car, it’s the sports car. It arrived in 1964, maintaining the same idiosyncratic but seductive rear-engined and air-cooled mechanical configuration as its 356 predecessors, but larger, more comfortable, and more modern looking. Since then, the 911 has set the template for astute automotive evolution: that sloping silhouette is intact on the 2022 car, as is the quirky layout and charismatic character, but everything else is wholly contemporary.
Meanwhile, 911 fans – and they are legion in number and commitment – will happily give you chapter and verse on the huge array of different iterations through the years. It’s no surprise to see the ’73 911 S enjoy prominent screen-time in Top Gun: Maverick; both director Joe Kosinski and Tom Cruise are big fans, and this is a connoisseur’s choice.
“I drive an old Porsche 911,” Kosinksi tells me. “They have a history with Tom [a Porsche 928 played a key role in his break-out hit, 1983’s Risky Business], and they have a history with Top Gun – that’s a Porsche 356 Speedster in the original film. So when it came to deciding what Penny [played by Jennifer Connelly] should drive in the film, my dream car would be a 1973 911 S so that’s what I’m going to give to Penny. And it looks great in the film.”
The 911 S ‘F series’ ticks the key boxes for collectors: only 1430 were made, a mere 524 of which made it to the US. The engine grew to 2.4 litres, the S getting a power upgrade to 190bhp and a new transmission related to the one in the 908 race car that removed the old ‘dog-leg’ style first gear in favour of a more conventional ‘H’ pattern. The whole thing weighs just over 1000kg, a more important metric than its power output.
True 911 adherents revelled in the challenge of its tail-happy on-the-limit handling, but Porsche elected to optimise its balance by relocating the S’s oil tank in front of the rear wheel rather than behind it. Porsche lore suggests that dopey fuel station attendants confused its filler flap for the fuel tank one, so that was dropped after a year. There was also a new spoiler to reduce the 911’s propensity to lift and bob its nose at speed, and crucially the S was the last 911 before the chunky bumpers demanded by US legislators spoilt the purity of the shape. Check out the famous Fuchs alloy wheels, another key 911 signature.
This side of the epochal Carrera RS, a ’73 S is the early 911 to have. It’s valued accordingly: GQ found one for sale at £179,900. And that’s the lower end of the spectrum…
Aston Martin DBR1
The world of historic cars gets very excited by Fifties endurance racing cars. As trite as it is to reduce the achievements of a car like the DBR1 to its fiscal worth, it’s unavoidable: in August 2017 the original example of Aston Martin’s racer was sold at an auction in Monterey for £17.5m. According to Joe Kosinski, the car in the film is the real thing, so assuming Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell hasn’t got a side line in grand theft auto, it’s just another part of the film for which the audience has to suspend its disbelief. How the hell could a Navy captain afford one of these?
I ask Kosinski if he knows how much the DBR1 is worth. Stupid question. “I do. Which is why I was not willing to drive it. But I figured Tom could cover it if he crashed it. [He] took me for a spin in it. They fired it up one day, took them about half an hour to warm it up, and they said, ‘does anyone want to take it out?’ And Tom said, ‘I’ll do it!’ He dropped the clutch, peeled out, and took me up the runway at about 130mph. I got a great picture of the two of us. It was awesome.”
Why the mystique? The DBR1 was part of a cadre of racing cars in the Fifties in which form and function came together spectacularly: its rivals included the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, Jaguar D-type, Maserati 450S, and Mercedes 300 SLR. They were designed to race for 12 or 24 hours, which pushed the engineers and drivers to the limit, in an era when motor racing was still a frequently deadly enterprise. They are now amongst the most sought-after and valuable cars of all, examples prized by the likes of Ralph Lauren, to name one leading collector.
Aston Martin’s patron at the time was British industrialist David Brown, who coveted victory in the greatest race of them all, the Le Mans 24 Hours. The DBR1 had a bespoke spaceframe chassis, engine and rear transaxle, all clothed in an ultra lightweight, thin-gauge aluminium skin. There were highs and lows from its debut in 1956, including a fabulous win for Stirling Moss at the Nürburgring, but victory at Le Mans finally came in 1959 when the American, erm, maverick Carroll Shelby and co-driver Roy Salvadori broke what would be a seven-race winning streak for Ferrari in the French classic. In fact, a DBR1 scored a one-two at Le Mans in ’59, prompting David Brown to wind up the race programme and quit while Aston Martin was ahead.
The car’s presence in Top Gun: Maverick might test our credulity, but it’s clear proof that the key people know their stuff.
Kawasaki Ninja
As well as being a jet and fast car guy, Cruise is also an extraordinarily accomplished biker. Top Gun made the Kawasaki GPZ 900 R Ninja the most famous movie motorbike since Brando’s Triumph Thunderbird in The Wild One or maybe the custom Harley-Davidson Chopper Peter Fonda rode in Easy Rider. Though neither of them raced an F14 Tomcat down a runway.
This was the first Kawasaki to use the Ninja name, it debuted the in-line four-cylinder engine, which was also a stressed member of the chassis, and it was the first street bike to reach 150mph. It also had an aircraft-style spring-mounted fuel filler cap rather than the usual twist-off job, and none-more-Eighties stripes and graphics.
In one of many unexpectedly emotional callbacks in Top Gun: Maverick, the original gets a proper outing, alongside the latest supercharged Kawasaki Ninja H2 Carbon, the only production bike to use forced induction. Four were supplied to the production, along with two fully restored GPZ 900Rs. Apparently, Honda was approached to provide the bikes for the original film, but the highly image-conscious company baulked at Cruise’s preference for riding without a helmet. It’s a preference he reprises in Maverick, but that’s the least of his health and safety protocol breaches…
P-51 Mustang
Like the Spitfire, the Mustang is one of the great warbirds. Designed in 1940 by a team led by James ‘Dutch’ Kindelberger, North American Aviation was approached by the British to build an existing fighter aircraft under licence for the RAF. When it was deemed too old, work began on a brand new design, with a turnaround time for the prototype build set at just 120 days. In the event, the team managed it in 117…
The plane first flew on October 26th 1940, immediately matching its most celebrated brother-in-arms, the British Supermarine Spitfire. The P-51 used a new ‘laminar flow’ design on its wing, which reduced turbulence and drag and increased speed, range and efficiency. The British Purchasing Commission ordered 320 Mustang 1s, originally powered by the 1100bhp Allison engine, but later transformed when the 1691bhp supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was dropped into the airframe. Another significant enhancement came with the introduction of the teardrop canopy, which improved all-round visibility. The P-51-H was the final iteration and could achieve 487mph at 25,000ft. A total of 14,819 were made for the USAAF, and records confirm that the Mustang destroyed 4950 enemy aircraft during WWII.
The Mustang we see in Maverick’s man cave is owned and regularly flown by none other than Tom Cruise himself, who acquired serial number 44-12840 in 2001. (It’s one of four aircraft the actor is reputed to own.) His Mustang wears the colours of the 334th Fighter Squadron ‘Fighting Eagles’ who were stationed at USAAF station 356 – otherwise known as RAF Debden – in north Essex.
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