As the vintage Beetle Herbie is rolled out of the Hollywood garage for his lastest film, Steve Pratt looks at the role of the hottest wheels in the movie business.

Wander around the Hollywood used car lot and you'll find the wrecks of motors that failed to find lasting fame. This is an industry where a screen test, not an MOT test, matters and where gleaming bodywork is the result of a plastic surgeon not a garage mechanic. Star power, not horsepower, is what counts.

It takes that special something under the bonnet to become a classic movie motor, for a car to become a star. To make it in the movies, a motor needs more than a big bumper, fast acceleration and full service history. Many a four-wheeled hopeful has come to a halt and been towed off to the Tinseltown crusher.

Age is no bar. Look at the remarkable comeback by Herbie the almost-human VW Beetle, back on the screen in Herbie: Fully Loaded. He's been rescued from the Disney scrapyard, given a makeover and new leading role. After starring in The Love Bug nearly 40 years ago, he featured in several sequels before being put in a garage and forgotten.

His revival is nothing short of miraculous. So is the fact that this mechanical marvel is referred to as a 'he' by director Angela Robinson. "That happened very quickly. It was kind of weird," she admits. "In the first couple of weeks, I'd say, 'move the car here, move the car there,' and then I'd start saying things like, 'he's coming in late on his cues'. And the script supervisor said, 'you mean Michael Keaton?' and I said, 'no, Herbie'. After a while everybody started to relate to Herbie. And now I say 'him'."

Herbie becomes a racing champion in his latest movie, following the rule that cars are rarely allowed to keep to the speed limit on screen. The car chase has become one of the most familiar sequences, with each one trying to outdo the previous one by staging bigger smashes and more motor mayhem. Now they can use Computer Generated Images (CGI) to enhance the action to make them even more spectacular.

For many, the car chase to beat is the one in the 1968 thriller Bullitt, in which the hills of San Francisco provided a bumpy backdrop for the extended pursuit as Steve McQueen's Mustang-driving character chases at speeds of up to 110mph. They did it all for real with McQueen, a bit of a racer in real life, doing some of his own driving.

Some film-makers think that speeding cars are enough to fuel an entire film. The Fast And The Furious and Gone In 60 Seconds were two examples where they thought audiences would be content to watch cars zooming around for a couple of hours without any characters or plot.

The British tend to drive at a more sedate speed. A vintage 1904 car starred in the 1953 comedy Genevieve about two warring couples competing in the London to Brighton rally. This may have been a big hit but hardly compares with McQueen's Bullitt escapades.

We Brits do have a few surprises in the cinematic garage. James Bond's cars are as famous as his liking for martinis shaken, not stirred. Most famous of all was his Aston Martin in Goldfinger, with a startling array of gadgets and gizmos. These extras included revolving number plates, oil slick dispenser, machine guns, bulletproof windscreen and, most memorable of all, a passenger ejector seat. Complain that 007 was driving too fast and, with a press of the button, his companion launched into space.

Each new Bond was handed the keys to a new car, courtesy of Q. George Lazenby drove a new Aston Martin DBS oddly bereft of gadgets. Unlike Timothy Dalton's Bond car in The Living Daylights, which featured rockets, spiked tyres and skis to allow driving on ice.

Bond's creator Ian Fleming was responsible for another famous British car, although not one you'd find at your local showroom - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the flying car that soared high in the film of his children's book.

Like 007, another screen hero has changed his vehicle for a newer model. The Batmobile, one of the most iconic of the superhero cars, was given a makeover for the caped crusader's comeback in this summer's Batman Returns.

"Before it was long and phallic; this has got nothing to do with that," says Batman actor Christian Bale of the new vehicle. "The background is that it's a rejected military vehicle purely because it cost too much. It looks like the child of a Lamborghini and a Hummer with stealth technology over it."

As director, Christopher Nolan wanted to use as few special effects as possible, no less than 13 Batmobiles were built. "I drove them and they were incredible," says Bale. "They have these supercharge camera cars that are meant to be able to keep up with everything and they couldn't keep up with the Batmobile."

The Batmobile aids his quest for justice, but other motors are positively malevolent. The killer car has become as much a part of the cinema tradition as lovable Herbie.

Christine, in John Carpenter's film of the Stephen King story, is as evil as the Love Bug is good. This fire engine red 1958 Plymouth Fury is powered by the devil. Twenty years after rolling off the assembly line - and leaving several workers dead in the process - the car is rescued from the scrapyard by misfit high school student Mike.

He lovingly restores the car and, in return, Christine helps him become a popular student. It's not all a smooth ride. Jealous Christine comes close to injuring Mike after he tries to make out with another girl at a drive-in movie.

Death Race 2000 was set in the future when made in 1975 and imagined a society where a cross-country road race was staged in which drivers were awarded points for killing pedestrians. The road race scenario was replayed in The Gumball Rally (cars race from New York to Long Beach) and Cannonball Run (crazy characters steer an erratic course from coast-to-coast), although powered by laughs, not violence.

Motorist Dennis Weaver wasn't so lucky in Steven Spielberg's Duel. He was pursued by a large truck intent on running him off the road. Sometimes smaller cars turn nasty. The Hearse found a student menaced by a sinister black hearse, while The Car terrorised residents of a Mexican town. In Maximum Overdrive, trucks attacked people. That was based on another story by Stephen King, the horror story writer who was knocked down in a road accident. Not every car is as friendly as Herbie.

The secret of being a movie star car is having a heart. Herbie didn't need a stand-in, or help from the computer-generated effects department, to express emotion. He even falls in love, with a sporty VW, in his new film.

"I just feel kind of alienated from the overuse of CGI in these big summer movies," says his director Robinson. "There is a ton of CGI in our movie but I felt a real responsibility to the origins of Herbie. It was so charming what they did in 1969. I also tried to look at the language of Herbie, which was very simple and had a lot of slapstick and a lot of heart to it.

"I tried to find the right balance in reintroducing it to a whole new generation of kids. The original conception was to have him be a full CG animated thing. I thought it would be more charming and more true to the original movies to make him more low tech."

Herbie can take his place again in the Hollywood Hall of Motor Car Stars.

* Herbie: Fully Loaded (U) is showing in cinemas now.