Remembering the Cars of Risky Business

In 1983, Risky Business made Tom Cruise a household name. In the beginning of the movie, we hear a rumbling of train on the tracks. Cruise’s character, Joel Goodson, will soon celebrate the fact that his parents have left him home alone while they go on a trip, and he dances around the living room in his underwear to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll”. Later, he will take his father’s prized sports car for a joyride, help a surprisingly vulnerable call girl escape her pimp, sink the aforementioned Porsche into Lake Michigan, and almost ruin his chances of getting into an Ivy League college.

Although Risky Business isn’t a car movie, there’s more than a few quintessential moments in the film where the Porsche 928 had a major role. 

14:40 – When someone says you can’t touch something, what do you do? The opposite, of course. Cruise stalls the 928 reversing out of the garage. Maybe he wouldn’t have if he’s father let him taste the forbidden fruit a little more. 

15:46 – Revving your engine in front of the ladies is such an aphrodisiac.

16:00 – “Hit it”, and the rest is history.

16:20 – High off the momentum from the car race…cough, cough…even though it was a crappy four-door beater (Yes, the car they raced was a Subaru GL, known as the Leone in most markets.), Cruise and his pal celebrate by doing some figure eights.

36:00 – “I don’t believe this!” Miles says. “I’ve got a trig midterm tomorrow and I’m being chased by Guido the killer pimp.”

56:00 – The reason why parents don’t let their kids drive their prized cars is best explained in this scene. Listen to your parents!

57:00 – What’s a kid facing a huge repair bill going to do? Ask your prostitute girlfriend to help you become a pimp. But first, tell your sob story to the school secretary. Ha!

66:42 – All the patrons of the whorehouse pop-up show up in their hard-earned second hand beaters.

79:45 – The Porsche 928 does the “walk of shame” back to the family garage.

At the end of the movie, a train also rumbles by, bookending a story that I’m sure many of us, despite the dangers, would have been thrilling to take part in. While there might not be a “substitute” for a Porsche 928, the teenage dream fulfilled on a late night train ride comes pretty, damn close. There’s a time for playing it safe…and there’s a time for risky business.