Ranking the Reluctant Werewolf Monster Road Rally Racecars

Recently, I ranked all the different versions of the Mystery Machines throughout the franchise in an article. A regular commenter on the blog, Samuel Kirkwood, suggested that I should do a similar article ranking all the different monster racing cars from Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, which I thought was an excellent idea.

Once again, I will note that I'm not super knowledgeable about cars, so I'm ranking them purely based off their features and how they look. I'm also limiting the scope of this article to only cars that were in the Monster Road Rally, not every single vehicle that appeared in the film (i.e. the Double Dyno Turbo Blaster, Dracula's Batcopter, the Drac-Mobile, etc.). Like last time, I will be ranking them from my least favorite to favorite.

This might really surprise people, but my least favorite is Shaggy's Werewolf Wagon. One thing I loved about the design of these cars is that all of the vehicles felt catered to some aspect of the monster driving it (i.e. the Freaky Franken Wagon had an electric antenna on it), but this one really didn't have much going for it. There's not really anything that screams 'werewolf.' There were a few somewhat neat features, like turbo boost, jet engine, producing teeth, a detachable skateboard, a tail-like helicopter in the trunk, and power boost via a spring (as in, a spring comes out from the bottom of the car which allows them to jump in the lead). However, all of these features felt generic to me and didn't fit with the theme of making the car reflect some aspect of the monster. Thus, it's my least favorite of any of the vehicles.

"And here comes the mummy, in his mummymobile!" is perhaps one of the most memorable lines of the film to me for some reason lol. This vehicle is a big step up from the Werewolf Wagon. I love that the car's exterior looks like purple bandages, and the Sphinx on the front is quite neat as well. We didn't really see too many features of this particular car, though I liked how the Sphinx's mouth was able to open and shoot bandages. Otherwise, there weren't a ton of exciting features compared to the other ones, hence why this car is placed second-to-last.

The Dragon Dragster, driven by the Dragonfly, is shaped like a green dragon, complete with wings, a tail, and headlights for eyes. Other than shooting out tacks and a few other minor features, it doesn't feel like we got to see very many interesting features here. Not that I found the car to be bad, but some of the others were better.

I really like the design of the Freaky Franken Wagon, driven by Frankenstein and Repulsa. The bolts of electricity coming out of the vehicle, the electric antenna on the back of it, and the Frankenstein hands at the front of the vehicle are quite cool-looking. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about catering the design of vehicle to the monster, as this very much looks like Frankenstein's car, whereas there isn't any particularly identifying attributes for the Werewolf Wagon. I also like how the front of the vehicle looks a bit coffinish.

In terms of design, this car is easily one of my favorites of the bunch. The half stage-coach half sports car design serves as a perfect metaphor for how Dr. Jackyll is more mild-mannered (represented by the old-timey stage coach), whereas Mr. Snyde is wild, untamed, and ego-driven (represented by the more lavish sports car). However, while the design is very cool, the car is very lacking in features. There wasn't really any feature of this vehicle that stood out to me, which unfortunately brought its final ranking down by a lot for me. I wish the car would have had more features like the other vehicles did, as it would have made this rank higher.

Driven by Bonejangles, the Bone Bomber is a car completely made of bones, two tires, and a steering wheel, with a large spiked skull on the front. The car can also shoot bones from the skull. The entire car being made of bones has always stood out as very cool to me, and I like the fact that it also shoots bones, which places this vehicle in fourth.

The last several are very tough to rank, because all of them are top-tier material for me. I'm going to have to go with the Slime Speedster next, driven by the Swamp Thing (although he was never given a name in the film). The design of this vehicle is so cool - it's completely made of swampy goo, and a creepy-looking purple stump. The fact that the car is made of swamp gook allows it to stretch out, to the detriment of the other racers' at one point in the film. The front of the vehicle also appears to be some sort of swampy creature, with red eyes and huge teeth. You can tell they put a lot into the design of this car, which makes it my second favorite of the bunch.

My favorite car in this film is the Cauldron Coupé. It's perhaps driven a bit by my love of the built-in cauldron feature, as some of the other vehicles admittedly have more creative designs. The cauldron works to the witch sisters' advantage numerous times in the film - it allows them to create potions to derail the other racers, and it also is able to shoot spells at other racers. The design is also super cool-looking. It had sort of an old stagecoach feel to it, in a sense, and the green stripes along the side are also quite neat. Ultimately, what makes this one my favorite is the combination of the design, which feels very witch-like, and the excellent features. Many of the cars in the film had one or the other, but this one utilized both aspects wonderfully.

I hope that you enjoyed reading these rankings! Once again, I'll admit that someone else with more knowledge on cars could have done a far better job than I did, but hopefully this article was still entertaining. I always love seeing all of your rankings in the comments for these types of articles and the weekly polls, so if anyone has their own ranking that they'd like to share in the comments, I'd love to see them!