Auto Erotica

Showing the new car to your boyfriend.
Automobiles. A type of land vehicle used for transport. Also used in teenage mating rituals.
—Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation

Two characters have sex in the back seat of a car. Extra points if it's at somewhere referred to as "Make-Out Point".

Moral or divine punishment for Auto Erotica (particularly at an isolated Make-Out Point) often manifests itself in the form of a Serial Killer on a prison break looking for fresh meat, a cop making his rounds, or an overprotective Knight Templar father armed with a shotgun or a baseball bat and out to defend his daughter's purity.

Not to be confused with sexual attraction/relationships with cars, robots, or vacuum cleaners. (Or actual autoerotica.)

Often accompanied with Don't Come a-Knockin'.

Compare Mile-High Club (having sex in an airplane bathroom).

Has absolutely nothing to do with Audio Erotica (someone's voice being considered a turn-on).

No real life examples, please; this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.

Examples of Auto Erotica include:

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Anime and Manga

  • One episode of Initial D has Takumi and Natsuki making out in Takumi's Trueno, to the point where we see the car rocking for a bit.
    • Subverted in the Second Stage OVA when Itsuki literally sleeps with a girl in his Levin.
    • W-wait...exactly WHEN did these events occur??
  • This is heavily implied to have occurred multiple times in Revolutionary Girl Utena with the "Akio Car" with multiple characters, and the car itself explicitly represents the world of adulthood.
  • A chapter of Futari Ecchi is dedicated to this trope. Containing useful advices (both social and hygienic) on how to do it properly. (Like explanations on why it's unadvisable to do it on the front seat or why it's preferable to turn off the lights.)

Comic Books

  • Scott Pilgrim and Kim Pine are seen doing this in a flashback.
  • "Hot Rod Boogie", generally regarded as the first true Cherry story, is all about this.

Fan Works

  • Naturally, since Misfiled Dreams has cars as a major theme like the original story, this had to happen at least once. It's even lampshaded with the line "Somehow… I knew we’d wind up doing this in a car."
  • In My Immortal, Draco and Enoby have sex in Draco's flying car.
  • KITT Copycat had Pepper and Tony having sex at the back of his car while 'JARVIS was driving'.

Film

  • Believe it or not, this trope applies to Titanic. In 1912, in the middle of the North Atlantic, on a ship with enough beds for over a thousand passengers, Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater wind up having sex in the back of a car which is being transported in the ship's hold.
  • The B-movie The Chase with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson features their characters having sex in a car. While Sheen is driving. And being chased by police.
  • Subversion: in Back to The Future, George McFly intervenes to prevent this kind of thing happening to his future wife Lorraine.
    • Then again, Lorraine seems like she may or may not be trying to get someone else in the backseat before Biff shows up. Specifically, Marty.
    • Remember: decent girls do not "park."
  • In the first part of Transformers, Bumblebee seems to be trying to encourage Sam and Mikaela to do this. The situation is made weirder by the fact that Bumblebee is the car.
    • The ending scene shows Sam and Mikaela making out on top of Bumblebee's hood while the other Autobots calmly watch in vehicle mode, quite possibly making the term "Auto-erotica" a little too literal.
  • Pleasantville: In which the sex act turns much of the town into colour. Several at one go later in the movie.
  • The main character of Gattaca was conceived that way, which means he's NOT a Gattaca Baby.
  • Rock and Rule has a scene like this, although by all appearances the cars themselves are already there, and just 'borrowed' for the festivities.
  • Subverted and averted in The Lost Boys: a disposable couple of characters are in a red-lit car, the man making advances towards the woman (who is amusingly more interested in reading comics) when a bunch of vampires shows up and, well, the obvious happens...
  • Subverted yet played straight in the movie Once Bitten. Mark Kendall (Jim Carrey) tries to get to first base with Robin Pierce (Karen Kopkins) but she doesn't want to make out with Mark, especially in a ice cream van. Frustrated, Mark steps out of his ice cream van only to notice in utter shock that EVERYONE ELSE was getting busy: the fleet of parked cars rocking and swaying from lovers' sowing their wild oats. Poor Mark.
  • Mallrats in a Strange Minds Think Alike series of gags, everyone infers the same thing about Shannon (Ben Affleck).

Trish: He tried to screw me somewhere very uncomfortable.
Brodie: The backseat of a Volkswagen?

  • In Parenthood, Helen tries this on her husband Gil while they are driving. Jump to the next scene: The car is totaled.
    • After which the cop walks up and asks Helen and Gil what happened. Gil's response? "Well, honey, do you want to show him?"
  • In Grease, Rizzo and Kenickie have sex in his car.
  • Also happens in Saturday Night Fever, although once again Travolta is not involved.
  • In Crank, Chev gets Eve to do this to him while they're being chased by gang members.
  • There's a very... different take on car sex in the movie Southland Tales. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1qLs1BQjSA [[NSFW] video excerpt.]]]
  • In The Graduate, Mrs. Robinson tells Ben that Elaine was conceived in the back of a Ford.
  • In American Graffiti, Toad and Debbie make out in Steve's Chevy. Steve tries to have sex with Laurie in her car, but she doesn't want it.
  • In opening scene of Splendor in the Grass, the protagonists, Bud and Deanie are making out in Bud's car (Bus would like to do more, but Deanie doesn't let him). This was probably a privilege of the rich in 1928, when the film is set.
  • The intro of Idiocracy has one.
  • In the first Scary Movie, a girl got run over by her father because her mother was giving him a blowjob.
  • This happens twice in K-9. The film opens up showing two people making out heavily in their car, though no nudity is presented. The other scene is when the dog, Jerry Lee, spots a poodle in the other car in front of him. This than leads to Jerry Lee and the poodle presumably 'doing it' in the car, though it's not shown, but it is implied from Dooley's words ("What are you doing?!") what they are doing, as well as showing the car shaking.
  • No Way Out has a scene where two characters made love in the back of a limo.
  • Hot Shots: Part Deux parodies the No Way Out scene.
  • In Then She Found Me, April's biological mother that gave her up for adoption first says that April's father is Steve McQueen; turns out that really April's mother "fucked" her next-door neighbor in the backseat of his car while at the drive-in (the movie that was playing was Bullet, a Steve McQueen film).
    • April and her ex-husband almost do this but stop.
  • In Super Troopers, Foster and Ursula go at it in the backseat of his police cruiser... which doesn't open from the inside. They have to remove the door from its mount to get out afterwards.
  • In The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Janet sings about how "heavy petting" only leads to "seat wetting".
  • In Revolutionary Road, April and Shep have sex in his car.
  • In Forrest Gump the titular character interrupts Jenny, who is apparently in the middle of this. He thought she was being raped. She wasn't.
  • In Heathers, DJ and Veronica rapidly strip and pretend to engage in this, after having faked the suicide of a couple of football players, when a couple of police officers approach.
  • In Ruthless People, Chief Benton has wild sex with a prostitute at night in his car while Earl Mott is filming both of them in an attempt to prove Sam Stone murdered his wife.
  • Discussed in the 2000 version of Gone in Sixty Seconds when Memphis and Sway are waiting for the owners of the car they're trying to steal to close the blinds. They start slinging around Double Entendres about said car being a stick shift, and then start making out. But before things get too hot and heavy the blinds finally close and they have to scramble back in position to drive the car away.
  • In Saturday Night Fever, one of Tony's friends is taking too long in the backseat with a girl he met at the disco, much to the annoyance of another buddy of theirs and his hookup. The couple in the backseat finishes with Tony and his friends watching.) After which the guy asks her, "So, what did you say your name was?"
    • Tony has sex with Annette later, but stops when he finds out she's not "fixed" (no pill, no "IOU", no diaphragm). The implication of course is that he wasn't using a condom. At least it averts Can't Get Away with Nuthin'.
    • Also, Tony tries to have sex with Stephanie in his car, but she doesn't want it and gets away from him.
    • And Tony's friends take turns raping Annette in the backseat in another scene.
  • Lord Love A Duck - high-schooler Roddy Mac Dowall takes new friend Tuesday Weld to the local make-out spot - with the express purpose of loudly disrupting the necking couples.
  • Bedazzled - Stanley wishes for himself and the woman he loves to be really nice people, madly in love with each other, in a cozy domestic setting - and ends up in just that scenario... with her married to his best friend. They try trysting in her car, but they're so nice that they're positively grievous with guilt for even trying it.
  • In Eight Legged Freaks, Scarlett Johansson's character is a teenage girl whose boyfriend is trying to have sex with in his pickup truck. She tells him she doesn't want to lose her virginity in a car seat, which prompts him to suggest the back of the truck. She proceeds to zap him in the nuts with her mother's taser. They get back together at the end, though.
  • This trope is invoked in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, when the title character talks about his passenger's habits.
  • Played with in The Film of the Book of High Fidelity—Rob and Laura have sex in the *front* seat of her car.
  • In PK, the titular character finds numerous examples of this during his quest to explore Earth and find "God". He dubs them "dancing cars", and use them to obtain clothes and money. A deleted scene has him interacting (non sexually) with one such couple doing in their vehicle.

Literature

  • In American Gods, Shadow's wife does this with his next door neighbor while he's in prison. Except that it was the whilst driving variant, and they both ended up dead in the resulting crash.
  • In Stephen King's Thinner, the protagonist's wife gives him a handjob while he's driving. Which starts the plot rolling...
    • In Christine, the protagonist tries this with his girlfriend in the titular car, but she doesn't want. Then... It Got Worse
    • In The Tommyknockers, when Bobbi's truck explodes, Gardener recalls that they once had sex in it "during some stupid Ryan O'Neal picture".
    • In Carrie, Tommy Ross and Sue Snell have sex in his Ford. Carrie's fundamentalist mother often mentions "the evil that goes on in parking lots".
    • In the film version of Thinner, the handjob is changed to a blowjob.
  • A cheesy horror novel called Ghoul (not Michael Slade's), in which a cop interupts a lover's-lane backseat tryst by a couple of teenagers. To the small-town cop's dismay, it turns out they're both girls.
  • Hideously played with in Thomas Pynchon's Vineland.
  • In one of the Honor Harrington novels two bit characters who haven't seen each other in a while reminisce about stealing an admirals hovercar and bringing some prostitutes and booze along
  • In Story Of A Girl by Sara Zarr, Deanna is found by her father having sex in the backseat...at 13, with her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tommy. This wrecked her life, branded her the school slut, and is the opening of the book.
  • After his stint at a spa in Thunderball, James Bond trysts with a female employee in her bubble car (a seriously small class of micro-compact).
  • Cat, the Night Huntress, picks up vampires in bars, drives them to a secluded rural area and just when the vamps think they're about to have dinner and dessert, she kills them. One of Cat's would-be victims turns out to be a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, and they eventually start dating. They drive to the same location and playfully enact the same conversation as before, only this time with a happy ending.

"Not much room in here. Want to go outside so you can stretch out?"
"Oh no. Right here. Love to do it in a truck."

Live-Action TV

  • In Brothers and Sisters, Nora states she lost her virginity in the back seat of a car. As she starts to go into how the height differential was dealt with, the rest of the family leave in disgust.
  • In the Red Dwarf episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", Lister is doing this with a virtual Film Noir vamp when Kryten enters the sim and interrupts. However, he has to enter the sim as an enemy of said lady, who then tries to hit on him.
  • The Unit has Bob and his wife Kim about to do this (the car is in their closed garage) when the baby monitor goes off.
  • In The Shield, Vic and Danny go at it in the back of Vic's Charger. Danny's son, Lee, was a direct result of that encounter.
  • In the That '70s Show episode "Parents Find Out", Donna and Eric were having sex (or attempting to) in a car, in a public place, and were caught by the police.
    • That really doesn't do it justice. The cop raps on the window...

Donna: Eric--we're completely naked.
Eric: Don't worry, I have a plan.
Eric: [Turns to the cop]
Eric: GO AWAY.
Donna: That's your plan?
Eric: Well, yeah. I mean, we're completely naked. I think he'll just go away.
Cop: [Raps on the window again, shakes his head]
Eric: Crap, have you seen my pants?

    • Kelso had sex with Jackie and Laurie in his van (not at the same time).

"If that van's a rockin', we're in there doin' it!"

      • Kelso and Jackie seem to be fond of Eric's Vista Cruiser - they've made out twice in the back, and also had sex in there at one point.
        • The Vista Cruiser's backseat also had a visit from Donna's parents Midge and Bob.
        • Bob & Midge also have sex in the back of their car. In a restaurant parking lot. When they're in their time of bitterness towards each other. And don't consider themselves back together after this.
    • And then there was the time a cop came knocking on a misted-up car window and it turned out to be Red and Kitty.
      • Fez once made out with a girl in the backseat of a car.
      • It's implied Fez is going to have sex with a girl in back of a car sometime in season seven...
    • That '70s Show just seems really fond of this trope.
  • On Cheers, Rebecca Howe decides to tease Sam by making up a sordid story of her youth that supposedly earned her the nickname "Backseat Becky".
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2's "Phases" shows Xander and Cordelia making out in the back of her car just before the werewolf attack. In "Bad Eggs" Cordelia says that "her friend" was doing this, but that in the midst of all the excitement, the gear shift was jerked out of "Park" and well.. car Oh baby, slow down, you're goin' way too far...
    • Riley hints that he might enjoy this too.

Buffy: Cars and Buffy are, like...un-mixy things.
Riley: It's just because you haven't had a good experience yet. You can have the best time in a car. It's not about getting somewhere. You have to take your time. Forget about everything. Just...relax. Let it wash over you. The air...motion... Just, let it roll.
Buffy: We are talking about driving, right?

  • Blair on Gossip Girl loses her virginity in a limo, of all places. Since then, both she and the person she was with seem inordinately fond of the limo.
  • The episode "Secrets", for The Walking Dead, ends with Shane and Andrea getting busy in their car, stopped in the middle of the road.[1]
  • On Home Improvement it's mentioned that Tim and Jill partook in this when they were younger:

Tim: I remember the song that we heard when we were in the back of my Corvair steaming the windows.
Jill: So do I: The Minute Waltz.

  • In the NCIS episode "Trojan Horse", this conversation ensues:

Abby: My first time was in a cab.
Ziva: First time for what?
McGee: Front seat or back?
Abby: Back. Well, both, kinda.
Ziva: Oh! My first time was in a weapons carrier.
Abby and McGee: Of course it was.

Music

  • Meat Loaf's song "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is about a teenaged boy trying to get the car rockin'. Unfortunately for him, the girl has conditions.
    • Also used in the third verse of "Objects In The Rearview Mirror (May Appear Closer Than They Are)", when Meat reminisces about how he and his long-lost first love, Julie, had experimented with backseat sex as teenagers.
    • Meat Loaf made a cameo as Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and sang "What Ever Happened to Saturday Night?/Hot Patootie", which also features some of this.
  • Paul McCartney, on the album RAM, actually recorded a song called "The Back Seat of My Car," which directly involves this trope.
  • The Hot Chocolate song "Heaven's in the Back Seat of My Cadillac".
  • The Bluetones' hilariously unsubtle "Autophilia (Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Car)", which is so ridiculous that it could easily be mistaken for the lust being directed towards the car itself. She does come in sixteen colours, after all.
  • Bob Seger's "Night Moves". ("Out in the back seat of my '60 Chevy...")
  • Semi-averted in Big Star's "Back of a Car", as the singer winds up explaining that he/she just isn't ready yet:

Why don't you take me home
 It's gone too far inside this car
I know I'll feel a whole lot more
When I get alone

  • "Making Love in a Subaru" by Damaskas points out the difficulties of attempting this in a compact car.
  • In Harry Chapin's "Taxi", the singer mentions that he and Sue "learned about love in the back of a Dodge".
    • Also in "Northwest 222", his SO would pick him up from the airport in the van and they'd "find a place for parking when the loving would not wait".
  • Death Cab for Cutie's "We Looked Like Giants," remembering how the speaker and his old girlfriend were "fumbling to make contact" in his "gray subcompact."
  • Billy Joel's "Keeping the Faith" mentions how he'd thought he was the Duke of Earl when he and a girl "made it" in a Chevrolet.
  • Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses" mentions this.

Sneakin' to his car's cracked leather seat
 The smell of gasoline in the summer heat...

  • Gwen Stefani's Crash is not-so-subtle ode to this.
    • Ditto "Bubble Pop Electric". Take it to the backseat, run it like a track meet~
  • LL Cool J's Back Seat pretty much describes this trope to the fullest extent.
  • "In the Car" by Barenaked Ladies is about this.
  • "Sleeping In My Car" by Roxette.
  • Elastica has "Car Song." Not just inside cars, in this case.

Every shining bonnet
 Makes me think of my back on it.

I don't want to meet your daddy
 I just want you in my Caddy
 I don't want to meet your momma
 I just want to make you come-a

  • "Hey Bobby" by K.T. Oslin

And I've never picked up a boy at his own front door
 Do ya wanna huh? Do ya wanna huh? Huh?
 Do ya wanna huh? Do ya wanna huh? Huh?
 I'll get ya back real early, trust me

(complete lyrics here.)
  • Sammy Johns took the '70s van culture and made an ode to this trope with his "Chevy Van":

I gave a girl a ride in my wagon, she crawled in and took control.
 She was tired 'cause her mind was draggin', I said get some sleep and dream of rock and roll.
 Just like a picture she was layin' there, moonlight dancin' off her hair.
 She woke up and took me by the hand, we made love in my Chevy van and that's alright with me

  • Ke$ha discusses the possibility of this in "Blah Blah Blah":

Think you'll be getting this? Nah, nah, nah
 Not in the back of my car ah ah
 If you keep talking that blah, blah, blah

  • Marina and the Diamonds reference it in "The Outsider", in the context of the rest of the song, could be viewed as a little creepy...

Don't get on my bad side
 I can work a gun
 Hop into the backseat baby
 I'll show you some fun

  • Lou Christie's "Rhapsody in the Rain" was banned upon release because of this trope: two teens had sex in a car on their first date, and the girl dumped the boy, who can only think of her now when he hears rain on the car.
  • The Nickelback song "Animals" is about this, ending with the singer and his girlfriend being interrupted by the girlfriend's father.
  • "Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix)" by Poe.
  • Warrant's "Cherry Pie" mentions this:

Swingin' to the bass
 In the back of my car!
 Ain't got money!
 Ain't got no gas!
 But we'll get where
 We're goin' if we
 Swing real fast!

Video Games

  • The Sims 2: Nightlife expansion pack adds this option.
  • The Grand Theft Auto series of games allows you to hire prostitutes in your car. The fourth game actually lets you swivel the camera around and watch.
    • What is there to watch? Everytime you hire a prostitute, it just shows the two of you in a car while the woman moans.
      • In Grand Theft Auto IV, the prostitutes give you three price options. The cheapest is a hand-job, mid-price is a blow-job, and the highest priced service is sex. All three have accompanying animations for both characters, and fairly realistic at that - even though both characters remain fully clothed. In case you didn't spot the irony, it's basically every feature in the Hot Coffee content, minus the interaction. I don't think it's difficult to see exactly what Rockstar learned from that scandal.
  • occurs in Kaori's good ending in Crescendo
  • H-Game (Obviously) Moero Downhill Night series have some of these. Granted, The games are about auto-racing anyway.
  • In Saint's Row 2's "FUZZ" activity [2] one of the situations you'll come across is busting two people in the middle of this. Pull them out, and they'll be naked with the relevant parts covered by Pixellation.

Web Comics

  • In Questionable Content, after Faye admitted she lost her virginity in the back seat of a Buick, she thinks Marten disapproves. In fact, he's envious, his first time was in a much smaller VW.
  • The image for this page comes from Sabrina Online.
  • Newlyweds Kate and Harry could not wait for the honeymoon.

Web Original

  • Snopes.com has a category for urban legends about sex in a car, which uses the same pun as this trope's title.
  • In the pregame of Survival of the Fittest V4, Rosa Fiametta and Dustin Royal get it on in the back of his car. At the end of pregame for one of the Minis, SOTF-TV, Amber Lyons and Sterling Odair do the same.
  • The second viewer submission of What The Fuck Is Wrong With You? included a very intoxicated man trying to have sex WITH his car.

Western Animation

  • Beavis and Butthead Do America follows this trope to the letter in one scene, right down to an ATF agent interrupting.
    • On the TV show, the two wander around a drive-in theater, ignoring the movie, until they find a rockin' van and take a picture of the occupants. Then they spend the rest of the episode running from the hideous she-beast they disturbed.
  • The Simpsons hits this one a couple different times.
    • Homer in a car muttering indistinct things such as "Oh baby" that indicated great enjoyment. Turns out he was back there with a mountain of junk food.
    • When Manjula wanted to get pregnant, Homer tried to help by having her and Apu roleplay a scenario as a cheerleader and football player making out in a convertable.
    • Kodos: "The most common spawning locations of your species... the back seat of a Camaro".
    • Groundskeeper Willie: likes to secretly videotape couples in cars.
  • King of the Hill: Nancy Gribble and John Red Corn have sex in the back of an demo model SUV that is parked in the terminal at the Dallas airport.
  • This is subverted in Animaniacs "Drive-Insane" when the Warner Siblings are jumping up and down excitedly in Dr. Scratchansniff's car. A mother walks by with her child, the child sees the car rocking violently, and the mother quickly leads her child away.
  • One certain episode of Two Stupid Dogs had said dogs try to watch a drive-thru movie. After sneaking in with their own car, the smaller dog got bored and asked "Why do people come here?". Zoom out to the entire car-filled lot (and even the film, with a car on a cliff) bouncing and squeaking suggestively.
  • Averted on Codename: Kids Next Door, when the KND investigate why so many of the hated Teenagers are planning to get together at "the Point" that night. Despite repeated verbal and visual hints that they're going up there to have sex in their cars, it turns out to be an unrelated scheme to become instant Adults.
    • No, that's just what Numbah One thinks it is. The truth is far more disturbing. They're all going to a roller-skating rink.
  • In the Futurama episode "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" Fry and Amy's car breaks down on Mercury, leaving them stranded with hours to kill before the tow truck arrives. When the guy finally shows up, he finds the car windows fogged up and... Fry and Amy playing cards. Then, while they're being towed...

Amy: So, you wanna do it?
Fry: Yeah!

  • When Orel is invited to Inspiration Point by his sweetheart Christina, he wonders why there are so many cars parked up there. He hears people screaming "Oh, God, oh, God!" and "Thank you, Jesus!" and cheerfully concludes that people go there to pray.
  • Subverted in Monsters vs. Aliens, down to the traditional gender roles.
  • Family Guy, as Death has a flashback to his adolescence, citing the burden of anyone he touches immediately dying.

Death: Oh, Sandy! Sandy!
Pause
Death: Sandy? Not again! I'm gonna be a virgin forever!
(beat)
Death: Or am I?
(car starts rocking)

  1. ↑ Zombie apocalypses do wonders for cutting down on traffic, once past roads clogged with the dead.
  2. ↑ In which you pretend to be a police officer and get filmed for the local [[COPS (series)|]] expy
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