Car Skiing

Want to show off a sweet stunt in your car?

Known as skiing, this maneuver is like a wheelie except instead of balancing on two front or rear wheels, the motor vehicle balances on all the wheels on either the driver's side or passenger's side. Skiing may be assisted with a ramp or by letting some air out of the ground tires. The driver will often be forced to drive in a straight line due to having to balance the car by steering.

It can be used to cruise through tight spots or just show how skilled the driver is. The higher the risk of turning over is, the better. Bonus points for pulling off the maneuver in a cumbersome vehicle like a truck.

Because Reality Is Unrealistic, the average audience may not know that this is an actual maneuver and dismiss it as Hollywood physics. Still, Don't Try This At Home.

Examples of Car Skiing include:

Anime and Manga

• The anime adaptation of Highschool of the Dead has the group escaping the overrun mansion in the Humvee. To get past the barricades, the Humvee leans at such a ridiculous angle that it should have completely turned over instead.
• Lupin III pulls this stunt often.

Film

• The Charlie's Angels movie shows a flashback in which Natalie pulls one off during her driving exam.
• In Diamonds Are Forever, while being pursued by Las Vegas police Bond uses a ramp to put his car up on two wheels to fit through an alley that would normally be too narrow. The police car following him also tries it but flips over on its roof instead. Unfortunately the film crew screwed up: Bond's car is shown entering the alley on its right wheels and exiting on its left, forcing them to splice in an implausible interior shot of the car swapping sides as it moves down the alley.
  • The climactic chase in Licence to Kill has Bond commandeering a tanker truck and somehow managing to dodge a Stinger missile with this maneuver.
• Done with a train in Unstoppable - one of the few Hollywood exaggerations of the film.
• Live Free or Die Hard has McClane pull one off on the crumbling freeway with the assistance of a misguided pilot and missiles.
• In the live action Transformers movie, Bumblebee does this to scan and transform into the 2009 version of the Camaro.
• Frank of The Transporter 3 skis between two semi trucks during an escape sequence.
• DARYL does this when driving through heavy traffic.
• In the movie Twins, Schwarzenegger's character does one of these completely by accident his first time driving a car.
• In the beginning of the first Police Academy movie, Mahoney uses car skiing to park a belligerent businessman's car in an otherwise full parking lot.
• Super 8 has this happen when the creature slams into a military bus transporting the gang. The raised tires end up breaking when the driver manages to tip the bus back.
• In Speed this is done with a bus, though the passengers are asked to act as a counterbalance as the bus makes a hard turn.

Live Action TV

• KITT has a dashboard function called "Ski Mode" that allows him to do this maneuver.
• Done regularly on The Dukes of Hazzard. One time a film crew was in town and happened to see them doing it, and hired them to do it on film.

Theme Parks

• The "Moteurs.......Action!" stunt show at the French Disney park and its American adaptation "Lights, Motors, Action!" at Disney Hollywood Studios features several of the villain Opal Corsas skiing during the third scene.

Video Games

• One of Q's gadgets in James Bond 007: Nightfire, the Q Wedge, allows Bond to tilt the Vanquish on its side and skid past two blockade cars, earning the player a "Bond Moment".
• Star Fox 64 introduced the Landmaster, a tank vehicle. The player can pull off this maneuver using either one of the Landmaster's jets.
• This is one of the more difficult stunts you can pull on Stuntman.
• One of the stunts you can pull in True Crime: Streets of LA and True Crime: New York City.
• In all Grand Theft Auto games of the III era, you can pull this off, adn get a bonus for doing so. Also, in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there's a side-mission in a stunt driving school where one of the tasks is to do one of these.