Automobiles, pop songs, and movies form a golden braid as eternal as the one that binds Gödel, Escher, and Bach. In 1980, the writer-director Paul Schrader released American Gigolo, whose first three minutes mostly feature shots of Richard Gere driving a black Mercedes convertible along the Pacific Coast Highway while Blondie’s “Call Me” plays on the soundtrack. There is something ineffably galvanizing about Gere’s whipping hair, the calm Pacific Ocean, the pulsating music, and the quick cuts to the spinning hubcap with the Mercedes logo on it—the whole scene puts the “motion” in “motion picture.” Even though the rest of the movie stinks, those opening minutes made American Gigolo a hit. And to this day, the only thing anyone remembers about it is the black Mercedes convertible.

Baby Driver, the surprise summer hit from the British writer and director Edgar Wright, is an exercise in style that doesn’t have an idea in its head. Instead, Baby Driver has guns. It has great songs. It has dancing. It has beautiful girls. It has beautiful guys. It has bank robberies. It has a cute couple who meet cute and remain cute. It has Kevin Spacey spitting out bons mots almost as fast as Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Most important, it has cars.