If Dune Characters Were Cars, This Is What They'd Be

The Atreides are one of the great houses of the Landsraad, directors of the CHOAM company, but they’re notably less dickish about it than the others. Sure they’re massively wealthy, unbelievably powerful, and rule at least one entire planet, but they’re chill — at least, compared to houses like Harkonnen or Corrino.

Similarly, Toyota is a massive automotive empire, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the company’s cars. Sure, there’s the Century, but that’s an outlier — most Toyotas you’ll see on the road are Camrys or Rav4s. Even Lexii (Lexuses?), while comfortable and luxurious in their own right, don’t shout about it the way a Mercedes or a Bentley does. The Atreides are old money, and so is Toyota.

Paul Atreides is a rich boy. Sure, the Atreides are some of the better, kinder, old-money rich folks, but Paul’s still not rolling in a Pinto. He’s gotta have something nice, something fancy, something that can win over a rebellious and social-climbing-minded Lady Bird. A Lexus is the correct answer here.

But, when things go south and Paul has to adapt to the deserts of Arrakis, he’s not out of his element. In fact, he almost seems more in his element than ever before. He shall know your ways as if born to them, like the skin of a rich boy draped over the bones of someone who lived their whole life in the sand — say, a Land Cruiser Prado.

Leto, patriarch of the Atreides clan, needs the best of the best. The top of the line model, the most opulent and comfortable. Leto needs a car for being driven in, and nothing below a Century will do.

But while Paul ends up finding himself at home on both Arrakis and Caladan, Leto proves himself a little bit less versatile. He can talk about desert power all he likes, try to make his allegiances with the Fremen, jack up his ride height on an SUV platform, but it won’t change his fate.

Jessica has been Leto’s concubine (no, they’re not just regular married) for long enough that she’s likely gotten accustomed to the good life. A Lexus fits her too, but something nicer than Paul’s GX — she’s Bene Gesserit after all; she’s accustomed to certain standards.

Jessica takes to the desert nearly as well as Paul, but she knows what will work with the Fremen. She knows what superstitions the Bene Gesserit have left with them, how to exploit those to her advantage. She can build off of what prior generations have done, much like how the LX builds off the Land Cruiser’s heritage. And speaking of the Land Cruiser...

Duncan, who dies in the first movie (I warned you about spoilers), is perhaps the longest-lived character in the entire Dune saga. Don’t worry about it. He takes to the desert before the Atreides even show up, integrates with the Fremen — he’s clearly comfortable in the sand.

Duncan isn’t Lexus luxurious, but he’s long-lived and comfortable no matter what the road throws at him. If he’s not the Land Cruiser of the bunch, I don’t know who is. It’s not Leto, I can tell you that much.

Gurney Halleck is gruff, to the point, and gets shit done. He trains Paul in combat, leads the Atreides troops in battle, and even survives the Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen — and, beyond that, lives in the desert as a smuggler. He’s a capable man.

Yet, he’s not without character. Gurney is a poet with the baliset, an instrument shamefully cut from the first of Villeneuve’s Dune movies. Denis, my guy, that movie was six hours long. You couldn’t fit a little baliset ditty in there?

I don’t know exactly what’s going on here but I know it’s not right.

This may be a surprising one, but remember — Nissan does a lot more than Zs and Altimas. It also does a lot more than just its U.S. models, meaning we can pick from the company’s Middle East lineup for some real desert power.

The lives of the Fremen are built around surviving their harsh environment, preserving of water and moving around via sandworm. Why not take a series of cars that are purpose-built for the same conditions? Except the worm thing, I guess. If you have pictures of a Titan riding a sandworm, I want to see them.

I specified current models up at the top, so why does the Patrol get a generation designation here? Well, Nissan makes multiple generations of the car at the same time for different markets. The Y62 is the current Patrol, the most updated and comfortable version, and that fits with Stilgar.

Sure, he’s a traditionalist adherent to an old-fashioned religion, but the underpinnings of the Patrol aren’t exactly modern — We’re talking about an SUV that has sat on this generation for a full 14 years. Still, it’s a more comfortable take on the Patrol formula, not unlike Stilgar’s accepting view towards Paul, Jessica, and the entire Atreides clan.

If you’re wondering why I consistently used the global name for an SUV we also get here in the U.S. in that prior slide, it’s for this — drawing a greater contrast with Jamis, the earlier (but still-produced) Y61 Patrol.

The Y61 is harder-edged, rougher, more capable and less forgiving. It’s not here for comfort, it’s here for capability — it’ll challenge you to an amtal long before it goes massaging you through its seats. Out of the two men who taught Paul the ways of the desert — the two mentors he sees in his visions — Jamis is not the lenient one.

The Terra (no, not old the U.S.-market X-Terra) is a new era of Nissan. It’s not an ancient platform, it’s not an aging engine, it’s not beholden to old religions for which it’s never seen evidence. Chani puts little stock in the story of the Lisan al-Gaib, and the Terra puts little stock in introducing a model in Japan, Europe, or North America before China.

The Terra is smaller than the Patrol, particularly the Y62, but it’s no slouch off-road. Just check out what the aftermarket is doing to these. It shares a platform with the Navara, known desert slayer, so it should be just fine on Dune.

Liet-Kynes is an interesting mix of Fremen and outsider. They’re the Imperial Planetologist on Arrakis, appointed by the Emperor as Judge of the Change, so they must be comfortable within the halls of Kaitain. Yet, they’re a Fremen leader — they sacrificed themselves to bring the Lisan al-Gaib to safety. They walk in both worlds.

So too does the Pathfinder. A family crossover, an off-road SUV — the Pathfinder does it all. Plus, Liet-Kynes was working on terraforming Arrakis into an environment that could hold water to better support human life. If that’s not finding a path, I don’t know what is.

As for the pronouns, Liet-Kynes is male in the books but played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster in the Villeneuve films. I’m splitting it down the middle here.

The Harkonnens are wealthy, industrial, and built their place among the Great Houses through sheer effort. They are, as a rule, very proud of all of this. They want to show it off, make you notice what they’ve built for themselves, and ensure you don’t forget who you saw.

They don’t do this through shiny colors or ostentatious clothing, but through financial and military power. Similarly, a BMW isn’t as showy or visually loud as other luxury competitors — yet, those somewhat subtler looks are backed up by the force of M engines.

The Baron runs everything, so it’s only natural that he should have the biggest, baddest offering from Bavaria’s lineup. Compare and contrast with Leto, a duke generally well-liked by the folks in his employ. The Baron has no such approachability or amiability. If he’s here, you’ve fucked up.

Similarly, while the Crown SUV may well be nicer, the Alpina XB7 shows up with 630 horsepower of German anger ready to smoke nearly anything in its weight class. An Alpina isn’t a car you see every day, and an XB7 less so — if you see it, it means something.

Where the XB7 has some lingering class and poise, the XM foregoes all that in favor of raw, hard-edged aggression. Sharp body lines, eyes angrily narrowed to a slit like it’s focusing all its energy on a single target — the XM is here to do injury to you.

Beast Rabban would love that aggression, as a man who does Genuine Evil in the world. Did you know he killed Gurney Halleck’s sister? Did you know he keeps genuine slaves? Rabban has the sort of malice that the XM works to project.

Feyd-Rautha is a different kind of Harkonnen. He’s younger and bloodthirstier; he lacks Rabban’s bluster and cruelty but more than makes up for them with grim efficacy. The i7 isn’t an X, an M, a something-35i — it’s a new breed, using modern tech to meet a more effective end. It’s also, uniquely among these picks, a sedan.

“Lady Fenring, noting the young man’s poise and the sure flow of muscled beneath the tunic thought: Here’s one who won’t let himself go to fat.” Feyd-Rautha is, canonically, the single skinny Harkonnen — so he’s the only non-SUV here.

House Corrino run everything. It’s led by the Emperor of the Known Universe himself — there is no tier above it left to occupy. Of course it’s going to be the most luxurious, the smoothest, the apex of the automotive world.

The astute among you, though, might notice a link here. Rolls-Royce, for all its luxury, doesn’t stand on its own as an automaker. It’s backed, financially and in production, by BMW — much like the collaboration between Harkonnen troops and Sardaukar zealots to wipe out House Atreides. When I said I thought about this slideshow for days, I was not kidding.

Here, I admit, I’m cheating on the whole “current model” thing. The Boat Tail is a one-off, an in-house coachbuild that went on to become the highest priced new car ever sold. It’s a bit of a stand-in for Rolls-Royce coachworks in general, but it has a deeply regal energy about it.

Rolls Royce is willfully dated in some ways, refusing to bend with time on things like vertical grille slats and hood ornaments. So too is the Imperium, with its rampant inequity. Also, the Boat Tail just looks like a car that Christopher Walken would have a good time in, and I think he deserves that.

Shaddam IV may be the embodiment of the old order, the ages-old imperium made flesh and bone, but his daughter Irulan is something else. She’s Bene Gesserit, she looks towards the future, and she’s even willing to enter a political marriage with Paul himself — for all that’s worth, given that he only cares about Chani.

The Spectre is something new from Rolls-Royce, as the brand’s first all-electric offering. It’s subtler, more reserved in its appearance, but hasn’t lost all the trimmings of that classic luxury — the grille and Spirit of Ecstasy still stand proudly out front. Irulan may look forward, she may be willing to follow the Empire down new paths, but she’s still a Corrino.

I spent so long carefully deciding on each and every one of these car casts. If you’ve got a great one for a character I missed, however, leave it down in the comments. Find some sort of automotive betrayer to cast as Dr. Yueh.