It seems that in order to be a successful muscle car these days; one must first make it in Hollywood, before it’s considered to be “cool” by the masses. If you need an example, look no further than the 5th-Gen Camaro’s role as Bumblebee in Transformers, or Dominic Toretto’s ’70 Charger of the Fast and the Furious films.

The late model GTO never received much in the way of star power from Hollywood, other than a few examples of the car getting destroyed in some of the background scenes of the first Transformers movie. There was also the little-known, made-for-TV flick, The Last Ride, (starring the late Dennis Hopper) which was directed by Rob Cohen, who brought you the first Fast and the Furious and xXx films, and that was nothing more than a rolling advertisement for the now-defunct Pontiac brand.

But someone in Tinseltown didn’t want the Aussie-built GTO to fade away into obscurity just yet, as it makes a brief appearance in the latest Jason Statham flick entitled, The Mechanic. In this role, he plays Arthur Bishop, a professional assassin who specializes in making his hits look like accidents, suicides, or the acts of petty criminals. It’s a remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson film of the same name.

Like all recent Statham films, (Italian Job, Death Race, the Crank films, and The Transporter trilogy) there’s plenty of gearhead-driven, non-stop action with our favorite British actor behind the wheel of whatever car the movie makers decided to put him in that week, and in this case, it’s a 2005 GTO.

Well we say it’s a 2005 model, but in some of the frames, it appears to be a 2004 model (particularly in the burnout sequence), and in others, it’s an ’05 with the Sport Appearance Package. We’re not sure if your author has eagle eyes and they used two different cars, or he’s just losing his mind.

Either way, scratch at least one GTO off the list of surviving cars as it bites the dust when it t-bones a late-model Chevy Tahoe in a convoy of other vehicles that also includes a new 3.6L CTS. We managed to attach the clip for all of you New Age Goat fans below, so if you have a few minutes to kill (pun intended) check it out!

The Mechanic was released in theaters on January 18, 2011 and is now available for you to rent or purchase on DVD and Blue Ray in case you missed its short theatrical half-life.