I know some people felt a little bit of sadness when Elenaor in the 2000s Gone in 60 Seconds remake got picked up by a junkyard grapple and thrown into the conveyor belt of a metal shredder, especially after getting away from the cops.
When I was a kid, there was an episode of M.A.S.K. where Thunderhawk, the flying third-gen Camaro was destroyed, and I felt it when its driver Matt Tracker was so sad. They spent the end segment of the episode usually used to teach kids safety tips that they had secretly rebuilt Thunderhawk to make Matt happy again, with even his son pitching in.
Dom’s Charger from The Fast and the Furious, on the otherhand, I can pretty much count on coming back even if it was obliterated into its individual atoms, in a future F&F installment.
I felt mad seeing the Mustang get wrecked in the NFS movie
It was such an amazing car, and one that really made me love the S197s
While Ford had a major product placement deal with that movie (which resulted in an early reveal of the not for sale yet S550 in the film), I think they really wanted Tobey to drive a hypercar in the final race, and I highly suspect they really had to talk Ford into letting the hero car get wrecked and sitting it out.
To give you an idea how Ford can get with positive portrayal of their products in films, the Transformers films are a good example. The reason why Barricade was a Saleen S281 was Ford apparently didn’t give permission for the Mustang to appear badged as a Ford in the film as an antagonist or a Decepticon, so using a S281 was a back-door way of getting a Mustang in without being an actual Ford Mustang, or a technicality. When Barricade returned in The Last Knight in 2017, he became an S550 Mustang, but the screen car had no Ford or Mustang badging. More telling though is any merchandise and toys of Barricade sold at the time used a non-screen accurate design that looked nothing like a Mustang, almost like Ford’s legal team said the Mustang design was trademarked and Hasbro couldn’t even use it without any Ford badging.