Why do they always have to trash the freaking coolest cars in the world in these kind of movies! arrrgh :mad:
Vin Diesel’s classic black Dodge Charger (or Challenger) … RIP sniff sniff …reaches for tissue
Other cars I cried out in pain to see obliterated:
“Elanor” the Shelby Cobra Mustang in Gone in 60 Seconds
Mad Max’s “V8 super charger” in The Road Warrior
The Dodge Hemi-Cuda in Phantasm II
The red '59 Cadillac in 5000 Miles to Graceland
Christine, the '57 Plymouth Fury
Someone, please form an “ASPCA” for automobiles!!!
The 50 Merc custom that they wrecked in “Cobra” and I will side with you. My all time favorite car and they DESTROYED 3 OF THEM (the flip, the leap from the second story parking garage and the long jumps on the hills)
My mother said she actually saw me wince while I was watching the video. It made me ill
Yea the Cuda they blew up in Phantasm really hurt too…my dad had the same car and I fell in love with it as a child. That thunderous 426 was actually used to put me to sleep in the back seat (dad drove me around…said I had oil in my blood being able to nod off to its lovely heartbeat)
I remember reading in an old TV guide how the Dukes of Hazzard producers had people scouring the country while the show was on, looking for replacements for the many General Lees “killed or harmed while making this program”. There were a couple non-stunt cars that were used for most of scenes in which the vehicle was seen, and those are what make the rounds of car shows today.
I think mockups are typically only used where the vehicle being wrecked is unique or was an entirely fictional mockup in the first place.
Not a movie, but I used to get upset at the opening to “Simon and Simon” every time because they had a shot of a 65 or 66 Mustang fastback flipping end over end. That just killed me every time.
I always thought it was a shame that Steve McQueen’s Mustang got its suspension wrecked at the end of the famous chase in “Bullitt” and he had to spend the rest of the movie in that silly (by comparison) Carmen Ghia.
Fear not, Road Warrior fans. “[Max’s Interceptor] was sold to The Cars of the Stars museum in the United Kingdom and there it sits, awaiting Max’s return.” http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/3423/
…it must have been a Stunt-Car Stand-In ™ that got it in the windscreen in the film
Oh, and of course, there’s a memorable scene in “The Italian Job”, when a sports car races into a tunnel, there’s a screech of brakes and a crashing noise, and its wrecked carcass reappears in the jaws of a bulldozer.
My own car (Mitsubishi FTO) has a claim to fame in this dept: Jackie Chan jumps into one in the film “Thunderbolt” and chases a Nissan Skyline. Both cars end up much the worse for wear. Sob.
There was an episode of Home Improvement when they crushed a rare classic Nomad(?). People were up in arms at the time and the producers explained that they had crushed a not-so-rare-or-classic look-alike.
The Z8 that gets sliced in half by a supersaw in The World is Not Enough was a replica. They had a real one that was driven around and then they made a fake one that was precut for that scene.
According to the car mags I’ve read, it depends upon the nature of the car and how much money the filmmakers are willing to spend. For example, in the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream they did have real Tuckers in the film, but they also made mockups of the cars which were used in certain scenes. For example, the car in the rollover scene is a Studebaker bulletnose that was mocked up to look like a Tucker (a waste of a perfectly good Studebaker, if you ask me), and the car that Jeff Bridges drives in the police chase was, I believe an Oldsmobile with a fiberglas body (watch the underside of the car when it drives through puddles and you can catch steam rising from underneath the front!). The show Nash Bridges has 3 Cuda’s in various conditions. One’s a genuine model and is used for close ups, with the other two being Cuda’s made up to look like the high performance one shown in close ups. These are used for stunts and driving sequences.
The irony in all of this is that thanks to movies like Christine where they did trash a number of Furies the popularity of the cars shoots up dramatically to the point where if someone’s going to use one in a film that gets trashed, its cheaper to build mock-ups and trash them, than it would be to buy the originals and do the same to them. Tucker’s are a perfect example. They were relatively inexpensive cars (in the tens of thousands) before the film came out, now they’re worth close to half a million dollars!
The one I said were strictly customized jobs with not much of the orginal Merc on them. But since I enjoy the leadsled look, it still pained me to see them used so roughly.
Oh and to answer a few questions here
Vin’s street rod in Fast and the Furious was the 1969 Dodge Charger. It was could be equipped with a 426 hemi so it could run in the 12’s and hit 110 on the quarter coming out of the showroom (drool). With the addon’s on that car blower, nitrous and such, Pretty sure it could hit 145-150 and shave a good couple of seconds on the quarter.
Interestingly enough, the General Lee(Dukes of Hazzard) is a 69 Charger as well. So you can see what modifications can do to a car. When I told my friends they were essentially the same car, they told me they would not believe it until they saw it
The car used in the film The Vanishing Point was a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T, with a 440 cubic-inch V-8, and not a 426 Hemi V-8.
Yes it was a real DeLorean. They wanted to go out with a bang so they did destroy one of the many used in the trilogy. I remember reading how it was real
I have a friend who collects beemers. I’ve driven the Z8 and it is simply the finest vehicle one could hope to drive. While I was driving it the first time I managed to pass (back and forth at about 40) a real antique Cobra. Two middle aged geezers shaking the asphalt and afraid to go over the speed limit by more than 10 mph!
“I dinna cry when me father was hung for stealing a pig, but I’ll cry now.”
-Willie
That quote sounds like a weird ad slogan. I can just imagine, a car magazine ad with a stereotypical tough guy (or nonstereotypical tough girl :)) crying over the wreckage of a Shelby. Imagine the same visual style as Altiods ads. Maybe with the subtitle: ‘The tow trucks never made it on time,’ or have him/her clutching a fender and say ‘She died in his/her arms.’ (Cars, like ships, are always female. Trust me. :D)
I’m insensitive and I’m going to automotive hell, where it’s always second gear and no shifting.*
sniff sniff …reaches for tissue