The first notable racing film of the 1960’s, The Young Racers (1963), was 32 year-old producer/director Roger Corman’s thirty-sixth feature film and thanks to his economic methods, not one of them had lost a penny. Armed with a $150,000 budget; a script originally about bullfighting; and a skeleton crew, he set out to capture the sights and sounds of the 1962 European Formula One season, visiting Monaco, Spa, Rouen, Reims and Aintree. The film proved to be an international success and in terms of production methods it established a precedent, proving the feasibility of simply arriving at a few races and using the paddock as a backdrop to the dramatic action.

Corman’s distributors, American International Pictures (AIP), had a long history of youth oriented B-movie fare, including such cinematic delights as I Was A Teenage Werewolf and the series of Beach Party films which starred singing heartthrob Frankie Avalon. Given the success of MGM’s well-known Elvis Presley racing pictures, it was only a matter of time before Avalon put down his beach ball and picked up a crash helmet. In the atrocious Fireball 500 (1966), he starred as Dave Owens, stock car driver, singer, ladies’ man, and all-round tough guy, who unsuccessfully treads the fine line between laidback cool and rudeness – proving beyond doubt that only Elvis could make such a potentially noxious concoction palatable. The producers followed this with more of the same good ole boy NASCAR nonsense in Thunder Alley (1967), which starred another singing heartthrob, Fabian Forte (who had also appeared in Fireball 500). Both films prominently featured the work of West Coast customizing legend George Barris, who for Fireball 500 created a replica of Richard Petty’s iconic number 43 Plymouth (supposedly raced by Owens) and a barely recognizable Plymouth Barracuda, whilst for Thunder Alley he modified a Dodge Charger. The latter cars toured America promoting their respective films and were subsequently licensed as 1/25^th scale plastic kits, the sales of which rivaled the box office takings.

Fabian Forte would don overalls once again for the last of AIP’s racing films, The Wild Racers, shot over the summer of 1967 in much the same style as The Young Racers, and featuring action from Formula 2 races at Rouen, Brands Hatch, Jarama and Zandvoort (which were cunningly presented as Formula 1 events to the unsuspecting audience) along with the Sportscar race at Magny Cours. An underrated and stylish piece of filmmaking, it also contains some extraordinary footage, much of which centers around the Winkelmann Brabham BT23 driven by the “King of Formula Two”, Jochen Rindt.

After the successful releases of AIP’s films the floodgates truly opened, and with the gradual relaxation of censorship laws filmmakers could focus increasingly upon unsavory characters and violent action for cheap thrills. “Raw Flesh Against Steel!” exclaimed the advertisements for the “crash-o-rama” flick Pit Stop, which centered around ‘Figure Eight’ racing and contained some genuinely hair-raising sequences. With its grotesque array of protagonists and atmospheric black and white photography, Pit Stop is exploitation filmmaking at its finest, though any picture directed by Jack Hill should not, however, be held as a standard, for few such talented men operated in the milieu of B-movie production. Proof enough might come from the ill-advised viewing of writer/director/star William F. McGaha’s 1968 opus The Speed Lovers, which co-starred NASCAR driver Fred Lorenzon as himself, and placed the duo at the center of a rather implausible race-fixing plot to negligible dramatic effect. Equally uninteresting were John Russell’s dealings with a similar bunch of gangsters in Fireball Jungle (1969) and singer Marty Robbins’ romantic exploits in the artistically barren Hell on Wheels (1967). Stock car potboilers aside, feature-length documentaries also exploited the dangers of oval racing – US cinemagoers could hear the racing philosophies of Mario Andretti and Parnelli Jones in Profile of a Race Driver (1966), or see the remarkable story of stock car hero Tiny Lund – Hard Charger (1969) whilst countless others extolled the daring of the Figure Eight racers and dirt-trackers. Perhaps the most interesting documentary of the period chronicled the difficult first season of Grand Prix star James Garner’s American International Racing team. The Racing Scene (1969) followed the team to the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours, then to Limerock and St. Jovite for the Formula A events, and combined first-rate on-track footage with an uncompromising look at their mixed fortunes.

The proliferation of adventure and espionage films resulting from the success of the Bond franchise led to the inclusion of brief racing sequences in many films during the latter half of the decade, largely in efforts to lend a little additional glamour to proceedings. Examples included the Spanish caper movie The Magnificent Tony Carrera (original title: El Magnifico Tony Carrera, 1968), which opened with an F3 Lotteria at Monza; whilst the denouement of the atmospheric spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic (1968) played out against the dramatic backdrop of the Avus banking in Berlin during a Formula 3 race; and secret agent Stephen Boyd pulled an associate from the burning wreckage of an F2 Lotus at Brands Hatch in Assignment K (1968). Oddly enough Stirling Moss appeared momentarily alongside racing fan and team owner Peter Sellers in the overblown spoof Casino Royale (1967). When asked in typical fashion to “follow that car” Moss does so, on foot – “Idiot” remarks Sellers “I’ll get Fangio next time”. The legendary Juan Manuel Fangio was himself no stranger to the big screen, appearing in two Argentinian productions: the comedy Viaje de una nocha de verano (1965) and the racing drama Turismo de carretera (1968) along with his cameo in Grand Prix.

The big budget Japanese production Safari 5000, attempted to rival the epic scope of Frankenheimer’s film, and featured action from the Monte Carlo Rally along with the titular event. Unfortunately, in spite of being the highest grossing Japanese film of 1969, Safari 5000 (originally entitled Eiko e no 5,000 kiro) was seemingly never released internationally, at least not in its original form. A heavily edited version was released in Europe in 1972 with an advertising campaign inexplicably featuring artwork of Jacky Ickx in a Ferrari 312 B2 at Indianapolis! Viewers must surely have been somewhat disappointed at the absence not only of Ickx in his Ferrari, but of an intelligible plot.

During 1960s the Italian film industry was booming and the film-makers of Cinecitta were notoriously swift to exploit the latest cinematic trends down to the very last Lire. After the release of Winning several racing dramas went into production. The first, Formula 1: Nell’Inferno del Grand Prix (US title: Maniacs on Wheels) attempted to lend a little authenticity to proceedings by featuring none other than reigning World Champion Graham Hill and ex-Ferrari driver Giancarlo Baghetti (who also served as Racing Advisor) as two of the protagonists, whilst the starring role went to Giacomo Agostini, who, rather unimaginatively portrayed a motorbike champion given his shot at F1 stardom. Though his role could hardly be described as challenging, acting-wise Agostini isn’t bad – he looks suitably unimpressed when first shown his new 4WD Grand Prix car – and thankfully Hill isn’t really onscreen for long enough to appear as magnetically wooden as he had in Grand Prix. The racing sequences interspersed footage from the ’69 Monaco, Canadian, American and Italian Grands Prix with staged sequences shot mostly at Monza using F3 cars. The crew also attended the rainsoaked F2/F3 meeting at Albi and captured some exciting shots of the field  slithering through the downpour. Agostini would return to the big screen for another racing asventure the following year, this time co-starring with pop singer Mal in the risible Amore Formula 2. It was aimed squarely at the teen market and opened to terrible reviews and mediocre box-office, thus ending his spell as a matinee idol. Opening later the same year, Le Mans – Scorciatoia per l’Inferno (English title: Le Mans – Shortcut to Hell) would be the third and final racing drama to emerge from Italy during this period. It starred American actor Lang Jeffries as an ex-driver turned manufacturer, haunted by the memories of the Le Mans crash of 1955 and troubled by the young upstart he has hired to drive for him. Footage from the 1970 Spanish and Dutch Grands Prix along with the Italian round of the Formula 5000 Championship was combined with more Baghetti coordinated slipstreaming action from Monza, this time using a variety of Formula 2 machinery, predominantly a Tecno (doubling for a Ferrari 312B in the race footage). With typical Cinecitta resourcefulness and sensationalism, footage of Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver’s fiery collision in Spain, and the aftermath of Piers Courage’s fatal accident at Zandvoort were made integral to the plot – the combination of the latter with a staged accident being a decision of questionable taste.

With the commercial failure of Le Mans the brief vogue for racing films largely ended, and the genre of the ‘road movie’ emerged, which would more accurately reflect the climate of social disillusionment in which they were made, as a series of displaced loners threw off society’s shackles and hit the road. Commercialisation, in the guise of the multiplex cinema, would soon put an end to the era of the exploitation ‘quickies’, just as corporate involvement would effectively end the glory days of the privateer in motor racing. Of course a big budget and decision making by committee is no guarantee of success, just ask the Toyota F1 team, or alternatively take a look at Days of Thunder…

First published in Octane magazine February 2011

The post Big Screen Action – Racing B-Movies 1966 – 1971 appeared first on Dylan Michael.

I mentioned the Piranha a few weeks ago, in reference to its brief appearance in the latter series’ of The Man/Girl From U.N.C.L.E. but as it graced a total of only six episodes its place in the pantheon of spy cars must be considered slight at best. As I recall it didn’t really have any answer to T.H.R.U.S.H.’s autogiros in The Karate Killers, Solo having to poke his P.38 through a gap in the awkward gullwings and fire off a few random shots, as opposed to deploying any fancy hardware. Bizarrely though, according to the designer of the AMT Piranha and creator of the 1967 U.N.C.L.E. special, Gene Winfield, the car was as close to the real deal as any of its contemporaries, the nose-mounted flamethrowers, rear propellers (for amphibious use) and braking parachute all being fully functional. Indeed, given a little more time Winfield believes that the Piranha could actually have been further customised for amphibious use. Other non-functioning equipment also included door-mounted rocket launchers, a laser gun, rocket boosters and infrared TV and radar concealed under the revolving dashboard, all of which makes a certain Aston Martin seem a little under-equipped.

Originally Winfield had been hired by the shows producers to customise a Dodge Charger, which was due to arrive in showrooms that year (1966), but with the project close to completion MGM execs pulled the plug, fearing that having received such strong publicity for their new model, GM might just cut short their contract. As a result the Charger made only brief appearances, in unmodified form, and into the limelight, albeit briefly, would step a truly unique car Winfield was in the process of developing: the Piranha.

Marbon Chemical, a division of Borg-Warner, was eager to promote the use of plastics in the automotive industry, but rather than approaching the Detroit manufacturers with small-scale proposals, elected instead to demonstrate the versatility, strength and durability of their product by constructing an entire car – running gear aside – from it. Racing engineer Dann Deaver, co-founder of Michigan-based Centaur Engineering, was recruited to design the car, and by late ’64 a prototype was under construction, based upon a racing spaceframe and rear-mounted four-cylinder water-cooled Sunbeam engine. The most important element would, of course, be the thermoformed bodywork, made from Marbon’s marvel plastic “Cycolac”, and Deaver’s design did not disappoint, simultaneously appearing both classically curvaceous and futuristically streamlined. The bodywork was moulded in two halves and bonded along a central seam, which was then covered with a strip of Cycolac trim.

The CRV (Cycolac Research Vehicle) Centaur would be unveiled at the Society of Automotive Engineers Convention in Detroit in January ’65, with press releases announcing that the easy-to-assemble kit car would be available for just $3,500, and capable of around 150 mph. It proved such a success that Marbon quickly commissioned Centaur to construct a second prototype, this time to be powered by an air-cooled flat-six Chevrolet Corvair engine generating 180 bhp and raced in the SCCA Championship. The CRV-II was unveiled five months later, this time utilising the Cycolac to create a monocoque tub – a genuine test of its rigidity – upon which the suspension was mounted. The car immediately proved successful in the hands of driver/engineer Trant Jarman, who won the SCCA Central Division Championship in the D-Modified class (though in actuality only one race, at Indianapolis, was eligible!), and apparently proved the strength of the Cycolac beyond question in a collision with an E-Type. Also raced by Centaur co-founder Forbes Howard, the car would latterly be fitted with a roof before disappearing into private ownership. It is yet to resurface, but is believed to reside somewhere in Japan.

Needless to say, Marbon were very pleased with the returns on their investment, and plans were laid to produce road-going versions, to which end CRV-III was constructed and promptly destroyed in order fulfil mandatory crash-testing. The road-going coupes CRV-IV and V were completed in early 1966, once again using Corvair power, and with an unmistakably space-age look about them, but now using fibreglass for the chassis. Both cars were deployed to Europe for promotional purposes, doing the rounds of factories and design houses, number IV vanishing into the ether in the years since, number V being written-off by an employee of OSI design in Italy. The company felt so bad about the accident that they offered to create a replacement for Marbon, which became known as the OSI CRV, and continued to perform publicity duties until being sold to a Marbon employee in the Netherlands who used it in competition. It’s racing career at an end the car spent some thirty-odd years in a barn, but is happily now under restoration.

The success of the Marbon cars attracted the interest of the AMT Corporation, whose Custom & Speed Shop in Phoenix, headed by Gene Winfield, had been developing concept cars with the likes of George Barris in order to promote their kits. Having purchased the rights to build the CRV along with Marbon’s stock of Cycolac bodies and fibreglass chassis, the car was renamed the ‘Piranha’, Winfield was placed in charge of the project and plans were laid to produce up to fifty cars a year. Naturally a racing programme was planned in order to promote the new cars, firstly on the dragstrip, then in a return to SCCA events.

Twenty-four-year-old Fred Smith was tasked with designing the Piranha ‘Funny Car’ chassis, with assistance from driver Walt Stevens, whilst mechanic Joe Anahory took care of the nitro-powered 392 Chrysler Hemi engine, and Winfield designed the distinctive Cycolac shell. With a chromoly frame weighing just 68 pounds and the use wherever possible of lightweight aluminium and magnesium components, the finished car weighed-in at just 1,550 pounds, which combined with around 1,400 horsepower made it a formidable proposition. With a wheelbase of only 120 inches there were concerns that the car would become airborne, but thanks to the clever use of ducting the air in under the nose, and out ahead of the cockpit, frontal downforce was never an issue. Trouble was the Piranha had issues with its competitors, too slow for Top Fuel races, and unlike anything on the Funny Car circuit, the unclassifiable car generated almost as much controversy as it did publicity. But as Stevens and Anahory toured dragstrips across the country, taking on and beating practically all who challenged them, they soon became fan favourites and the car a regular press feature, whilst the heavily promoted model kit became a big hit.

With the ’67 ‘Summer of Love’ in full swing, Dick Carbijal hit the SCCA circuit in the turbocharged racing Piranha, and Winfield completed work on the U.N.C.L.E. special, a kit of which was also released, whilst detail changes to the CRV cars were finalised prior to the commencement of the production run. Things appeared to be going to well, but before the year was out AMT had pulled the plug, and the Piranha was dead in the water.

If AMT’s publicity ambitions for the project had quickly been realised, they soon discovered that it was insufficient ammunition in the battle against falling model sales. Most dispiriting was the realisation that the production costs per hand built unit were in the neighbourhood of $4,000 higher than their target selling price, meaning that their only option would be to sell the cars in kit form. The final nail in the coffin however, would be the announcement from GM that production of the Corvair would cease in 1969, which promised an expensive redesign and the negotiation of a new supply contract. Just four road cars were completed before AMT sold their stock of parts back to Marbon.

The U.N.C.L.E. special meanwhile had proved a disaster, reputedly trundling around the backlot leaving a trail of parts and oil in its wake. Aside from the malfunctioning electrical gadgets, and cockpit temperatures akin to a greenhouse, the high sills made it thoroughly impractical to climb into or out of with any grace or speed, especially in the case of poor mini-skirted Stephanie Powers. The car was soon retired, as unfortunately was the show itself. As ownership of the chassis reverted to Marbon, the bodywork and spyware were removed by Winfield and refitted to an AMT chassis, which was subsequently sold and then disappeared, finally being traced and restored by Hollywood FX specialist Robert Short. The Marbon chassis is now in the process of restoration to road-going spec.

The AMT racer meanwhile continued to be used in hillclimbs and road races by new owner Dick Carbijal until the close of the decade, when after having been sold and converted for road use it sat forgotten in a haulage yard for some twenty years, before being rescued and beautifully restored to its original spec by enthusiast Frank Zucchi in the nineties. Post-restoration the asking price was some $120,000 but thankfully that hasn’t kept it away from the historic racing circuit. The Funny Car, also recently restored, now resides in Don Garlit’s drag racing museum in Ocala, Florida.

Marbon’s body shells would go on to grace a number of VW-based kits into the seventies, after they joined forces with Allied Industries, the run ending with the hideous ‘Seagull’. The body moulds were sadly destroyed when Allied relocated. Dann Deaver remained in the Cycolac car business with Centaur, who had become a research and development arm for Borg Warner, designing the Jeep XJ-002 concept car in 1969/70 and the mysterious Can Am I. Both projects were in collaboration with the Bolide Motor Car Corporation, whose President was none other than Jack Griffith of TVR fame.

As I’ve said before, there’s something about the design of most fibreglass cars that gives them the air of a backyard special, but that simply wasn’t the case with Deaver’s early CRV cars, nor with the AMT racers. Only about twelve cars were completed by Centaur and AMT, and the remaining examples are understandably now highly sought after, even the badly damaged CRV-V currently being under restoration. As for the probably the most prized of them all, it’s unknown whether CRV-I still exists – it was last seen in 1973, being raced by actor James Brolin using VW power in place of the old Sunbeam unit. So James, if you’re reading this – and I like to think you do – where’s the car?!
For more information on the CRV and AMT Piranha please visit Nick Whitlow’s excellent site.

First published on Discoveryuk.com

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Now it may come as news to some people, but once upon a time the Italians churned out films at an astounding rate, and as the famous ‘spaghetti’ western genre began to lose steam, a new wave of action films, known as poliziotteschi, took their place. Taking their cue from the likes of The French Connection and Magnum Force, the poliziotteschi would often focus upon tough cops treading the fine line between law enforcement and vigilantism, brutally thwarting an apparently endless mob of bank robbers, purse-snatchers, drug dealers, pimps, hitmen and, of course, Mafiosi. Now what has this to do with Alfa Giulias you might wonder? Well, as luck would have it a lot of these tough cops, or the baddies they were chasing, drove Giulias – they were ten-a-penny back then and apparently as disposable as spent cartridges – and barely a film passed without several being demolished. Sad yes, but death in action must surely be preferable to a slow and inevitably rusty decline…

Indeed, the poliziotteschi have frozen the Giulia in a period of time when they not only comprised the bulk of the Italian police fleet, but were amongst the most popular domestic cars in production, as is reflected by the fact that the model remained in production for 16 years. The greatness of Giuseppe Scarnati’s design was the simple notion of placing a powerful (1,290 or 1,570 cc) engine in a comparatively light car, which though adhering to the three-box design school, retained a mysteriously low drag-coefficient. This was largely thanks to some very clever aerodynamic touches around the bonnet and windscreen – with its pronounced curvature – and the slight overhang at the rear of the roof, subtle elements which complimented the overall smoothness of the bodywork – no stripes or spoilers needed here.

Handling, as one might expect, was superb, complimented by a five speed ‘box and disc brakes, initially only available on the 1963 racing spec Ti Super – the most sought-after Giulia of them all – but latterly across the range. The Ti Super (Ti being an abbreviation of the racing category Turismo Internazionale) entered production in 1963, and lasted barely two years before the racing department turned its attention to the GTAs, during which time just 501 examples were made. The model featured floor-mounted gear shift (at the time other models had a column shift), three-spoke steering wheel, bucket seats, plexiglass windows in the rear, in addition to which sound-proofing was removed and the bodywork was constructed using thinner gauge steel, all of which added up to a weight saving of 200 kg.

Of course the standard 1,570 cc Giulia was plenty fast enough for everyday use – be it on the school run, as a getaway car or pursuit vehicle – the twin cam engine was good for over 100 mph, as the films attest. Indeed we owe a great debt of thanks to Remy Julienne and his team of stunt drivers, for had they not set about wrecking them en masse – their final moments forever preserved on celluloid – they’d only have wound up rusting in the scrapyards. So if you’ve any doubt in your mind that a boxy car can shift, I’d like to direct your attention to youtube and a few onscreen demonstrations in the likes of Poliziotto Sprint (aka Highway Racer) and La Polizia è sconfitta (aka Stunt Squad).

First published on Discoveryuk.com

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Sadly nobody involved in the production of Rush appears to have reached the same conclusion, and though the resultant film might capture the sound and fury of a racing car unlike any other, what it fails to capture is the speed or skill of Grand Prix racing, in part because it lacks what might be considered a true racing sequence. Where Grand Prix utilises the film medium to its fullest extent in the pursuit of visceral realism, Rush misdirects its audience with a series of heavily edited sensory assaults, none of which lasts long enough to generate any tension from the racing itself. Journalist Simon Taylor, who actually commentated on the ’76 Japanese Grand Prix, reprises his duties here, adding what narrative there is to the images flashing before our eyes, and without him it must be said that even a fan like myself wouldn’t really know what was going on.

Beneath its hyperactive visuals though, Rush is a relatively straightforward biopic, delivering a quick précis of two careers, and exploiting the rivals’ famous differences of personality for ease of storytelling, whilst never really pausing to explore either character. The lead performances – especially that of Daniel Brühl – are uniformly excellent, but I can’t help feeling that the opportunity to explore two genuinely nuanced characters was missed. In reality, as I understand it, Hunt and Lauda were friends, not the best of friends perhaps, but that they remained on good terms at all through a year of such intense competition and adversity is incredible and surely makes the nature of such a relationship worthy of exploration. The protagonists of Rush however display few subtleties, each man having been reduced to his most basic characteristics: the ambitious Lauda with a brittle façade of ruthlessness, whose greatest fear is to find happiness and lose his competitive edge; and Hunt the swaggering, seemingly fearless bon vivant, living for the moment, yet famously prone to tension-induced vomiting before races and whose excesses obviously mask self-doubt.

Perhaps the issue for me is that screenwriter Peter Morgan attempts to cover too much ground, engineering events for the purposes of characterisation, rather than allowing them to be revealed through the extraordinary circumstances as they actually occurred. And it’s very much a two-man show, with Lauda’s wife Marlene popping up to humanise him a little, the supporting cast otherwise having to act like caricatures, especially the other drivers who are portrayed as a bunch of mop-topped half- wits, only Clay Reggazoni being given anything approaching a character – that of a lazy womaniser – though it’s clear he was featured only for expositional purposes.

I must apologise if this review sounds overly harsh, for there is much to like and be admired in Rush, not least Ron Howard’s energetic directorial style, which somehow feels appropriate given the film’s independent roots, lending the story both an air of immediacy and disguising the constant requirement for historical exposition. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography also warrants mention, his innovative use of Indiecam cameras mounted inside crash helmets and on the cars is genuinely striking, whilst his colour palette creates an unmistakably seventies atmosphere, without resorting to the muddy shades of brown we’d usually associate with films of the era.

In spite of my reservations, it’s a pleasure to have had the opportunity to write about a new film set in the world of Formula 1 and the factual inaccuracies one might recognise as an enthusiast are ultimately of little concern, for the average cinemagoer wants only entertainment, not a lecture on tyre wear. The sights and sounds of F1 seventies-style will surely be enough to enthral audiences, many of whom will be experiencing them for the first time, and in the end, as John Surtees said to me at Goodwood, perhaps it’ll inspire a few youngsters to get involved in the real thing, which I guess is what Frankenheimer’s film did for me.

First published on Discoveryuk.com

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The story of “the last American hero, to whom speed means freedom of the soul” was a career-defining success for most of those involved, though Sarafian himself said that the true spirit of the film was left on the cutting room floor by executives keen to make something more commercially palatable. In this, the age of endless Hollywood superheroes and large-scale destruction, the term ‘commercial’ might seem ridiculous when applied to such a film, but in 1971 audiences were searching for something a little less escapist, dare I say, more cerebral, more timely. As the peace and love generation grew disillusioned in the aftermath of Altamont, Kent State and the Manson murders, war still raged in Vietnam, and the notion of a stalwart hero in a white hat riding up to save the day was long gone. Of course the studios had long since cottoned on to the notion of the antihero and commercialising the cause for a fast buck, but Kowalski in his Challenger was unlike any other, for he represented nobody, no ethos or way of life, just himself, and much of what he symbolised to those he met were ideals projected upon him. Betting the price of a bag of speed that he can make it home to San Francisco from Denver in fifteen hours, he is guided on his journey by a blind radio DJ named ‘Super Soul’, who hails him as “the last beautiful free soul on this planet” and helps propel him to counterculture fame. Kowalski though appears more like a bystander to the action, searching the sad images of his past for some sort of meaning, but ultimately finding only the Vanishing Point.

So to Kowalski’s car, the Dodge Challenger R/T, (Alpine) white in accordance with the character’s symbolic status. Five cars were used during filming, each specially prepared for the specific requirements of the various chase sequences, and famed stunt driver Carey Loftin undertook driving duties. Loftin had worked on practically every racing or chase movie made in Hollywood, a list including Red Line 7000 (1965), Grand Prix (1967), Bullitt (1968), along with various Elvis films, and would latterly double again for star Barry Newman in the 20-odd minute chase that opens Fear Is the Key (1972), before driving in the likes of White Line Fever (1975) and Smokey and the Bandit (1977). Having chosen the Challenger for its sturdiness and torsion bar suspension, Loftin then saw to it that the cars were fitted with the widest wheels possible, to optimise traction for the many spins he’d be called-upon to perform, then stripped of their power-steering in order to improve responsiveness. Four of the cars used were 440 Magnum spec with manual gearboxes, the fifth a 383 Magnum with three-speed Torquelite automatic transmission. The latter was used only to tow a ’67 Camaro – doubling for the Challenger – up to speed for the final stunt, the Dodges deemed too expensive to wreck.

The film took just 38 days to shoot, though having run $80,000 over budget, Sarafian was forced to relinquish much of his share in Twentieth Century Fox’s massive profits. Their $1.5 million investment certainly paid off, the film having swiftly passed into the popular consciousness remained there ever since. Naturally there was a remake – heavily sanitised having been made for  television – starring Viggo Mortensen as wholesome sounding Jimmy Kowalski, racing to see his pregnant wife in hospital and pulling off a truly spectacular jump-and-roll. Tarantino couldn’t resist but pay homage to the greatest of road movies in Death Proof (2007), in which the sight of that poor Challenger being repeatedly smashed made my stomach turn in a way that none of the violence in his other efforts has. Likewise Sarafian’s son Deran worked a few references into his enjoyable 1994 action-adventure Terminal Velocity, which starred Charlie Sheen as a wise-cracking skydiver nearly as failure-prone as Kowalski, and proud owner of a very ill-fated white 1970 Challenger. Word is afoot of another remake, one that’s certain to miss the mark again, if for no other reason than that the original concept is so purely existential in its nature, and to give Kowalski’s quest the kind of tangible goal I suspect modern audiences would demand would render the premise meaningless.

Sarafian’s name will live on as long as the film, as long as Kowalski and the notion that the open road can embody freedom, if not a means of escape, for as ‘Super Soul’ laments, “the question is not when he’s gonna stop, but who is gonna stop him”.

First published on Discovery.co.uk 2013

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