George Miller is relaunching Mad Max with the long-rumored, then long-delayed, and now imminent Mad Max: Fury Road. Miller needed about 25 years of development, including 12 agonizing years after announcing that a script had been written, to get this movie made. And while previous Max movies were filmed in the Australian outback, this one was shot in Namibia.
Here are 10 of the vehicles featured in the film:
Plymouth Rock
Built around the desiccated remains of what appears to be a 1937 Plymouth sedan, this metallic hyena’s mission is to scrounge the wasteland looking for carrion to consume and repurpose. The spikes were not part of Plymouth’s original design.
The Big Foot
It’s a monster truck shoved under the sheetmetal of what appears to be a 1939 or 1940 Fargo pickup. And Fargo, for those scoring at home, was what many Dodge trucks were called when sold for export to (or built in) countries like Canada, Turkey, and, yes, Australia. Riding on 66-inch-tall Goodyear tires and featuring four feet of suspension travel, this beast, according to the official materials, is powered by a supercharged V-8 turning a Turbo 400 automatic transmission. The massive axles are reportedly from a military tanker.
Buggy #9
Because the Corvette wasn’t exported to Aussie Land and was left-hand-drive-only, in the early 1970s, the maniacs at a Sydney-based company called Custom Performance Modification decided to plant a copy of the C3 Corvette’s fiberglass body atop the chassis of a Holden one-ton truck. But because the truck was 22 inches longer than the real Corvette and had a 120-inch wheelbase, the result was, well, strangely proportioned.
Mack
In The Road Warrior, it’s an R-series tractor-tanker that is at the center of much of the action. In Fury Road there’s “Mack,” an R-series wrecker tasked with trailing the action and scavenging the battlefield for precious scrap and equipment. It’s an homage of sorts and its own beastly thing.
Peacemaker
In the mix-and-match world of classic Australian muscle, the 1971–78 Chrysler Valiant Charger is something of a companion to Ford’s XB Falcon that plays so prominently in the Mad Max mythology. So in Fury Road there are at least two Valiant Chargers featured.
FDK
In Fury Road, FDK is a blown V-8–powered contraption to which the filleted body of a Volkswagen Beetle is tack-welded. In the story it acts as part of a convoy guard that throws off flames with fuel from barrels integrated into its structure.
The War Rig
A six-wheel-drive Tatra semi powered by two supercharged V-8s seems big enough to qualify for that last category. The semi cab seems to have been extended with the rear half of a late-1940s Chevrolet sedan.
The Nux Car
It’s apparently a ’34 Chevrolet model. It does feature a turbocharged V-8 that also huffs in a steady diet of nitrous oxide.
The Gigahorse
Take one 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille body and split it open down the middle. Then insert another Coupe DeVille body into the first one and weld like mad. Finally, all that is mounted to a huge truck chassis and powered by two turbocharged V-8 engines mounted alongside each other.
Interceptor
Mad Max would only be Slightly Peeved Max if he didn’t drive the classic 1974 Ford XB Falcon. It’s been beat up, sandblasted, rusted, and left to rot in the most gloriously cinematic of ways.
