10 Wild Facts About McCormick's Coyote X - Hardcastle & McCormick

[Music] foreign folks and welcome to carstar's 10 wild facts about my cormix coyote X and the 1983 TV series Hardcastle and McCormick fact number one impressively there was only around half a dozen different custom built and or heavily modified vehicles used to portray the Kodi coyote X prototype road race car throughout the whole three-year run of the show that may seem like a quite low number considering that most other car action heavy TV shows at the time went through dozens of stunt Vehicles portraying their main character's vehicles but there is a reason for this difference that we'll get into it a bit later on each season had a designated Trio of coyotes prepared with each one being set up specifically for a different purpose one being the actor driven hero car for close-ups one dialed in for handling for the fast Chase scenes and one setup for jumping off-roading stunts fact number two probably the most common quandary about the coyote X in general by fans is just what the heck is it exactly well the answer is a bit complicated and it's certainly not any regular production model car that anyone could just go out and buy a new off a car lot at any point although the most common assumption across the web these days is that the coyote X was just the McLaren M6 GT replica kit car known as the Manta Montage that is not quite the case but it is quite similar while certainly directly based upon the aforementioned vehicle the body of the coyote X was actually a fully custom-made created design by designer Mike fennel of Mike fennel Restorations who created the original mold for the Coyote's unique fiberglass body the body was then fitted to a modified Volkswagen Beetle chassis fact number three however the Coyote's Design Story doesn't end there as any viewer of the show could plainly recognize once season 2 kicked off the coyote suddenly appeared strangely different than it did in the first season with a significantly wider and more square roof line along with Gullwing doors the reason for this odd inconsistency is that for seasons 2 and 3 as well a set of completely different cars were built to portray the coyote unlike the original cars these new coyotes didn't have entirely custom created bodies and Interiors but instead were built upon a modern production vehicle at the time which was the Dorian dmc-12 however it still took an extensive amount of custom body and Chassis award to convert The Deloreans into coyotes although fennel's Custom Body molds were once again utilized he was no longer with the group at that point so these modifications were now being carried out by a related company called unique movie Cars of Las Vegas fact number four getting into what powered the coyotes while it certainly wasn't a 3D 12-cylinder Ferrari Lamborghini engine that you so often hear dubbed in unfortunately in reality there were a number of much smaller and far less impressive four-cylinder Volkswagen engines used in the original coyotes from the first season the fennel belt coyotes two different flat four VW engines were used which were the type 1 and type 3 that originally had just between 40 and 65 horsepower with a four-speed manual transmission however engines were modified with performance upgrades bringing the horsepower up into the lower hundreds range depending on the needs on the specific builds purpose it should also be noted that these VW engines were not the same engines used in the Porsche 914 as so many websites out their state incorrectly the second and third season delorean-based coyotes utilize their stock in much heavier V6 engines outputting around 130 horsepower to a 5-speed manual transmission even when just stationary or at low speeds you can see that the rear end squatted the suspension down the rear a lot more than the original lighter VW engine coyotes you could also certainly tell just from watching early on in season 2 especially if the stunt drivers had a bit of a learning curve with the rear and heavy delorean-based coyotes as that booty has some serious swinging action going on in the corners for sure fact number five the original jump stunt coyote had the most significant modifications and was built upon a custom tubular off-road buggy chassis instead of borrowing the standard Beetle base some additional modifications included a full roll cage tripled up off-road racing shock absorbers and additional performance upgrades to his type 3 VW engine the vast majority of the jump and off-roading stunts performed were done within the first season of the show with the original jump stunt coyote as the later Seasons mostly just reuse footage from season one for the jump scenes the primary stunt coyote was quite ingenious with this very lightweight and strong tubular chassis as they could be used again and again without damaging much more than cheap fiberglass although they did go through a lot of fiberglass for sure they fortunately didn't actually destroy any of the coyotes entirely which certainly kept costs down for the studio this was actually a fairly low budget show in general and they were always concerned with the possibility that they may destroy one of the few built coyotes on hand and may not be able to commission another build fast enough to replace it so that ultimately resulted in very few actual new Jump Stones before throughout the last two seasons there was actually a delorean-based jumpstunt coyote build as well but was used very seldomly and mainly just for this one street jump scene shown here mid-season three oddly enough fact number six as per stunt coordinator Gary Combs Stunt Driver Gary Hymes was the only person that was able to drive the original Chase car throughout season one this was because Hymes had the car set up with an unusual custom position pedals layout that Combs described as just plain awful this uniqueness in the chase coyotes driving setup did present a problem however since there was only one Chase car at the time with Himes being the one and only person willing and able to drive it so if anything major happened to Himes or the car it could halt production such a situation did occur towards the end of filming the first season during some high-speed stunt driving for a chase scene Heinz lost control of the car and crashed into a light pole busting the car apart by badly fortunately no one was hurt though and they were able to piece the car back together enough to finish out the season it was this incident that really gave the necessary push to create a new set of coyote cars for season two not to mention the difficulties of senior actor Brian Keith that played Hardcastle had entering and exiting the original coyotes as well so necessary changes to address these issues were certainly forthcoming fact number seven after the show ended the original first season jump stunt coyote eventually found its way into the hands of famous Hollywood custom designer and Builder Jay orberg who converted it into this custom show car that he named the tasmobile Roadster Jay was also the designer for the Knight Rider 2000 films which he used a similar front-end design on this interesting creation for those of you who don't know Jay has created some of the wildest off-the-wall custom car Creations that one could imagine as well as two numerous to listen movie and TV cars over the last 50 years or so the tasmo bill Roadster was last listed for auction at barrett-jackson's back in 2010 minus the actual test character in the the back that is interestingly enough the car is still on the Barrett-Jackson website with the status still showing as available as you can see here so it's possible the current owner may still be trying to sell it fact number eight four years after the series ended the delorean-based hero coyote actually had a brief Cameo on another popular 80s TV show Married with Children it was shown briefly in the 1990 season 5 episode 6 of the show and the car was renamed to improta for the scene named by the set designer Richard improta fact number nine the closest thing that you could buy to the coyote car in the Market at the time was the original Manta cars company Montage kit car however that company went out of business around the same time that the show ended back in 1986 and there are no companies out there offering pre-made or even full kit coyote or McLaren M6 GT replica cars at present but if you are a dedicated enough fan to want to build up your own coyote-like Montage today there is still a company out there with the manticar's namesake that still makes some Montage parts and they can help you Source what you need to build up a replica you can check them out over at mantacars.com fact number 10. luckily a number of the original screen used coyote cars still exist today most of the surviving coyotes from the show are in the hands of dedicated fan slash collectors such as the original hero car here some have also landed in museums from time to time such as the delorean-based stunt car that the Volo Auto Museum had for a time but then was sold off in 2011 and is now in the Hollywood cars Museum owned by Jay orberg in Las Vegas you could also go visit the season one Chase coyote as well as it currently resides in the Rusty's TV and movie Car Museum located in Jackson Tennessee well there you have it folks thanks for watching and make sure to hit that subscribe button if you like what you saw here you guys are all great see you next time

Channel: CarStarz

Views: 322,081

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Id: jB7grt8IaVQ

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023