History of FURY ROAD INTERCEPTOR

Hello and Welcome, today I'll be talking  about the history of Fury Road Interceptor [Music]   One minute and 24 seconds. That's how long we got  to see Max's Interceptor in Fury Road before it   got blown up. But the history of this car is way  longer goes at least 20 years back and I'll tell   you all about it. So let's start by answering  the most important question: what is this car   even doing in Fury Road? I mean it blew up in Mad  Max 2, right? Well Max's original Pursuit Special   got destroyed in the second film and right after  it blew up Max started building himself a new one.   Why? Well, Max is hopelessly stuck in the past  and the car is just part of his identity. [Music]   And George Miller had the idea for Max to  be building himself a new car for a very   long time. It goes all the way back to the 80s  when he wanted to make a whole TV show about it!   In 1987, two years after the release of Beyond  Thunderdome George Miller was working on a Mad Max   TV series starring Jon Blake as Max. And according  to Mark Sexton that show was about Max doing jobs   for people in the Wasteland in exchange for parts  for his new Interceptor. Back in the 80s after   Thunderdome, George was actually considering  doing a television series about Max where he   was actually literally going out each week in an  episode doing jobs for people in order to actually   get bits of the Interceptor back. To be able to  rebuild the vehicle. And of course that show was   never made but the idea for a Mad Max TV series  came back in 1996 and according to Mark it's   entirely possible that the premise of that show  was just the same. But again that TV show from '96   was not made either because George Miller decided  to make Fury Road instead. A film that literally   opens with Max and his Interceptor back on the  screen. And he still wanted to show us how the   car came back except now in a movie tie-in game  that he was making with Corey Barlog back in 2008.   And the game never came out but George would  finally show us how the car was put together in   the 2015 Fury Road tie-in comic books written  by himself Nico Lathouris and Mark Sexton.   Except he had only one story explaining how Max  got the final piece of the car. The engine itself,   so Mark Sexton stepped in and filled in the  rest of the backstory which went like this:   After Max's car blew up in the second film  he immediately started building himself a new   Interceptor. He scavenged for parts or earned  them by hiring himself as a bodyguard a miner   or an assassin and that's all we really get from  the comics and I know you'd like to know how Max   found himself an XB Falcon shell so I asked  Mark you know and he said that Max probably   found it in a half buried salvage yard so I guess  that's canon now too. So the building process   started right after Mad Max 2 and it took years  because as it turns out Max was using his Camel   Wagon from Beyond Thunderdome to move car parts  for his new Interceptor. Which means that Max's   new black on black is canonically somewhere off  screen when Beyond Thunderdome is taking place.   And by the way - the original script for Beyond  Thunderdome shows that Max's camels were loaded up   with a bunch of car parts they just never filmed  it so maybe George Miller wanted to show that Max   was building a new car in Beyond Thunderdome?  Who knows? Anyhow the first time we see Max's   new Black on Black is in the comic books that take  place after Beyond Thunderdome and approximately   two years before Fury Road. And Max was building  his car for over 15 years at that point but the   car is missing the engine so Max goes to Gastow,  he wins the engine in a Thunderdome fight and then   the Buzzards steal both the engine and his car  and then put it together and Max steals it back   from them. So technically the new Interceptor  was finished by the Buzzards. You know he's   capable enough of putting the stuff together  himself all with help but yeah the engine might   be Beyond his ken I don't think we have really  figured out how that was going to work because   we didn't have to. The next time we see Max's car  is two years later at the beginning of Fury Road And the car looks rough I mean it's  all rusty the rear tire is busted it's   littered with what appears to be a bunch  of junk and the engine barely runs and   spits black smoke it's only a shadow of the  original black on black, so what happened?   In short whatever happened to Max in those  two years turned him into a feral animal he   stopped taking care of himself and his vehicle  by extension. We might learn what happened to   him from a prequel called The Wasteland which  shows a year of Max's life leading up to Fury   Road and that story is apparently very bleak  and it might explain why he decided to run   away from all people. But no matter how far he  runs the voices in his head always catch up. So at the beginning of Fury Road  Max is planning something sinister.   According to script co-creator Nico Lathouris, Max  at the beginning of Fury Road is planning to go   across the Plains of Silence. Or in plain English  he's going to drive out into the dried out ocean   away from all people and hopefully the voices  in his head. He wants to end his suffering and   he really is that desperate. And it's exactly  why he turns the Vuvalini around later in the   film. They're just about to drive out there into  this nothingness but he won't let them because he   knows what's out there. 160 days right that way  there's nothing but salt. But Max in his delusion   thinks that he's prepared. He even has a crab trap  in the back of the car in case he stumbles upon   some water but in reality the car is just too  clapped out. It's too damaged for the trip and   it's definitely no match for the War Boys in their  shiny and chrome vehicles. So they run him down   in a place called Powder Lakes as it says on his  back tattoo and just like that Max's new Pursuit   Special gets destroyed and his plan gets foiled  just one minute and 24 seconds into the film.   So let's take a look at all the vehicles  they used to bring this car to the screen.   The year is 2001. And George Miller is ready  to shoot the first version of Fury Road in   Namibia and for that he's gonna need some  Ford Falcons to build a new black on black.   I managed to track down three people who sold  their Ford hardtops for that version of the film   and they were Roy Anderson Paul Spanna and Jamie  Beyer. Let's start with Roy. He sold his jet black   Ford Falcon XB 500 Hardtop in September 2001 for  an undisclosed price straight from Chatswood in   New South Wales. Unfortunately nobody really knows  what happened to this car after it was sold for   the film. The second one was owned by Paul Spanna.  It was a green 1973 Ford Falcon XA 500 hardtop   and the papers proved that it was a special  edition Superbird with a 351 V8 and Paul owned   it for only two years before selling it for the  movie. And this car actually made it to Namibia.   The last car is their hero of this story. It  is a light blue 1976 Ford XB Fairmont hardtop   owned by Jamie Beyer and it was a project car  that started out as a bare shell bought from   Wollongong and Jamie built it using the engine  transmission differential and wheels from his   other Falcon this black XC sedan and the engine  was a NASCAR 351 turned into a 383 Stroker with a   twin mandrel exhaust and a four-speed 28 spline  toploader transmission and Jaime told me that   it was a great car but he just kept getting  pulled over in it so you know eventually he   got tired of it and he put the car up for sale  and immediately Fury Road's production wanted   to buy it. The car was eventually sold for nine  and a half thousand Australian dollars in January   2003 and it was shipped to Namibia where its long  life as the Fury Road's Interceptor would begin.   The green Falcon and the light blue Fairmont went  to Namibia between September 2002 and March 2003   and landed in the hands of Fury Road's Chief  mechanic Australian Mark McKinley and South   African fabricator Alex Wheeler the owner of  Apocalypse Mechanical Monsters. Their task was   to turn those cars into quote unquote The Other  Interceptor as in the Pursuit Special built by Max   himself and to build it they would use fiberglass  kits made by Scott Smith back in Australia. He   made enough parts for four Interceptors and he  even filmed an instructional video showing how   to install those kits and everything seemed  to be right on track but after about 10 weeks   of work the production of Fury Road stopped. The  Iraq War had broken out on March 19 2003 and the   film lost 25 percent of its budget overnight and  then restrictions prevented from shipping vehicles   to Namibia so the entire production of Fury Road  collapsed just six weeks before planned filming in   May 2003. After hearing the news Alex Wheeler  quickly mucked up an Interceptor using Jamie   Beyer's light blue Fairmont and a fiberglass kit  so he installed the rear tanks zoomies put on the   Simmons wheels from the green hardtop and painted  the whole car flat black. And it should give you a   rough idea of what the car could have looked like  in the film back in 2003 but it was time to leave.   The production packed one 20-foot container full  of equipment and parts and they sent it all back   to Australia. The green Falcon was sold to a  local in Namibia who kept nagging one of the   production guys about missing parts for months  whereas the Interceptor mock-up was brought back   to Australia and put in Canal Road film storage  facility where it stayed for four years waiting   for his debut on a big screen. And debut it did -  except on TV. In late 2007 an American Ad Agency   Goodby Silverstein and partners were hired to  make a TV commercial for the Commonwealth Bank   of Australia. The commercial was supposed to  show Australian icons so obviously they went   looking for a Mad Max Interceptor. Sure enough  they found one. The actual mock-up Interceptor   from Namibia that was sitting in storage for four  years at that point so they went to work on it.   Then during Christmas of 2007 George Kritty a huge  Mad Max fan managed to snap a bunch of pictures   of the car before the ad went on TV and the  Interceptor was modded with a couple of 50 gallon   oil drums in the back uh vintage code 3 amber  light bar and it got a fancy graphic on the doors   and also a really cool set  of mesh headlight covers.   The commercial aired on January 28 2008 and  you got to trust me the car is in this ad.   You can barely see it. So after the ad the  Interceptor was put back in storage for   another 20 months until the production of Fury  Road started once again in September of 2009.   Kennedy Miller Mitchell once again started  looking for new vehicles and people that   would work on them and this is where the main  character of this story comes into the picture   Cameron Manewell the man who built the Interceptor  for Fury Road. Cameron specializes in rebuilding   old Falcons and creating Interceptor replicas,  he was approached by Fury Road's vehicle buyer   Laurie Faen who only wanted to buy a couple  of Falcons from him but then he noticed his   Interceptor replica just sitting outside of his  workshop and then he realized that he probably   found the right guy to build the cars for the  film. And Cameron also owned a sandblasting   business which is very useful in creating bare  metal cars for Fury Road so offering him the   job was a no-brainer. And Cameron accepted,  he became one of the first car builders on   the film in mid-september 2009 and helped set up  Workshop in Villawood in Sydney. There were only   a couple of vehicles in the workshop back then but  George Miller was eager to announce the production   of Fury Road so Cameron's first task was to  prepare an Interceptor for the TV announcement.   So they brought out the Interceptor from Canal  Road and gave Cameron a week to fix it up for   the cameras. So Cameron threw out the rear tanks  removed the light bar and he ran out of time.   The car was shown to the world at the press  conference but it was half covered with tarp   to hide all the crimes and the moment TV cameras  stopped rolling the car was just dragged right   back into the workshop. And so the construction  of Fury Road Interceptor would begin for real. Three vehicles were used to create it for the  film. The Original 2003 mock-up Interceptor with   its long history - this would become the hero  car designated as car #100. And the second car   was marked car #101. This was meant to be a clone  of the hero car and it was going to be used for   the main stunt and it was based on a 1974 Ford  Falcon 500 which was bought from Brisbane for 14   000 Australian dollars and it came with a  351 from a 1981 Ford Bronco and it had a C4   transmission and it also ran on LPG so that  whole gas installation had to go in the bin.   The third car was marked 102 and this  was a prop car essentially it was a   rusty shell of a Ford Falcon GS that was  meant to be dragged on the roof towards   the camera after the rollover stunt and  later Max jumps over it in The Citadel Fun fact there's a cameo in this scene: the guy on  the right this is Matt Gatt and he was the head of   the steel fabrication department on Fury Road.  This shell had no engine no transmission it was   way beyond repair and it was sitting on top of a  shipping container for months in Queensland before   it got bought for five thousand dollars to which  Cameron said that it was way too much. Cameron   claimed a small area in the back of the workshop  lined up all three cars stripped them into bare   shells and started assembling them side by side  into three matching Interceptors. but he was not   given any kind of concept art to follow the car  was basically up to his own interpretation which   was strange because most other vehicles had years  worth of artists renderings and some even were   built as scale models but not this one. Cameron  was just told to build a car like a Mad Max 2   but rougher and that's exactly what he did keeping  in mind that it was supposed to be a car built by   Max with limited resources so it was going to be  a little bit different from the one in Mad Max 2.   The first difference was under the bonnet - the  original Pursuit Special had a manual transmission   but Max's new black on black is canonically  an automatic and that's mainly because the   hero and the stunt car had Ford C4 automatic  transmissions and they're very reliable and   easy to maintain so you know they fit the logic  of the Wasteland as well. Cameron also installed   the correct throttle cable on the supercharger  which is something that was missing in Mad Max   2. So does that mean the supercharger was fully  functional? "That one must be really supercharged   though that one actually is supercharged" It  was installed above the air filter and connected   directly to the engine so there was no way of  turning it on and off just like in Mad Max 2. Although the car did have the correct blower  switch inside but it's never shown in the film.   But the main difference was that the engine in  Fury Road was supposed to be barely running and   to achieve that effect Andrew Rickard installed  ignition interrupter that made the engine choke   on startup combined with black powder that was  stuffed in the exhaust that shot up in the air   you know when the engine was turned and then in  post-production Mark Mangini, the sound editor   added a very subtle splutter and detuned the  engine to convey how down on his luck Max is. The   Interceptor had to have the iconic set of tanks in  the back but to keep it different Cameron decided   to give it just one tank. It was fabricated  by George Kritty, yeah the same man who took   pictures of the hero car in Canal Road storage.  George got access to the Interceptor wreck back in   2002 where he measured the only remaining tank and  it turned out that it was custom made from thin   steel so it was about as real as the blower and  the fuel caps and gauges were sourced from 1960s   double deck buses but to hold the caps down the  springs were supposed to be installed vertically   not horizontally. And that created a design flaw  that made the caps flip open when the car was   driving and you can actually see that in Mad Max 2  right here. So George Kritty made three copies of   the original tank but also fixed the cap issue  for Fury Road. The hero car and the stunt car   were equipped with Scott Smith's original 2003  fiberglass kits and one of those kits was then   copied and put on the third car which also got a  fake fiberglass C4 transmission and a 9-inch diff.   Then Cameron removed all stainless trim from  the cars to give them a rugged look and decided   to give the car just one left headlight and a  broken headlight cover on the other side. The   cover is broken in the shape of Australia which is  a little easter egg by Cameron who smashed through   half a dozen of perspex covers just to achieve  that effect. He got five sets of new functional   zoomies so he threw out the rusty ones that were  just spot welded into place and installed the new   ones on all the cars. And then at one point Colin  Gibson approached Cameron to make a list of parts   that make the Interceptor and that list was  for a tie-in Fury Road game that was supposed   to show how Max built this car. So Cameron made a  list of essential Interceptor parts and suggested   to remove the rear spoiler from the car to make  it a rare collectible item in the game so that   part was removed from the car but Cameron left  the visible outline where it's supposed to go.   The problem is that the game was never completed  so the film car is now missing the rear spoiler.   Cameron did all the bodywork that included  rotating the side marker lights on the hero car   by 90 degrees because it was a light model XB and  he also fixed all the holes from LPG installation   on the stunt car and then he matched all the rust  holes in the lower panels on all three vehicles.   He also painted the cars himself with satin black  paint but they did not have a spray booth in the   workshop so he waited till everyone went home and  then he painted the cars at night and the doorway.   He worked on the interiors as well he matched  the dashboards steering wheels installed the   blower switches everything and he turned  the passenger seat from the hero car into   the driver's seat on the stunt car he also  changed the wheels from those to those.   In short Fury Road's Interceptor had bigger rims  because it's easier to get tires for them which   is also in line with Wasteland logic. And of  course he gave the car a rag tire. He came up   with the basic idea which meant stretching a  narrow tyre over a 10 inch rim filling it with   rags and then he drilled holes in the rim and  then effectively tied the tire to the rim and   those wheels were fully functional and he made  one for each car. he did a ton of work on the   cars before people from other departments even  showed up so once the props team came in he gave   them the rag tires to make him look nicer and  more functional. And then they just stared at   him all confused because Cameron was not supposed  to be doing any of that! He wasn't supposed to be   painting the cars or fit the interior or work on  the props or any of that but that was his first   time working on a movie car so he just was not  familiar with the entire process that involved   other departments that worked on different areas  of the car so he took on four other people's jobs.   After the vehicles were more or less mechanically  finished they were handed over to the special   effects department to install the nitrogen  flipper arms and special effects rigs.   Now the idea was to hide the flipper arms so they  would retract after launching the car and Cameron   would cut and weld zoomies onto them for a cleaner  look. Those arms were tested on two vehicles:   one was Cameron's own XB Sedan painted with MFP  colors except for the doors that he didn't have   paint for that and then the other one was an  XC Sedan that was tested in Namibia. The third   prop car was connected to a hydraulic arm on a  truck called Rosie that basically held the car   upside down on a stick and just dragged it on a  roof to a complete stop in front of the camera.   The vehicles were towed to Broken Hill for testing  and further refinement and were handed over to   Art department and Scenic artists to receive the  final touches in 2010. Around the same time John   Platt did a photo shoot with the cars in their  almost finished state and one of the pictures   you can actually see a quadruple shotgun in the  Interceptor which is the same weapon that's being   held by one of the elevator guards at the end  of the film and that made some people think that   it was Max's weapon that got stolen from him but  the gun was put in the car by the Art Department   because they thought it would just look cool in  the photos. Then the production of Fury Road moved   to Namibia in 2012 and one of the first scenes to  be filmed was crashing the Interceptor Guy Norris   took it upon himself to do the stunt. He started  his career as a stunt man on Mad Max 2 so it was   only fitting that he does the final stunt in his  career in a Mad Max film. So first he did a dry   run, the cameras were set and rolling so Guy  got in the car and he did the stunt himself. And I'd love to tell you that the hero car of  this entire video you know the Interceptor from   the original version of Fury Road that lived  all those years and you know survived so many   things that that car made it out alive  but unfortunately that is not the case.   You see the car that Guy Norris rolled  was not the purpose-built stunt car. He   crashed the hero car and he used it because it  just had a more powerful engine. It had a 383   stroker as opposed to a 351 from a Bronco.  So I think you know it's a bit of a shame   that this piece of history got destroyed but  you know what can you do it is what it is.   After the crash the car #102 was dragged across  the sand on a roof and they filmed it in a way   that allowed for a seamless transition between  the crash footage and Max crawling out of the   car which created an impressive continuous shot.  And what's interesting is that this worst version   of the Interceptor that one actually survived  filming and came back to Australia which is where   they filmed the scene in The Citadel with Max  jumping over it. As far as the car #101 the Clone   stunt car well it left Namibia and went on an  extensive promotional tour all around the world. [Music]   It got a bit dinged up in the process because  people treated it kind of like a piece of junk   which to be honest it kind of it does look  rough but the car is still around and who   knows maybe the story doesn't end here? Maybe  we'll see the car again? Only time will tell. And that is it. That is the history of Fury Road's  Interceptor or at least most of it. I still you   know haven't talked about why this car keeps  getting destroyed in a lot of Mad Max stories   but I think that topic deserves its own video.  So having said that - a huge thank you to Cameron   Manwell for providing me with a whole bunch of  information pictures and stories he even taught me   how to read VINs you know vehicle identification  numbers for old Falcons which became really useful   in making this one. And also a huge thank you  to Aaron O'Deneau, he is a really talented 3D   modeler who provided 3D models that you saw in  the video and you can check out his work down in   the description there's a link. So if you enjoyed  the video, leave a like leave a comment subscribe   hit the bell all those things and I'll see you in  the next one. Until then - Stay Shiny and Chrome!

Channel: Mad Max Bible

Views: 1,175,206

Keywords: mad max, interceptor, fury road, road warrior, pursuit special, ford falcon, ford falcon xb, australia, car, automotive, history, behind the scenes, mel gibson, tom hardy, george miller, mfp, main force patrol, postapocalypse, fallout, supercharger, wasteland, weekend, mad max game, 2015, comic book, engine, transmission, racing, auto, vehicle, wheels, africa

Id: qERJ8vaVB4s

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023