I remember the tailgate popping down to get the last few inches needed but don’t remember much of the rest of it.
Why would they?
I can’t remember the reason why. but they mentioned it on the TV show Graveyard Cars.
oldtimer-11
Thunder Road tops my list.
Agree the best car movie.
Carey Loftin was the film’s stunt coordinator and responsible for setting up and performing the major driving stunts.[citation needed] Loftin’s resume at the time included work on Grand Prix (1966), Bullitt (1968), and The French Connection (1971). Barry Newman learned from Loftin and was encouraged by the stunt coordinator to do some of his own stunts. In the scene before Kowalski crashes into the bulldozer, Newman drove and performed a 180-degree turn on the road himself without the director’s knowledge.[12]
The 383 car was also used as the tow vehicle in the crash scene at the end of the movie. A quarter-mile cable was attached between the Challenger and an explosives-laden 1967 Chevrolet Camaro with the motor and transmission removed. The tow vehicle was driven by Loftin, who pulled the Camaro into the blades of the bulldozers at high speed. Loftin expected the car to go end over end, but instead it stuck into the bulldozers, which he thought looked better.[12]
- Chrysler loaned four cars to the studio for filming. Some say five, others say eight but our sources across the board say four. Three of them 440 four-barrel 4-speeds and one 383 four-barrel automatic. They were all badly damaged during filming. Director Richard C. Sarafian has said the cars were so badly abused that near the end of filming they had to take parts off the other cars to keep the last one running to finish filming. After filming, they were returned to Chrysler and said to have been crushed due to Chrysler not being happy about the use of drugs in the movie.
And that is why classic car collectors do not loan cars to the movies!