You wear a leather jacket, carry a sawed-off shotgun and hold a massive grudge against a murderous biker gang that killed your wife, your kid and your best friend. Civilization has broken down, there is no justice beyond yourself, and the Weiand supercharged V8 under your Interceptor’s hood is your greatest weapon and only trustworthy companion.
You’re Officer Max Rockatansky of the Main Force Patrol — the “Mad Max” of Mad Max — and your car is Australia’s baddest 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT coupe. Somewhere out there in the great post-apocalyptic wasteland is Toecutter and his gang of killers. You want them dead, dead, dead.
So you grab the steering wheel, point the Interceptor in the general direction of the ruined Adelaide or Canberra or Sydney or wherever it is that lies beyond the horizon and slam down the accelerator. Of course, your destination really isn’t any of those places; it’s vengeance. Stabbing the four-speed’s shifter into 3rd, you move your fingers to the red plunger strapped to the handle. With the engine wailing, you shift into 4th, pull that red plunger and engage the blower. The car shoots forward with all 600 horsepower and a wail as desperate as your anger.
No-One is Madder Than Max
OK, it’s kind of a dark fantasy. But not all of us want to drive Herbie The Love Bug. Some of us are dark, and there have never been any car movies darker than 1979’s cult classic Mad Max and its worldwide hit 1982 sequel The Road Warrior.
The story of Mad Max is is set in Australia in the near future. It depicts a poorly-funded police unit called the Main Force Patrol (MFP), which struggles to protect the Outback’s few remaining townspeople from violent motorcycle gangs. The film depicts future Australia as a bleak, dystopian and impoverished society that is facing a breakdown of civil order primarily due to widespread oil shortages. (This is not explained in this film but in the sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior). The film introduces a young MFP police officer, Max Rockatansky badge number mfp4073 (Mel Gibson), who is considered the MFP’s “top pursuit man”.
A member of one of the biker gangs (nicknamed Nightrider) escapes from police custody by killing an officer and stealing his vehicle. Max pursues Nightrider in a high-speed chase, which results in Nightrider’s death in a fiery car crash. After the dangerous chase (which results in injuries to a number of officers), the police chief warns Max that the bandits will be out for him now because of Nightrider’s death.
The biker gang, which is led by Toecutter, plans to avenge Nightrider’s death by killing MFP officers. Meanwhile, they bully people and commit crimes such as one with a civilian couple that went escaping to the road after seeing the madness of the gang; the couple is overtaken, then both of them are raped and the car is wrecked. Then, Max and his close friend and fellow officer, Jim Goose are informed about the incident and go to the crime scene. They find Toecutter’s young protegé, Johnny the Boy and the girl of the couple in the middle of the wreckage. And by following the Patrol instructions, they take them to the Halls of Justice.
They are notified for a visit from the Court. Instead of a trial, the judge decides to set Johnny free because no witnesses show up. Since there are no allegations to charge him, they declare no contest for that case. After hearing that, Goose is shocked because of the decision, and starts a complaint that ends in desires of revenge from both Goose and Johnny.
Some time later Johnny the Boy sets a trap for Goose while Goose is attending a show at the Sugartown Cabaret. When Goose’s vehicle is flipped over, the bikers burn him alive. Goose survives, but after seeing his charred body in the hospital’s burn ward, Max becomes angry and disillusioned with the police force and resigns from the MFP with no intention of returning. He takes a road trip with his wife and infant son in the relatively peaceful coastal area north of their home.
While on vacation, Max’s wife, Jessie, runs into Toecutter’s gang, who attempt to molest her. She escapes, but the gang manages to track her to the home where she and Max are staying. While attempting to escape from the gang again, Jessie and her son are run down by the gang who leave their crushed bodies in the middle of the road. Max arrives too late to intervene. His son is pronounced dead on the scene, while his wife suffers massive injuries.
Filled with obsessive rage, Max once again dons his police outfit and straps on his sawn-off shotgun. Driving the supercharged, black Pursuit Special, he drives out to avenge the death of his family. He hunts down and kills the gang members one by one, including the Toecutter. When Max finds Johnny the Boy taking the boots off a dead driver at the scene of a crash, he handcuffs Johnny’s ankle to the wrecked, overturned vehicle with a ruptured gas tank. Max lights a crude time-delay fuse and gives Johnny a hacksaw, leaving him the choice of sawing through either the handcuffs (which will take 10 minutes) or his ankle (which will take 5 minutes), and then drives off into the desolate outback. As Max drives away, the camera shows Max’s car from the front, with a large and fiery explosion in the distance behind it. Apocalyptic Oz indeed!
Building the Authentic Interceptor
But really, who wants to wait for an apocalypse just to get a cool car? It’s better to get one now. And in Victoria, along the land of Oz’s southeastern coast, a gent named Scott Smith has for the last decade dedicated himself to producing exact replicas of Mad Max’s legendary pursuit vehicle – the Interceptor.
The basic building block for any Interceptor replica is an Australian-made, 1973-’76 Ford Falcon Hardtop coupe. The most desirable of these “XB” Falcons is the ‘73 XB GT model that served as the base for the original Interceptor in Mad Max, but virtually any XB Hardtop can be massaged into a convincing replica.
Fortunately for him, much of both films were shot in and around nearby Melbourne and many of the crew members who had worked on them were still lurking about. “I spoke to quite a few involved on the film, including the stuntman, original painter, vehicle designer; most of these guys are still around Melbourne,” he explains. “I spent hours and hours with them, and got the full history of it: how, where, why it was built.”
Even some of the equipment to build the original cars was still around. “I have the full, genuine original molds for all of the vehicles from the first Mad Max,” Smith told the Australian newspaper The Age. “That’s why I can reproduce them fairly accurately…. They’re pretty close. They’re as accurate as you can get. Without beating my drum, I don’t think I could do them any better.”
The Concorde Is Ready For Take-off
A major element in turning a Falcon into an Interceptor is the front nose cone. Designed in the late ’70s by former Ford stylist Peter Arcadipane, the “Concorde” nose cap was made of fiberglass and sold in the Australian aftermarket as a way to make any Falcon look zoomier.
Smith got lucky when he managed to track down, through a scrapyard wrecker, an original Arcadipane-built front end. The original moulds made for creating the fiberglass hood, roof, trunk spoilers and wheel flares are fairly straightforward, but Smith still had to fabricate many things from scratch.
Replicating the car’s signature “fake” supercharger was a particular challenge. In the movie, the non-functional blower was rigged up to run continuously off the engine despite the misleading presence of an on/off switch in the cabin. Smith tracked down an original example of the Weiand 6-71 blower and injector hat and made up patterns to reproduce them.
I’d Rather Be Blown
Then there’s that infamous switch on the shifter that engages the supercharger. It’s really nothing more than a large truck’s differential switch. And it isn’t hooked up to anything at all.
The original Mad Max was filmed on a microscopic budget — there wasn’t enough money around to actually mechanically alter the sole Interceptor built for the film. So the blower never actually worked, and the 600 hp (450kw) at the wheels promised to Max when he first sees the car is strictly fictional.
Likewise the interior, which was modified mostly by throwing parts overboard. So, even though Smith’s Interceptor is mechanically stock and stark inside, it’s authentic to the film car right down to the leather ammo pouch, oversize fuel gauge and passenger dog seat. There are even rips in the seats to re-create the beaten-up look. The original’s Maxrob steering wheel is nearly impossible to find — so a similar Saas wheel is installed now.
When Do We Go for a Ride?
Of course by contemporary standards the Interceptor’s steering is lousy, the four-wheel disc brakes wholly suspect, and that wicked cool tail-up rake makes for a nasty ride and hip-hop handling. But so what? There’s still something inherently thrilling when a large-displacement 351-cubic-inch V8 roars to life. And there are few more primal mechanical connections between man and machine than a big stick stirring a Top Load four-speed.
In other words, driving it faithfully replicates the real thing. Max wasn’t concerned with comfort while on his quest for vengeance, and neither are we. This car is hot, sparse and an absolute blast to drive. With only 225kw pushing 1,600kgs, it’s not truly quick — the trip from zero to 100kmh probably takes about 8 seconds — but the view out over that long, black hood and the finned aluminium case of that supercharger is enough to hard-wire any 40-year-old into his childhood.
Don’t misunderstand. Max’s Interceptor could be used as a daily driver — even if your days aren’t about taking vengeance. Then there’s the sound. One part V8 rumble, two parts blower whine. Sounds like the devil built himself a hot rod.
The Apocalypse Is Coming
“I’m probably a little bit biased with these cars, but how could you improve it?” says Smith, using the term “little bit” in its most ironic sense. “And to think it was done over 30 years ago with hardly any money…it’s just amazing. It’s a work of art.” With these turn-key cars starting at around R450,000, it’s certainly not cheap, and this figure increases depending on how authentic or perfect you want your Interceptor to be.
Of course, if you want the real thing, the actual car used in the Mad Max flicks now rests in a “Cars of the Stars” museum in Keswick, England. Mad Max might have launched the career of Mel Gibson, but it also inspired a million “what kind of car is that?” conversations. It carries with it the baggage of a car-movie legend on the order of Bullitt and the original The Italian Job.
Either way, buy yours now and avoid the rush — because after the apocalypse, everyone who’s left alive is going to want one.
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