By now you may have figured out one of Hollywood’s most poorly kept secretes. During the production run of most major motion pictures that feature cars as a central part of the plot, several different cars are often used to portray the “Hero” car. The most common reason to have more than one Hero car is to protect the shooting schedule. Each minute of shooting costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, involves weeks and sometime months or preparation, and in the case of an intricate outdoor shoot involving stunt driving, may never be able to be duplicated. Image the consternation that would result from the wreck of the one and only Hero car just before a rolling shoot that’s pivotal to the story line of the movie.

Well, sometimes production companies do tempt fate. During the preproduction of the first Mad Max movie it was decided that only one V-8 Interceptor would be built for the filming. The first film in the series was definitely a low-budget enterprise and a lot of corners were cut to save money. If you’ve seen the movie you realize how risky that decision was considering the driving scenes. One source familiar with the production claims that one of the plans to deal with the wreck of the Interceptor during filming was to build another car for Max and write the crash into the story line.

The black V-8 Interceptor started life as a white 1973 Australian XB GT Ford Falcon Coupe. The design crew added a custom “Concord” front end, fender flares, fake supercharger, roof and trunk mounted spoilers, a set of B.F. Goodrich white letter T/A Radials, protruding exhaust pipes, and the Interceptor was born. But the real story of the car is what happened after the filming of Mad Max 2.

When principal filming was completed the car was sold for scrap, although it was in reasonably good condition. Fortunately, the owner of the scrap yard couldn’t bring himself to destroy the car that made the Australian Outback famous throughout the rest of the world. It was stored in front of his wrecking yard in Australia for three years before it rediscovered and started a journey that would ultimately end on the other side o the world in England.