Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Vehicles
Vehicle listing:
(Note: Where a vehicle is linked, there is a sub-page for that specific vehicle).
Max's vehicle - probably an F150 based truck. The plane used by Jebediah (Bruce Spence) is a Transavia agricultural/survey craft, which is unique to Australia. Aunty's vehicle The Cow Car The "Andamooka Buggy"
General Buggies The truck on the train wheels is a 1965 Mack H/D. It was specially modified (axle base width) to ride the rails, as well as all over customisation to give it that "aged and weathered" look. The car towards the end of the movie where all the lost kids and max climb in the boot is a 1959 Chrysler Royal.
Many of the custom vehicles were scratch built, using only the basic shells of the original vehicles. Apart from one Toyota Landcruiser based vehicle I haven't had much more info on this, although someone else believed that some of the smaller buggies were apparently volkswagon based. Kevin, who saw the vehicles first hand at the Sydney Easter Show, offered the following additional info:
"I remember having a close look at two of them, and they were powered by Suzuki 3 cylinder motors, ie from a Swift GA. The motors were definitely longitudinally mounted, so I guess they were RWD, rather than FWD as in a Swift. I remember this as being odd at the time..."
All of the non film pictures which I have online currently are from the 1985 Melbourne Motor Show, where the vehicles were displayed. They were also displayed at the Easter show in Sydney that year, and were probably also put on display at other shows around the country. There must be HEAPS of pictures of these around from these shows, so if anyone out there has any further information or additional pictures which you'd like to add, please just contact me.
Additionally, for some pics of the vehicles on the transport train on their way to the set of Thunderdome, you should check out Squizzy's Home For Old Cars. (Page seems to no longer be online, I will archive here in the future...)
As a final note on these vehicles, it appears that after the promotion work for the film, they were not originally destroyed, but were in fact all put into storage - and apparently remained in storage untouched for many years, forgotten about. Rumour has it that when they were subsequently re-discovered, and at that point they were in fact unfortunately then dismantled / destroyed, there being no likely future use for them at that time. If anyone has any further detail on this (or in particular, photos of them in storage), please do get in touch.