Driving Mad Max's Last of the V8 Interceptors

It's not a cheery picture....

You wear a leather jacket, carry a sawed-off shotgun and hold a massive grudge against the roving scuzzball 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.



Kick It in the Guts, Barry
OK, it's kind of a dark fantasy. But not all of us want to drive Herbie The Love Bug and hang out with Buddy Hackett. 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 (released in Australia as Mad Max 2).

And it's always better to imagine yourself as Mel Gibson instead of Buddy Hackett.

But really, who wants to wait for an apocalypse just to get a cool car? It's better to get one now. And in Wonthaggi, Victoria, along the land of Oz's southeastern coast, Scott Smith has for the last decade dedicated himself to getting replicas to everyone who wants them.

"They're crazy in Japan for them, almost as much as us in Australia," Smith, 36, says as he shows off the Interceptor replica featured here. In fact, a few weeks after our photo shoot, this car would become Smith's third shipped to the land of the rising sun.

Yes, he has shipped cars to America as well.

She's the Last of the V8s
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.

Smith took more than two years to build his first Interceptor replica and ended up taking several months off work in order to finish it. "The first replica I built was based on a rare XA GT RPO 83," recalls Smith. "I bought it off a mate, it was black, it was tunnel-rammed, and it sort of had the Mad Maxxy look."

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 Duck's Guts
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 — particularly the then-wildly popular vans — look zoomier.

Smith got lucky when he managed to track down, through a wrecker (that's a junkyard in American-ese), an original Arcadipane-built front end. The original molds 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.

After that first car was complete, Smith celebrated by driving to filming locations around Broken Hill in New South Wales and Little River outside Melbourne. Then like a born capitalist, and with a nudge from his friend Peter Barton's authoritative Mad Max Web site, he sold the car to someone in New York and got on with turning out Interceptors as a business.

She Sucks Nitro
We made it out to Scott Smith's just as he was finishing his eighth Interceptor — including two done up to The Road Warrior specifications, which means hogging out the rear of the car and bolting in two specially fabricated, truly huge, "fuel" tanks.

To illustrate the lengths he goes to ensure his replicas are "movie correct," Smith points out on his latest (built to represent the car in the original Mad Max) a small step in one of the rear flares that even the most hard-core fans would struggle to pick up. "I've asked the guys who built the movie car and they just said it was all part of it being different and futuristic," he explains.

He also went to great lengths to accurately reproduce the striking black-on-black satin and gloss paint scheme created specially for the film. "The original painter told me he got a lot of ideas from the GTs with the pin-striping and the satin sections."

For the distinctive, black-painted Sunraysia steel wheels, Smith now replicates these at his auto engineering day job. The classic BFGoodrich T/A Radials are still available but getting harder to source. Smith keeps a set of the fine-cut versions used in the movie on the side for use in displays.

Other custom-built parts include the zoomie side pipes, gold-striped plastic headlight covers and gold MFP "Maintain Right" decals on the front guards. Smith also fits a very accurate replica police radio to the ceiling, which is supplied by another fan who's put his aircraft mechanic skills to good use.

The Blower, the Blower Man
Smith has allowed a couple of personal touches including the tiny "Last V-8 eng" insignia on the headlight covers, and his trademark "Last V-8" number plate he uses as a rolling calling card on all his cars.



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 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 300 horses pushing 3,500 pounds, it's not truly quick — the trip from zero to 60 mph probably takes about 8 seconds — but the view out over that long, black hood and the finned aluminum 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 — but weekend cruises and the occasional run to save mankind from Humungus and his dogs of war are more appropriate.

Then there's the sound. One part V8 rumble, two parts blower whine. Sounds like the devil built himself a hot rod. No General Lee ever sounded this cool.



He's in a Coma, Man
"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."

There's no doubt Smith's cars attract instant attention, but after dedicating a decade to his obsession, he says he's a bit worn out — so it may take some cajoling to get him to build an Interceptor for you. The cajoling starts at about $60,000 (American) and goes up from there depending on how authentic or perfect you want your Interceptor to be.

Of course, if you want the real thing, the actual car used to film Mad Max and The Road Warrior now sits in a "Cars of the Stars" museum in Keswick, England. You'll need a much bigger checkbook to pry that car out of their hands and even then, it may not be as "authentic" as one of Smith's.

Either way, buy yours now and avoid the rush — because after the apocalypse, everyone who's left alive is going to want one.