DALE: You can shut the gate on that one Maxie, it's the ducks guts.
COMM: Over 3 decades ago, 50-year-old Dale
Walter from Michigan, set his heart on recreating one of cinemas most iconic cars.
DALE: Mad Max is one of my very top favourite
movies of all time and when I was sitting there in the theatre and they rolled out that
car in the scene in the garage where they first show it to him, I turned to my friend and I said
"Someday I'll own that car" and he said "yeah right". Well, 30 years later I sent him a picture of
me next to the car! It's just so bad, I mean it's just such a bad car!
COMM: But to build the replica of the police
interceptor which is so far featured in three films from the Mad Max franchise, Dean first had
to get hold on an Australian Ford Falcon.
DALE: I flew out to Washington to take a look at it.
And when I first saw it I remember saying “I have
never paid more money in my life for a bigger piece of junk".
COMM: Undeterred, Dean paid over $120,000 dollars
to convert the 1972 Falcon into a convincing Mad Max Interceptor.
DALE: And this is the heart of the car.
That is a 351 Cleveland, its 450 horse power is built by proformance engineering. We spent $12,000
on the engine alone.
DALE: My favourite thing about the car is
probably the engine sound. I considered putting a stereo in it,
but that engine note off that 351/390 is just so choice that I just like listening to it.
DALE: The steering wheel is the Maxrob steering
wheel that was used in the movie and you can see in the shifter it has the lever
to turn on and off the blower. One of the interesting things about the car that I get asked
all the time is, is the blower real? And no it's not, because if you remember in the movie
he would turn on the blower which is the big scoopy thing to get more power to the car.
A real blower can't work like that. The way a blower works is its forced air induction
and if you turn it on and off you would probably blow the bottom out of your engine. So the
way this one works is it's on a magnetic clutch, when I pull the lever it spins up the
blower just like in the movie.
DALE: If you notice here it has the RVS radio
just like the one in the movie had. And what Mad Max car would be complete without your
handy dandy double barrel shot gun? So we have a replica of that here because these are really
illegal even in the United States.
DALE: One of the other features of the car is it does have a movie accurate siren.
It also has a movie accurate horn and like the
car in the movie we have a PA system as a police car would. "Hey you stop, hey you know
you're a turkey?" like Goose says in the movie.
DALE: When I first saw the car after it was
rebuilt I was absolutely stunned, absolutely stunned. It took them five years to do this
but the wait was worth it.
DALE: Well you've seen it, you've heard it, how about we go for a ride?
COMM: The interceptor always turns heads, even on the highway.
MAN: Sweet car!
DALE: You get all kinds of odd looks, you get
either "that car looks familiar" or people whose eyes light up and they go "that's the
Mad Max car!"
CARL: I think it's great, it's a great movie,
it's a great tribute to the car. I didn't see it first, I heard it first!
TIM: The car's pretty cool, I think
the car is awesome actually. It brings me back to when I was a little kid watching the movie
for the first time.
COMM: And the car has also attracted the attention
of some other Mad Max buffs who are keen to get their hands on the wheel.
DALE: I get asked a lot of times would I sell
the car? The car is pretty much priceless to me at this point. Of course there's always
a price. If somebody walked through the door with $25 million dollars I would pretty much
hand him the car.
DALE: You know this was such a dream for
so long. 30 years. To now be sitting here in my own Mad Max Interceptor is pretty cool.
COMM: But for all its big screen bling, Dean's interceptor does have its downsides.
DEAN: I often wonder how it would fair in a post apocalyptic
wasteland and I think not so well. Simply because it gets about 6 miles to the gallon and,
you know, you could tell in the second movie Max added those huge tanks. There's a reason
for that. This thing sucks gas like it's going out of style. So for that reason not so well.