The cars of Death Race – Part 2

In part one, we looked at which cars were selected for Death Race, from the 2006 Ford Mustang GT driven by Jason Statham’s hero Jensen Ames to the 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab 4WD wielded by his sociopathic road rival Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson). These primary cars were joined by nine others in the gruesome death races, but plenty more, 34 in total were used by the film’s production crew, each with a price-tag of over £100,000. Think that sounds ridiculously expensive? Read on to find out how the creation of these fearsome road warriors didn’t waste a single penny.

It began with eight weeks worth of brainstorming concept designs for director Paul W. S. Anderson, the production designer Paul D. Austerberry and a team of concept artists and draftsmen before setting up a fabrication shop in Montreal, Canada. Once this was up and running, the team swelled to 50 crew members and the hunt was on for the chosen cars.

Acquisition of the 34 was a mixed bag of dealing directly with the manufacturers (take a bow Ford, Chrysler and Dodge who were clearly happy to be enjoying centre stage in the movie), buying online (the Jaguars, Porsches and Rivieras) and trailing through auto-trader magazines. While the latter sounds seriously mundane for a £40 million Hollywood production, it was still relatively straightforward. That was all about to change with the next stages.

There was no time to gaze adoringly at the impressive array of classic muscle cars and modern American favourites as picture-car mechanic Brian Louis (whose CV includes The Kingdom and the upcoming Fast and Furious) and special effects foreman Jason Hanson quickly started to gut them. Austerberry explains: “We stripped them down to bare metal, then built them from the ground up, doing roll cages, fuel cells and racing seats.”

Once cleared of their electrical systems and more, a handheld 3-D scanner was passed over the car to produce a computer image of it. These images, captured with three optical cameras and three laser sources, were accurate within a thousandth of an inch and helped the team understand how their designs would work in reality. How would the hundreds of parts fit together? Would drivers have enough visibility? These questions and more were resolved using the AndiScan, while also enabling Anderson to see what kind of shots he could get of the cars.