Steve's Rule of Car Chases

If you are looking for real world car chase advise, just move along, nothing to see here.  Other than you can't outrun that cop radio, of course.

Rule 1: The MOPAR always wins.
Many cite the movie Bullitt as the movie with the greatest car chase, a respectable point of view.  On screen, the Ford won that one.  However, when one digs into the filming of that movie one discovers that the Mustangs were heavily beefed up and destroyed performing tasks that the largely unmodified Chargers survived.

In the 1971 release of Vanishing Point, the chase scenes were largely Mopar vs. Mopar, few modifications, lots of jumps, and the cars largely survived.  The police chases begin in Colorado and end in Cisco, California, on screen.  In reality, the chase ended in Cisco, Utah.  The crash that ended the show was performed by a Camaro,  not a Challenger.  If you like chase scenes, that is the car chase movie to watch.  If you like cool music, you might want to check out the soundtrack too.


Vanishing Point (1971) - High Octane chase by geekfemme

Another memorable Mopar performance was in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, where a 1966 Chevy Nova is "swapped" for a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T "440" for the chase action.  It was not a true 440, it was just acting like a 440 for the camera.  It and survived all of the stunts enough to be sold to some guy named Bert, and wrecked by his girlfriend's 13 year old sister.  From there it went to a dealership as part of a trade and was eventually totaled.

To Live and Die in LA is noted by many as having a great chase scene, but if you want to watch a chase through the concrete-lined Los Angeles river you might want to go with Grease instead.  In To Live and Die in LA, they manage to portray all of the traffic on a Los Angeles freeway going the wrong direction, while the movie stars are chased by underworld toughs in the correct direction.  Not much Mopar there either.

Okay, there you have it.  One rule, and one rule only.

Carry on.

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ