The V8 Interceptor

Look, I was struggling to name this blog, ok? I've been meaning to start one for ages but, as usual, couldn't even get past the blog title. All of the good ones were taken, so much so that at one point I even thought of calling this blog allofthegoodnamesweretaken, but it was taken. All that was left were obscure movie reference types, which seemed a bit too smug, even for me. I needed something movie-ish and yet recognisably Australian. And then inspiration came to me in the form of my model of The Greatest Movie Car Ever that sits on my PC.

The 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT Coupe. The pursuit special. The last of the V8 interceptors.

Or, as most of you know it, the black car from Mad Max 1 & 2. Obviously the car wouldn't lower itself to appear in Mad Max 3 Beyond TelstraDome, and who can blame it?

But I'm not exaggerating when I say I consider this fine vehicle to be the greatest movie car ever and it has held a special place in my heart since I first saw Mad Max 2 back when I was 12 or so. MM2 tied together my two favourite genres - post-apocalyptic and road movies - in a way that no other movie has since. It was also my first exposure to Australia in any meaningful way.

When Fiona and I decided to move to Australia, though I knew Australians fuelled their cars at filling stations and not via bloody hand-to-hand combat on the open road, I was still a bit disappointed. However though I reluctantly had to accept there was almost no chance of coming across mutants in hockey masks or leather clad bikers with foot high mohicans here, the odds of doing so seem to be improved if you go to Tasmania from what I'm told, which is something I suppose.

But I digress.

Although the original Mad Max car is in a museum in England, my home country had pretty much chuff all of it's own that could hold a candle to it, though in terms of looks I always thought the Ford Capri (Euro version, not Aussie) was a decent budget replacement. I owned two and despite managing to combine the unlikely pairing of being both underpowered and tail-happy, I loved driving them.

Yeah, I know. It only looks like a V8 interceptor (hallowed be thy name) if you look at it through a welder's mask and squint, but you see what I'm getting at.

But I digress.

The Ford Capri was the best I could do and both of mine did a decent job, not only as faux movie motors but also as cheap, reliable cars. They were certainly better than the mad as hell Ford Transit van I owned. Deep purple in colour, jacked up at the back, ground scraping chin spoiler (great idea in England, land of the speedbumps) and a dashboard, I kid you not, that was little more than a plank of wood with the instrument cluster nailed to the top. Clearly the previous owner had delusions that this might have been a mobile pleasure palace of sorts judging by the burgundy deep pile carpet he'd plastered across almost every inside surface from the doors to the roof. In reality I think it would have become like an anti-shaggin wagon so he sold it. I bought it because it was cheap, bonkers and went like stink thanks to all manner of highly dangerous modifications that had been done to it. Sadly all those mods meant the thing did about 9 mpg (it had the aerodynamics of a choc-ice) and that, plus the fact some witty fucker would hum the theme tune to The A-Team when I drove past, meant I parked it up and sold it to someone I obviously didn't like.

But, I digress. Again.

Back to cool cars, post-apocalyptic wastelands and mutants.

You know while I think about it, in retrospect, there was probably more chance of coming across fuck-ugly mutants, of either the hockey-mask wearing or mohican varieties, in the wild and wildly inbred areas of Lincolnshire and Norfolk anyway. And as a side note, when I ever I type Lincolnshire, it always comes out as Lincolnshite - I'm not sure if that would qualify as a typo or a statement of fact.

Maybe if society and civilisation crumbles back home in Blighty then by the time Fiona and I go back we might have to fight our way around the country, waging war on carrot-crunching yokels in souped up tractors to get to my sister's place or fighting gangs of marauding savages to get to mum's in Aldershot (Aldershit?). Actually, come to think of it that's pretty much how Aldershot is now, really. I mean, I'm not saying it's ugly but if a natural disaster swept through it then the headlines would be something like Hurricane Hits Shithouse Town, with a byline of does £2m of home improvements. Old joke but oh so very, very true.

But I digress. I do that lot. Maybe I should have called the blog butidigress.

Nope. Just checked. Taken. Ho hum.