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A battered Dodge Challenger sat forgotten in an Australian garage for years, its owner unaware of what he had until he saw the same car in a movie trailer. It is a 1971 dressed as a 1970, built to survive one of the most dangerous practical stunts of the 2000s, with reinforced door frames welded on so a stuntwoman could ride the hood. Read on for how it was built, how it was found, and what a screen-used car is really worth.
A matte black 1970 Chevrolet Nova built as an almost exact replica of Kurt Russell’s villain car from Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof rolls through a cruising night in Helsinki, Finland — and the burnout that follows makes clear why the exhaust note mattered as much to the build as the paint job did. Nearly two decades after the film’s release, the car is still instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen it.
Seven identical 1970 Dodge Challengers were built for a single Quentin Tarantino stunt sequence, and most of them did not survive the shoot in driveable condition. One of the survivors now lives in Finland, legally registered, dents and all. It was never even the most dangerous car on that set. Read on for how a purpose-built stunt car ends up street-legal on the other side of the Atlantic decades later.