Cars
The cars in the Transcontinental Road Race each have a specific theme.
- Nero the Hero - Roman. The car, a Fiat 850 Spider resembles a lion (the historical Nero threw his enemies to the lions). Nero is the first destroyed when he runs over a booby-trapped doll planted by the Resistance, which he mistakes for a real baby. His Navigator is named Cleopatra.
- Matilda the Hun - Nazi. The car, "The Buzz-Bomb" (a modified VW Karmann-Ghia) resembles a V-1 flying bomb. She drives off a cliff while obeying a fake detour set up by the Resistance. Her navigator is 'Herman the German' Boch.
- Calamity Jane - Cowgirl. The car resembles a bull and runs over a matador. Her navigator is named Pete, who is run over by Matilda while fixing Calamity's car. Later she fights off a half-hearted attack by the resistance which is meant to drive her to a car wrecking lot where they have a landmine set to blow her up. Initially thwarting the attack and missing the landmine, Jane drives over it while escaping the area.
- Machine Gun Joe Viterbo - Gangster. The car has a mounted knife and machine guns on his car. He is the last racer to die (killed by Frankenstein's "hand grenade").
- Frankenstein - His car (a Shala Vette by Dick Dean, known as "Gator's Car") resembles a monster with red eyes, scales and teeth. He is the sole survivor of the race.
Many of the cars were re-bodied VWs and a few were sold after the film to museums for more than it cost to make them, according to Roger Corman.
The car seen in the epilogue is a Sterling Nova.
Read more about this topic: Death Race 2000
Famous quotes containing the word cars:
“When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I looked, there was nothing to see but more long streets and thousands of cars going along them, and dried-up country on each side of the streets. It was like the Sahara, only dirty.”
—Mohammed Mrabet (b. 1940)
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)