Examination of the 'Cannon Car' (Number 46)

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What happens here

The discussion moves to a third 'Days of Thunder' car, a heavily damaged shell, numbered 46 with 'SUPERFLO' sponsorship decals, that was specifically used for stunt work involving explosives. Randy confirms that this was a 'cannon car,' designed to be launched into the air during crash scenes. The car's severely mangled state, with its rear end completely missing and a makeshift tow rig in the front, is a testament to its explosive role in the film.

Goal: Understand the purpose and construction of the 'cannon car' stunt vehicle

Tools and materials

Days of Thunder 'Cannon Car' — The stunt car used for explosive scenes, heavily damaged

What they say

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Let's take a look at it. But that's what's left of one of the flip cars. Wow. So, is this one that would have had the pyrochnics in it to launch it into the air? Yeah. So, a friend of mine, Robbie, worked for Hendrickk, uh, when they were filming, and they ended up with one of the cars back there. I guess the cannon was behind the driver's seat, and then this car, the cannon was actually set kind of back here where the pool side was, so it was all back here. I found like B-roll footage of the car when they shot it off, and they towed this car behind another car. So, if you watch the B-roll footage, there's a Richard Petty 43 car towing this car down. It was a airport down there down a runway and you can see the 43 car lets this car go and it rolls about 20 ft and just basically explodes. Is that why the whole back is gone now? Yeah. Yeah. As the car flips over, you can see, you know, there's nothing left of it. All you see is like bent up trailing arms and and they cut for some reason they they're like hollowed out the back of this the huh third member there and when the car flashed through the air you can see that all cut out. There's a crankshaft in here. The dash says Oldsmobile. Do you know what what the past life of these chassis were before they were movie cars? They were all bought. I've heard a lot of them come out of Bud Moore's shop. I've heard a couple of them came out of Hilton shop. So that says Swisser Sweet Oldsmobile on there. So that's It had to been an old Roboso Oldsmobile before they cut it up and put the Chevy body on it. Still got the tow rig up front. Nice engine. Yeah. You going to fire that up again or what? Great. You can probably grill something in there pretty easily. So I guess it was made so when the charge went off and the car flipped forward like that would dig into the ground and flip the car over. Oh, that makes sense. So, where did you pull this one out of? Uh, Chznney. I was up sitting behind a guy's property in Chznney in a giant field full of studio bakers. What happened to these cars after the filming was done? Did someone go to amusement parks or like why why South Carolina? Well, they all didn't go to South Carolina. It's just my shop is in South Carolina. Oh. So, some of them I did before we left. Some of them I did at different racetracks in different like Daytona and then we went to Darlington and stayed for a long time and they actually ran

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