PHOTOS First look at Mad Max: Fury Road vehicles

George Miller’s much-anticipated Mad Max: Fury Road is set to begin filming in early 2011. The cast for the project includes Tom Hardy as Mad Max Rockatansky along with four of the “five wives:” Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Adelaide Clemens, and Teresa Palmer. (Sorry – Mel Gibson will not be reprising his role. Apparently the production company balked at having to rename the project Abusive Racist Insane Max: Fury Road.)

But if you tell yourself you are a man’s man like I do then you don’t care about the people in the movie, all you care about are what kind of post-apocalyptic junkyard vehicles are going to be racing, crashing and exploding all over the barren Australian landscape! Thanks to an observant fan from down under we get our first glimpse of the real stars of the show! (Click images to enlarge)

I ran across these great photos on another site and tracked their origins back to the Adventure Rider forums where member 3legs tells this great story:

Stopped at a truck stop somewhere in NSW and spied these vehicles under tarps trying hard not to be noticed. When I asked the truckie what they are he said he is transporting them to Silverton for the new Mad Max movie which is about to commence shooting. While he went for a piss I took some shots. Unfortunately I could only get the under sides of the vehicles but I can tell you they are huge and a lot of engineering went into them and there is some serious horsepower being produced by one of them (twin v8 engine).

One is a tracked vehicle and check out the cowcatcher on the front of one of them. There were 4 vehicles in total.

Sorry I couldn’t get anymore photos but time was limited.

In the photos you can see the front end of a 1959 Cadillac (top) and what looks to be Rockwell military-issue axles. (No, I’m not that smart – those facts are thanks to the knowledgeable folks at the Mad Max movie forum.)

There are also caterpillar treads and a vicious cowcatcher!

A couple other Adventure Rider forum members offered up some more insight on Fury Road:

k0diak: Matt: I wish I could comment. Went to see the workshop about 2 months ago, enough to say the whole group had an enormous grin on their face the whole day. Some insane builds both two and four wheels (and more) and if the movie is anything as good as the vehicles, it will be a classic.

DRjoe: I know one of the blokes who is working on the mad max set (he’s been painting the vehicles) He reckons there are hundreds of crazy looking rigs that have been built and some have two or three copies just so they can blow them up.
Apparently there is no budget for the movie so they have just gone nuts on building all the vehicles.

I’ve got an invite to the set of the movie before they start filming 🙂

The story is so great it had some folks on the board (perhaps jokingly) suggesting 3legs was a plant by the movie company. They suggest it’s a bit suspicious he got photos that showed enough to drum up a bit of buzz, but not too much. Either way, it’s great! They’re like a really bad celebrity sex tape where you can’t really make out too much!

Anybody else out there with some Fury Road espionage images? Let me know! I have to see more!