![]() ![]() Some months later the tank came up for sale. Luckily their booking clashed with an important job I had with Tanklimo and I couldn’t be there on the day so it saved me pouring petrol over the entire film crew and all of their vehicles and burning them alive! (well not literally, but I was truly gutted!). Unbelievable! surely they would have been better off giving me the actual bloody tank from the film for the launch! I managed to compose myself yet again, smiled politely and got things sorted. They actually asked if they could livery up all of my tanks with their logos and do interviews with the stars on one of my Centurions. Soon after that the makers of the film came to see me asking if we could lay on a huge tank driving press day for the launch of the Fast & Furious 6 blue ray and DVD release. I had been out tendered by so little, just three thousand pounds it turned out. ![]() I casually asked what one would have to pay to own such a magnificent example. I was gutted, but managed to hide it (I hope!). ![]() I asked my 5 very keen pupils why they needed an H and a young lad replied “my Dad bought the tank off the film Fast & Furious 6 and I need an H on my license to move it around legally”. It’s a regular thing we do at Tanks Alot for all sorts of people with all sorts of reasons – some are farmers, some are in the construction industry, some are tankies either professional or hobbyists, even a few modellers trying to gain street cred and I suspect a mercenary or two gaining a valued qualification for overseas employers. Bollocks, Bollocks, shit, bum, feck.Ī few weeks later I was taking a group of five down into Brackley for an H Licence Exam – basically taking a driving test in a tracked vehicle so you can drive a tank to go down the pub in. Why couldn’t it be an auction or even a gun fight, but not a tender.Īfter taking advice from a clever friend in the know related to the film, I was told exactly what to bid and I added a few grand just in case, that hurt, but what hurt more was learning a few days later I HADN’T won her. If you win it you wonder if you paid far too much, if you loose it, you wish you had paid more. The bad news was, it was a tender and I hate tender’s. I had heard figures being bandied about of £250,000 being blown on the build and it taking a specialist engineering company three months to complete it, maybe this was true? When I finally walked around The Beast I was more than impressed. I had hoped this was different considering the sheer number of cars it was designed to mash, take after take. I was keen to view the tank before I made an offer – too often a film prop vehicle is all smoke, mirrors, and plaster board, and literally degrades in front of your eyes about two weeks after you flashed the cash. When the film was finished Robbie fixed me up with a meeting on site where all the props from the film were being stored in the UK. A combined speed of possibly 80 mph, this was Just what I needed – maybe with a bit of inside help I could buy this beast. It was seriously beefed up in all the right places for hitting cars at full speed, in fact more than full speed, the cars were fired from a cannon mounted on the back of a lorry to give the effect of them being driven into the approaching tank. Turned out they made some out of foam rubber built on lorries, had one with a foam rubber turret, but just one clad in heavy gauge steel. It wasn’t long before everybody in the tank world knew several chieftains were needed for a major feature film and I had lots of various people trying to buy mine, they had a huge budget, but I guess mine just weren’t good enough for them. The story starts when a friend told me he was off to Tenerife on a film set for a couple of months as a specialist tank mechanic running and driving a custom Chieftain tank, hob knobbing with Vin Diesel and all the gang, and drinking San Miguel’s in the sun – lucky bastard I thought! As jealous as I was I knew Robbie was the best man for the job, probably knowing more about Chieftains than any man alive and a real hands-on guy too.
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