With the Furious 7 movie coming out in theaters this week, viewers will be in awe of the heart-pumping, fast-paced car chases and sequences in the action film. But what some may not think about while watching, will be what happened to all those wrecked cars? That’s why the iScrap App Team is here!
The Scrapper’s Fantasy
As scrappers, we watch action movies for the thrill and of course for the scrapping fantasies we have about the scrap life of the props and vehicles after the films have no use for them on set. Unless a car is in great shape like Burt Reynold’s Trans Am, and can be auctioned off to collectors, most wrecked cars from action movies are scrapped. Not only are movie makers responsible for wrecking and blowing things up, but they also have to cover their butts for liability when they no longer have use for crashed cars (even crushed by tanks). When producers are finished with crazy stunt scenes like the one from Furious 7 below, the cars have to find a home in a scrap yard because they can’t take the chance of someone fixing it up and trying to drive it.
When the set for Furious 7 was filming the mountain side car chase in Colorado Springs, CO, a local salvage yard got the call they probably weren’t expecting. The local auto wrecker, Bonnie’s Car Crushers had a billboard in the area that had said they bought junk cars. So someone from the crew had contacted them about removing 30 to 40 vehicles that were beyond repair and ensuring that they would be destroyed for scrap. As the cars were being scrapped, everything had to be documented for liability purposes.
At the end of filming for Furious 7 there were a total of over 230 vehicles wrecked and scrapped. In the mountain chase scene alone there were over 40 wrecked. Those cars were stored at a local parking lot of a ski resort but had to be picked up and moved quickly to prepare for the upcoming winter season. Read more about wrecked cars in movies and the process behind it from the Wall Street Journal article.
