Chevy 5-Window Rides Historic into Petersen Automotive Museum
Vintage Chevrolet coupe used in Mad Max: Fury Road on display as part of museum’s ‘Hollywood Dream Machines’ exhibit.
Forty years ago, one man stood on the edge of madness amid the collapsing society of his native Australia, armed with only his sawed-off shotgun and a black 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT. His name was Max Rockatansky, but all of us know of him and his legend as Mad Max.
Four films and four decades later, Max’s legacy is firmly entrenched into pop culture history. So much so that a few vehicles from the latest installment of the franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road, are on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum as part of its latest exhibit, Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy now through March 2020.
One of the machines from the wastelands of humanity is this 1934 Chevrolet 5-Window Coupe piloted by one of Immortan Joe’s War Boys, Nux (portrayed by Nicholas Hoult). His war machine has a front attachment for holding “blood bags”: physically healthy souls (like Max) forcibly used to donate blood to those (like Nux) who aren’t as healthy. But that’s only the beginning.
Nux’s goal in life is to “die historic” in the eyes of Immortan Joe, where being declared “mediocre” by the war lord may as well be a death sentence (in fact, he tried three times to go down in history before then, according to Hoult). Thus, the Chevy not only has a twin-turbo V8 with nitrous onboard, but also enough explosives to rocket up to Valhalla and earn his place among the greats.
Out back, Nux’s Chevy has a perch for other War Boys to use when launching so-called “thundersticks” upon any enemy who gets in their way (or, in some cases, steals a very important war rig from Immortan Joe). Of course, like every other war machine driven by the death cult, the Chevy is lost in battle amid the expansive desert, going out historically as its driver finally would later on.
There was another Chevy on display at the Hollywood Dream Machines exhibit, too: the Batmobile from the 1989 film, Batman, and its follow-up, 1992’s Batman Returns. Under the long black body and front-mounted jet engine is the bones of two 1967 Impalas.
The powerplant for this version of the Batmobile was not the big Rolls-Royce engine up front, but a Chevy V8; the only turbine-powered replica was built in 2011. The car is not only a part of the exhibit, but is part of the Petersen’s permanent collection, too.
And if you’d like to see both Nux’s Chevy and the Batmobile piloted by Michael Keaton, $16 will get you in the door, $11 for your children between 4 and 17 years of age.
Photos for Chevrolet Forum by David Ciminelli
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