Are these real race cars or mock ups?
At the beginning of the movie when the drivers are in the pits waiting for the race to start and also the in-car shots?
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MovieChat Forums > Le Mans (1971) Discussion > Are these real race cars or mock ups?
Yes they are, and the 512 crashed by "Claude Arac" is the car in which Pedro Rodriguez died at Norisring in 1971
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The "512" crashed for the movie was a Lola T70 IIIB rebodied as a 512. See "A French Kiss with Death" pages 368 - 371 for details.
When McQueen's 917 wrecks, it is actually a radio controlled Lola as well ( pages 385 - 387). You can see the bodywork come off and the yellow of the Lola shows, even it's number roundel (#11). This car can be briefly seen in another part of the movie.
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Both. I mentioned in another thread that there is a feature story on David Piper in the March issue of Octane magazine where he explains that he bought several Lola's T70s to be used for mock-ups in the movie.
http://shop.instant-shop.com/Octaneshop/product80536catno20536.html
If you are interested.
Also, the camera car was actually a Porsche 908/02 that was entered by Solar Productions (Steve McQueen's production company) and was driven by Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams and was outfitted with three cameras including a 35mm Arriflex camera mounted in a bubble under the hood. It completed 282 laps and came in ninth place although it DNF. It was the same car that McQueen and Peter Revson drove to their famous 2nd place finish at Sebring although it was repainted and modified for use as a film car.
There were other camera cars that were used for filming the racing scenes that were not filmed during the race. I've got a picture of the Gulf Porsche 917 #20 with a camera strapped to the nose... although this certainly could have been one of the Lola mock-ups.
All of the 917's in the film are actual 917's as are the Ferrari 512's but the older Lola's were made to look like 917's or Ferrari 512's and were used for the crash scenes.
The 908 camera car was actually second in the prototype 3.0 class at the actual race in 1970 but finished too many laps behind the leaders (due to frequent pit stops for film reloading) so it was "Not Classified" but it was running at the finish. McQueen wanted to drive the 908 at LeMans but his insurance company wouldn't allow it. You can see the camera car in the film at one point. There are a bunch of production photos in the gallery for this movie on IMDB. One of them is of the camera car before the start of the real 1970 race and there are a few other photos of Steve McQueen at the actual race.
One note, one of the drivers that finished 44th in the 1970 race, Clay Reggazoni died Dec 16, 2006 in a road accident near Parma, Italy. He had been paralyzed below the waist since a 1980 crash at the USGP in Long Beach, CA.
The results for 1970 are here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_24_Hours_of_Le_Mans
One of the 917 that McQueen used in the film was later sold to the 1970 winner Richard Attwood through Brian Redman, who the former saw the car as a pension. Attood sold the car in a RM auction at the Monterey Historics Weekend in 2000 and according to the 962.com site, the car is currently owned by Jerry Seinfeld.
Detail of the car is on this site
http://www.962.com/registry/917/917-022/index.htm
Surely you just need to hear them to tell that they are very real !!!!!!
I mean those v12's are something else !!!!!!!!!!
As a matter of fact, those "V12's" actually ARE something else! The Porsche 917 has an aircooled Flat 12 (or boxer engine), not a V12. The 917's flat 12 is basically two 911 flat 6 blocks joined together. Porsche also experimented with a flat 16 derivative for the 917 (joining 2 flat 8's together) but the concept proved too complicated and heavy to be raced.
The screaming engine note of the 917 is more likely a result of it being aircooled, and is not a typical V12 sound.
Yeah Yeah I knew that, but I doubt anyone could tell the diff. if they saw them around Goodwood 12 cylinders will sound similar whatever the angle they are opposed !!!
shareYou're absolutely wrong, the 917 didn't have a boxer engine, and the engine was in no way related to the 911 engine.
In fact, it was a flat V12 engine, this means a V12 with 180° angle between the cylinder banks.
In a V-engine the connecting-rods of two opposing pistons are attached to the same crankpin. When a piston in a flat V-engine moves towards the lower dead center, its opposing piston moves towards the upper dead center. The same principle is BTW used in Ferrari's so-called "Boxer" models like Testarossa, BB, PB and so on. The responsible guy, who named those engines, must have had some bottles Chianti too much <g>
In a Boxer, every piston has its very own crankpin, and the angle between two adjacent crankpins is 180°. Thereby, two opposing pistons go up and down (or left and right) simultanously.
Also, the ignition sequence of a flat V-engine and a Boxer with the same number of cylinders is totally different.
My understanding of the 917's air cooled motor was that it was a Flat 12, as opposed to a Boxer 12 too (which ironically, Ferrari used instead of their V12 in the road going 512BB). Either way, the way that sucker howls like a wolf on heat when it's being wound up...one of the greatest and possibly the most blood curdling sound produced from an engine?
Anyway, back to the original topic. Yes, all cars were real. Even the two 'crash' cars were real racers (albiet rebodied Lolas...T70s I think?). My pride of joy at home is the 40 inch long photo I have hanging on my wall, which captures the start of the 1970 Le Mans 24 hours...with what in the movie would be Delaney's #20 917 leading the pack away from the pit wall. Although this was a photo taken of the real 1970s Le Mans, all the main cars of the movie can clearly be seen.
"This isn't just a thousand to one shot. This is a professional bloodsport."
Michael Delaney