The original cars for the movie were made by Eddie Paul and here's a tidbit I found on the net. I do remember that one of the cars was stolen from a storage yard.
The Mercury comes with a particularly interesting story. It is one of four Mercurys Paul built for the movie, an action-thriller that involved a lot of gunfire and wreckage. In the movie, the car was used in a highspeed highway chase scene in which a stuntman made a spectacular 180-degree spin backwards and then spun it back around. Bullet holes were shot into the trunk during the scene. The movie subsequently took it to Venice Beach, Calif., where it was used to jump canals.
"It took some pretty bad abuse," Paul said.
If that wasn't enough to destroy it, consider what happened after the film. Someone bought it off a junk yard, restored it and ran it two years in the Carrera PanAmerican race in Mexico, one o€ the most grueling races in the world. At same point, it also went to the harsh Bonneville Salt flats for land-speed trials. Paul said he believes it once was in the hands of the Hell’s Angels also.
“It’s been all over the country. I’m amazed he tracked it down. I know I knew I was never going to see it again.”
The business man had seen one of the four cars in 1986 but couldn’t buy it at the time. After 16 years of searching, a friend alerted him in 2002 that one of the Mercs was being offered on Ebay, and he jumped at the chance. He flew to Washington state, where the car had been garaged for 12 years, looked it over, had it authenticated and bought it.
Later, he met with Paul and arranged for the car to be put back in movie condition. After nearly 20 years, Paul couldn't remember all the details that went into building the car, so the businessman sat down with a copy of the movie and examined it frame by frame and made notes and photographs.
"A funny thing I tell people it took two weeks to make the Merc for the movie, 10 seconds for them to wreck it and me two years to put it back together again," Paul said.
The car is chopped 1 ½ inches, has a roll cage and a 350 Chevy supercharged, nitrous powered engine that can churn out over 600 horsepower. The engine was shot when Paul started rebuilding the car, so the businessman had a new one made from scratch in Lynchburg.
Paul was skeptical when the studio making "Cobra" wanted 1950 Mercurys for the film. He wasn't sure he could find four 36-year-old Mercs, but a buddy who has a junk yard on the West Coast had them in the driveway of Paul's El Segundo shop in about two days.
Paul finished rebuilding the car in early June and had it shipped to Virginia. Its appearance at the car show on the Market will be its first public viewing ever as the "Cobra" car or "Awsom 50 car," as it is also known because of the movie license plate - AWSOM 50.
"The movie makes it look virtually indestructible, and this car has actually been virtually indestructible," its owner said.
This was from an article that Eddie Paul wrote...
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