Let’s face it, we all have expertise in something or many things in our lives and there is probably not a movie that has been made that can not be ripped apart in some fashion. We can be railroad snobs about inaccuracies in movies about trains, but how much flies over our heads when movies contain ridiculous things we know nothing about and don’t pick up.
The movie was not “based on” real events, but “inspired by” real events, which gives a lot more leaway in the facts.
That bigger engine will get you to 80 a lot quicker[:)]
I say yes. Authors are just as clueless as Hollywood with most things mechanical. They don’t know cars much less trains etc.
Just enjoy Denzel. He’s always worth watching.
My biggest pet peeve is actor pilots in the cockpit of an airplane just pushing and pulling buttons and levers trying to look like they are flying the plane. They have no idea what buttons or levers they are pushing or pulling and it is ridiculous to those of us that know what ones they should be pushing. Not to mention the cockpit never matches the exterior shots of the plane or the passenger cabin for that matter.
Just don’t call me Shirley.
Ed
Have you seen the scene in “Sharknado 3, Oh Hell No!” where Mohawk Guy (Bobak Ferdowsi) teaches David Hasselhoff how to fly the Space Shuttle so he can go battle the sharks in space?
Best nerd cameo ever!
[(-D]
-Kevin
And because I can tell the difference, I laugh when the movie set in 1964 has a Checker Motors cab from 1978.
Yes, Checker did not change the basic body from 1959 to 1982, and even that car was the same platform and very similar to the 1956-1958 cars, but there are differences.
Some of them VERY obvious, like the battering ram bumpers after 1973, or the larger windshield from mid 1968 on…
Sheldon
Good luck getting that thing to hook up when the boost comes on. My Gen 3 with mild mods struggels to keep it planted in 1st or 2nd gear.
My Gen 1 struggles to keep it planted in lockout 4th if you’re injudicious. I know somebody whose son did a 720 in the middle of Palm Springs when he got caught in a rain shower with the ‘top’ and curtains off…
Hennessey Venom was already over the top for that car. I was 6’ and essentially needed a full-face cycle helmet to drive the thing anywhere over 120mph.
But of course what this brings to mind, now that Cosby is out of jail, was the poster child for all hookup-challenged cars, the Super Snake. That had a side-oiler 427 with a couple of Paxton blowers feeding a couple of ginormous 4-barrel carbs, and had no low-end throttle sensitivity at all. It ran beautifully when you got it up to reasonable speed, but that presumed you could get it rolling – I don’t remember if Cosby got it completely around the block but he gave the car back to Shelby the same day it was delivered. As I recall he had a comedy routine about it…
Those cars are all impressive enough, but I am more interested in those who do cool stuff with less.
Like the guy a few years ago turning 12 sec 1/4 mile times with a FORD FLEX ECCOBOOST, and all he did was reprogram the ECM. Of course an ECCOBOOST FLEX does 15’s off the showroom floor.
Enough money will always go faster. What can you do with less?
At age 19 I restored and rodded this for less than $4,000
Yes, not expensive, not exotic, but fast enough, and lots of fun.
283 built to about 325 hp, 4 speed, 0-60 in 5 sec, 1/4 mile in under 14 sec, top speed 135 mph.
Drove it for 7 years.
The Blonde was a lot of fun too.
Sheldon
But of course what this brings to mind, now that Cosby is out of jail, was the poster child for all hookup-challenged cars, the Super Snake. That had a side-oiler 427 with a couple of Paxton blowers feeding a couple of ginormous 4-barrel carbs, and had no low-end throttle sensitivity at all. It ran beautifully when you got it up to reasonable speed, but that presumed you could get it rolling – I don’t remember if Cosby got it completely around the block but he gave the car back to Shelby the same day it was delivered. As I recall he had a comedy routine about it…
I remember the comedy sketch…
Cosby thought the car was dangerous and the sketch ended with Cosby instructing Shelby to deliver the car to Governor Wallace of Alabama…
Peter
[#offtopic]
Did someone mention ‘horsepower’?
A 3000hp Dodge? Youll need it and more to catch one of these…
Sheldon:
“And the blonde was fun too.” [(-D] [(-D]
PMR
PS: as for the movie… eh. Yawn. Stretch. Crickets.
There was a Ford commercial in the 1960s that worked this the other way. They showed the car pulling THREE BOXCARS – man, if it’ll pull that, think how much trailer it can manage! (I believe more recently they repeated the ad idea with a pickup pulling 35 or 40 cars – shades of the Decapod and the coal cars!)
Of course the best of these was the Toyota photo op with their truck pulling the whole million-pound Space Shuttle. Strange they don’t seem to have advertised the hell out of that – perhaps they did.
My takeaway from “Unstoppable” was that the engineer/conductor were having normal conversations in a locomotive cab while in Run 8 with the windows open. The sideways wheelie thing was not believeable, but one chalks that up to action enhancement.
They did a little, but Chevy beat them to that idea decades earlier (And with a better truck, IMO):
Thanks – I hadn’t seen that one! (And it is a legitimate use of the 4WD and full weight in the bed for traction… in those days they mentioned it up front instead of with fast-talking lawyerese or invisible fine print).
(Of course, I suspect the 350 is already ‘overkill’ compared to what’s in the towmotors that pulled 747s regularly… but it still makes you impressed.)
Of course for 350 truck-block bragging rights, we proposed two of them running on natural gas to do all the heating and cooling for Patterns, in Delaware… [;)]
if thats yours, thats a beautiful car! My buddy had a '85 GN and a '87 T-type and those were a blast to go on rides in. The T-type would chirp all gears and pulled like a freight train.
Okay back on topic to unstoppable, I actually really enjoyed the movie. If you could over look some of the stuff, the behind the scenes on the SD-40s wrecking is pretty cool.
This is shooting the scene where the train almost tips off the tracks
A friend had a Syclone, which used that turbo V6 engine in an AWD chassis – and was tuned correctly: it was supposedly the fastest car in the world at that time between 50 and 70mph – which it did like pinching a wet watermelon seed.