8 replies to this topic

[mercenary62]

trundling along to work in my old berlingo van and generally fed up with my job ,i got to dreaming/thinking about the italian job original minis ,which were all destroyed totally in the film , so here we go , a good few years later lo and behold the italian job mini registration /original/ comes up at auction on the dvla site , and was bought by a mini enthusiast who then built up a mini using none of the original parts and used the original doccuments from one of the coopers in the film ,how i was thinking did he get away with that as i thought you needed to at least use original subframes or something on a points systmn to qualify to use original plates ??

[JimminyBob]

Not if it was just the number plate being sold off as opposed to the ID, as long as they don't make the car appear newer than it is then there's no requirement. You could fit them to a Ford Fiesta and it wouldn't be a problem.

[Tamworthbay]

You can transfer number plates as long as they don't make the car look younger. So in theory you could buy the 621AOK plate and put it on an MPi. The DVLA have sales of dormant numbers every so often.

[Tamworthbay]

Not if it was just the number plate being sold off as opposed to the ID, as long as they don't make the car appear newer than it is then there's no requirement. You could fit them to a Ford Fiesta and it wouldn't be a problem.

Doh! Beat me to it

[mini danny]

I think I read somewhere the shells actually weren't destroyed they used other minis which got destroyed. Don't hold me to that asbo may have dreamt that haha

Dan

[Dan]

Yes they don't try to claim these are the original cars (if you read the fine print, they are trying it on a little bit). The registrations were purchased all above board, and three age appropriate cars were rebuilt in an almost above board way. They aren't strictly completely legit rebuilds as I understand it, but are all in character for their age.

And no, none of the original cars came home, I believe they were simply left at the bottom of the hill. But in a film or TV show there is almost never simply one vehicle used to play the role of an action car like that. Loads of cars were written off during filming so there is no particular 'original' car. Just like there isn't for any action car whatever the car museums will tell you.

[steven]

" Ken Morris, one of the last of the production crew members to leave after filming in Turin stated that there were six surviving Mini's and 30 sets of mag wheels in the lock up garage that they were using. He said that he locked up and headed for the UK, and as far as he was aware neither Paramount or production company Oakhurst returned to collect them!" http://www.theitalia...ars_coopers.htm

Edited by steven, 22 April 2013 - 06:27 PM.

[Dan]

I'm lead to believe (by the film's prop master who I work with fairly regularly) that the cars that left the bus were actually some of the damaged cars from other stunts rather than 3 normal Minis as is often claimed. It would make more sense to use cars that already looked nearly right than to get hold of more cars. Cars in films are just props, nobody considers them to be anything special. Especially if you have loads of them to use up. I remember walking about at Pinewood during Die Another Day, there was an absolute mountain of wrecked Jaguar and Aston body shells piled up next to the action car workshop. I can easily believe that any excess Minis that survived would have just been left in a lockup somewhere, and probably then sold off for scrap locally by whoever was left behind to wrap the art department office. Cars rarely make it back into the public world after a film as insurance companies (the film's insurer that is) don't trust what we do to them when filming, so they usually end up as scrap. I can only think of 2 jobs I have worked on where the cars were sold to the public after. It is fairly sensible, I do remember sending a Mondeo back to Ford after a commercial that was only held together with gaffer tape after we cut it right down the middle for camera access.

[mercenary62]

thanks for the replys lads very interesting points raised there