The Mad Max Interceptor

What the Interceptor really is

The Mad Max Interceptor is a 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT hardtop, an Australian two-door with a 351 cubic-inch V8, rebuilt for the 1979 film Mad Max as the black Pursuit Special of the Main Force Patrol. The film also calls it the Last of the V8 Interceptors. It survived Mad Max 2, and the original car was last reported on display in Orlando, Florida.

It is not a Mustang and not an American Falcon. The XB is one of the classic Australian muscle cars, only 949 GT hardtops were built, and only one car from the first two films survives, so almost every Interceptor you will see is a replica. Our Ford Falcon XA, XB and XC hardtop guide covers the donor car.

The base car was a 1973 XB Falcon GT hardtop

Ford Australia launched the XB Falcon GT in September 1973 with a 351 cubic-inch Cleveland V8 rated at 300 bhp and a twin-nostril hood. It came as a sedan or a two-door hardtop, and Ford sold 1,950 GT sedans and 949 GT hardtops before XB production ended in 1976. The film car started out as a white GT hardtop. Most records call it a 1973 car, though a few date it to 1974.

Producers Byron Kennedy and George Miller began preproduction in 1976, and principal photography ran six weeks around Melbourne in November and December 1977, with second-unit work continuing into May 1978. It opened in Australia on April 12, 1979, and in the US on March 21, 1980.

How the Falcon became the Pursuit Special

Art director Jon Dowding designed the car, and Melbourne customizer Graf-X International built it, with Peter Arcadipane, Ray Beckerley, John Evans and painter Rod Smythe doing the work. The fiberglass Concorde nose was Arcadipane's design, created as a show-car piece and later sold to the public as an accessory because people wanted one. In the story, the Main Force Patrol offers Max the new car to stop him from quitting the force.

Did the Interceptor's supercharger work?

Not in the first film. The Weiand 6-71 blower on the first-film car was a prop. Its belt was spun by a small electric motor rather than the engine, and the sound effects were added later. The film shows Max switching the blower on and off from the cabin, which a fixed belt drive like this one could not do. The replacement blower fitted for Mad Max 2 is described as functional, though the on and off effect was still staged. Under it sat a genuine 351 V8, so the tire marks it leaves on launch were real.

The Main Force Patrol cars and the Nightrider's Monaro

The other patrol cars were Falcon sedans, two of them 1974 XBs usually described as former Victoria Police cars. The car Nightrider steals at the start of the film is also called a Pursuit Special, but it is a 1972 Holden HQ Monaro coupe, tuned and deliberately battered to look crash-damaged, and it is destroyed in the opening chase. If that car is the one you came for, see our guide to the Holden Monaro.

What happened to the car after Mad Max and Mad Max 2

After the first film nobody bought the car, and it went to Murray Smith, who had worked on the production, in place of money he was owed. Smith removed the blower and side pipes, registered it for the road in Victoria and tried to sell it (reports put the asking price at A$7,500), again without a taker.

Miller's team bought it back for Mad Max 2, released in Australia on December 24, 1981, and in the US as The Road Warrior. For the sequel it got a replacement blower (the original had been lost), new rear wheels and side pipes, two large cylindrical fuel tanks in the rear, matte black paint scrubbed to look rusty, and no air dam. A duplicate was built for the scene where the car rolls down an embankment and explodes, so the original survived.

Nobody wanted it when filming around Broken Hill ended in 1981. It was left in far western New South Wales and later reached a South Australian wrecking yard. In the mid-1980s Bob Fursenko rescued it, fitted a new nose cone and air dam, kept the Mad Max 2 fuel tanks, confirmed its identity with the production company Kennedy Miller and repainted it in all-over gloss black rather than the first film's gloss and matte scheme. It toured Australian shows and spent 1990 to 1992 at the National Motor Museum in Birdwood, South Australia.

Where the original Interceptor is today

In 1992 the car was sold to the Cars of the Stars Motor Museum in Keswick, England, where it stayed until 2011. That year developer Michael Dezer bought the museum's entire collection and shipped it to Florida, where his Miami Auto Museum opened in 2012. The collection later moved to Orlando.

The museum offered the Interceptor for sale in February 2020, price on application and not at auction, and no sale was ever announced. Reports in January 2026 said it appeared to still be in Dezer's collection, shown in the Cars of the Stars room at the Orlando Auto Museum at Dezerland Park (opens in a new tab).

The Interceptor in later films

The car sits out Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). It returns in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), where Immortan Joe's War Boys capture it in the opening, strip it to bare metal, rename it the Razor Cola and lose it when it is crushed between the War Rig and the People Eater in the final battle. The production built new XB-based cars for that film's crash scenes. It also appears briefly in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), as Max watches Furiosa return to the Citadel.

What a real XB GT or a replica costs

A genuine XB GT hardtop is a six-figure car. In March 2023 a 1974 GT hardtop with original GT body stampings, reproduction ID tags and a non-original automatic transmission sold at an Australian online auction for A$172,500 before the buyer's premium. In mid-2024, average XA GTs, the XB's predecessor, traded at about A$130,000 to A$150,000, with excellent cars above A$200,000.

That is why most Interceptors are replicas built on non-GT hardtops. One replica build, begun in 2009 and finished about three years later, started with a 1974 Falcon GS hardtop with a factory 302 V8 and four-speed manual, then added roof and trunk spoilers and a rear valance from a specialist maker in Perth, rear flares sourced from the Fury Road production team, a fiberglass Arcadipane nose, custom Sunraysia wheels and a fake Weiand blower spun by a windshield wiper motor. Finished replicas have been advertised in Australia at A$79,000 for an XB Falcon 500 hardtop car and A$119,000 for an XC-based car, in listings last seen in late 2019 and 2021.

• Ask whether the car is a genuine GT, a GT-look car or a replica, and get the answer in writing
• Read the compliance plate model code, where a final digit of 8 marks a GT, and have the body stampings checked by an independent inspector, since reproduction plates and tags exist
• Budget for rust in the rear quarters and roof, the usual trouble spots on these hardtops
• Plan to remove any working police lights and siren, which are not legal on a private car in Australia

Importing an XB Falcon to the US

Every XB Falcon is well past the US 25-year line. As a general rule, vehicles under 25 years old must meet every Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard to be imported permanently, so a car built from 1973 to 1976 can come in without that conversion work. You still file DOT form HS-7 and EPA form 3520-1 at entry. The EPA exemption for cars 21 or more years old covers only cars in their original, unmodified configuration, and a replacement engine qualifies only if it is the same model as the original, so a car with engine work may need an EPA-approved independent commercial importer, which is expensive. Passenger cars carry a 2.5 percent base duty, and since July 24, 2026, products of Australia also carry an extra 12.5 percent Section 301 duty that cars 25 or more years old do not appear to be exempt from, so budget for about 15 percent in total and confirm the current figure with a licensed customs broker before you buy. The full checklist is on the CBP vehicle import page (opens in a new tab).

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