UNCLE RAY TO THE MAX

PULL UP A CHAIR AND A LONG DRINK, MORLEY IS IS ABOUT TO UNWRAP THE TALE BEHIND THE MAD MAX CARS

- DAVE MORLEY

Okay, you’ve seen the movie a hundred times – or more – and you’ve heard all the gossip about the cars of the original Mad Max of 1979. But grab a cold drink and a comfy chair, because I’ve just been learning the real story about some of those cars – from the one bloke who would know.

My old mate Uncle Ray could, on first glance, be anybody’s grandad. He enjoys messing about with us on a Saturday morning at Chuck Ripplejaw’s home for abandoned race cars (a seven-iron from the MBC) and like any grandad, he has a million stories to tell.

But what makes Uncle Ray a dead-set living legend is that he was one of the main blokes responsible for the cars that made the original Mad Max the cult Oz-noire blockbuster it eventually became. We all know that Peter Arcadipane designed and made a lot of the fibreglass add-ons to the four-wheeled stars of Mad Max. And a few folk know that another mate of mine, the late Bertrand Cadart, was responsible for the ‘glass fairings on the baddies’ bike as well as Jim Goose’s pursuit bike. (In fact, Bertrand’s original responsibility was to supply the fairings, but the film’s budget was so tight, that he received a part in the flick as part payment for his fibreglass genius. “And zat, Morley,” he once told me in his outrageous French accent, “was ’ow I became Clonk” – the gang member Clunk.)