Landmaster (Damnation Alley)

The Landmaster is the huge all-terrain vehicle built for the Twentieth Century-Fox science-fiction film Damnation Alley, in which it carries survivors of a nuclear war across a devastated America. It was built by the custom-car maker Dean Jeffries of Studio City, California, whose earlier work included the moon buggy for the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. Jeffries said it took his shop nearly three months and was the toughest job of his career.

Design

The defining feature is the Tri-Star wheel system patented by Robert W. and John P. Forsyth of the Vehicle Development Corporation. Twelve wheels are grouped in four triangular clusters, each permanently gear-driven, with two wheels on the ground and one above. When the vehicle meets a rock or hole the cluster rotates, lifting the top wheel into play to climb over the obstacle. The tyres are farm tyres 38 in tall and 24 in wide. The vehicle turns tightly, completing a circle in 35 ft.

Underneath, according to an enthusiast who examined it, is the articulated four-wheel-drive chassis of an earth-moving scraper, salvaged from a scrapyard and without suspension. The engine is a Ford 391 cu in industrial truck engine with an Allison automatic gearbox. The body is steel, sheet metal and aluminium, and the joint between the two halves gives the vehicle unusual twisting ability. Popular Science reported it as 11 tons and 35 ft long. Jeffries said it survived a 55 mph run that included a 25 ft drop without damage.

In the water

The doors are weather-stripped and the underside is sealed with an undercoat-like compound. The rotating wheel clusters propel it afloat, and in the film it floats across Flathead Lake, Montana. For the film it was fitted with six remote-controlled cannon, two bazookas, closed-circuit TV, radar, bunks and a shower.