That's all very well I hear you say, but what about the van? Well it had some slight changes but remained mostly true to the original.
The roof lights are now attached to a tubular bar and the running boards have been replaced with chrome exhaust piping. The bullbars are still there but now have round KC fog lights on them, the wheel flares now have a more chunky look and the rear door has louver windows and the van has been given a completely new set of wheels and a modernised stripe.
Other than the above the van looks nearly unchanged on the outside, but the interior is completely different.
They've gone for the black leather 80's look and there are two tyres in the back along with toolbox style cabinets.
Director Joe Carnaghan Told MTV: we've done our little tweaks to it, so you could see it being driven around today ... it's a badass vehicle." |
The A-Team movie car co-ordinator Rick Rasmussen told the LA Times:
The A-Team van started life as a 1994 Chevrolet G20 cargo van, the original A-Team van was that same body style (and) our production designer wanted to pay homage to the original, but give it that feature film feel and update it a bit.
Body Work
There were 3 vans in all, one main van and two stunt doubles. They were all just basically stock cargo vans, however to make them into A-Team vans, we had to fill all the nameplate holes, all the side marker lights, the mirror holes, key cylinder locks. We installed, obviously, the famous flare set, and moulded it to the body. We designed our own roof wing, and we installed three sunroofs in each van, typically just for lighting. We put hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of labour in each van.
The Stripe
Everybody was used to the old stripe design, but we gave it the new feel, changed it up a bit. The new van stripe goes along the bodyline. At the front door, the stripe used to turn and then go all the way up to the roof. We took the stripe further along the bodyline, and then turned it and went up into the roof wing and across the roof. So it's kind of different. The colours are very close, keeping that original black, charcoal and red feel.
The Engine
We did quite a bit of mechanical work on them from a stock Chevy V8. We changed the intake manifold. We put a bigger fuel injection system on them. We put a performance chip in the computer. We installed headers on them with side pipes. This helps them breathe a lot better and gives a little more performance. We put positraction rear differentials in them so both tires would spin as opposed to one. Each van had a 15-gallon fuel cell installed for safety purposes. In case the vehicle rolls over, there's no leakage.
This was to prove to be a disadvantage to skate boarder Tony Hawk who drove the van in the 2010 Gumball 3000 road rally. He got hold of Fox publicity and asked if he could drive the van, He drove it from Montreal to New York. Filling up the little 15-gallon fuel cell, along the way.
Months of work went into creating a fleet of identical vans for filming.
Each of the three vans was stripped to bare steel so that they could be refitted to look identical with lights, fender flares and other features. Plus, the crew had to line up spare parts that were sure to get destroyed during stunts like door handles and mirrors. Everything was fabricated, he says. The parts for these vans were so scarce it was amazing.
Three of the vans were the main ones photographed from the outside, a show van, Stunt 1 and Stunt 2, a fourth van was used as the construction template and a fifth became the test-bed for figuring out the special effects.
All this and the van only shows up in about the first 15 minutes of the movie!
The above info comes from an interview with Rick Rasmussen by Cristy Lytal of the LA Times.
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