I remember precisely one thing about the 1981 Disney movie Condorman, which I think I must have seen in the theater as a kid. I must have seen it in the theater because I don’t think it ever made it to television, and I’m pretty sure my family was the last American family to come to possess a VCR. So it had to be in the theater. I would have been about 10, and all I remember of the movie is one scene where an old ramshackle truck had an impossibly low and sleek car burst out of the front of it.
That’s all I ever remembered about that movie, just that one very specific image of a yellow car bursting out of some archaic-looking truck. When I wanted to figure out what the hell that scene was from and if I just imagined it or not in some childhood automotive fever-dream it wasn’t easy to Google, because I really couldn’t remember what the hell the rest of the movie was about.
Were there feathers on the car? I think so! It was sort of a superhero movie? An avian-themed superhero? Birdman? No. Hawkman? No. Something like that. Egretman? Emuman? The Human Pelican? Condor! It was Condorman!
The movie was a strange Disney sorta-superhero, sorta-spy movie. It wasn’t great. Here’s the trailer:
It was about a comic book artist who sort of inadvertently “became” his superhero creation, and somehow managed to build all of the fancy equipment and cars and flying suits and whatever, getting involved with a KGB defector and all manner of other hijinx. The lead guy was kind of charmless, and the movie wasn’t really that great.
Well, I should say the movie itself wasn’t great, but there were some fantastic car chases in it. The chases were choreographed by Rémy Julienne, the man behind the car chases in a number of James Bond movies and, most significantly, The Italian Job. So, the car chase sequences definitely punched well above their weight, especially the one I remembered from my childhood, which, happily, I can show you, right now:
Oh man, there is so much going on there. It starts with a big, lumbering truck – it looks a bit like a Bedford, but it was built specifically for the movie, being chased by four black Porsche 911s, led by what looks like a Porsche 930 slantnose:
(Screenshot: Disney via YouTube)
I kind of suspect that slantnose was a studio-modified normal 911, but still, it’s fun to see. They make quite an imposing and menacing pack of cars, especially when their prey is something as lumbering and helpless as this truck:
(Screenshot: Disney via YouTube)
There’s a lot going on with that sorta-Bedford truck: it has that charming home-built camper back that looks like some sort of Romanian dacha, along with all of those bundled quilts or bags of whatever lashed to the bumper there. It’s a bit of a confusing mess, but it all makes sense when that truck’s party trick is revealed:
(Screenshot: Disney via YouTube)
It births a sportscar! A low, sleek, condor-livery’d sportscar! The sportscar emerges, and just casts its former shell aside, like some sort of automotive hermit crab.
(Screenshot: Disney via YouTube)
I do love the control panel shown for the inside of the Condormobile; the green-phosphor video displays were very much products of their era, and I like how the button typography is the legendary and improbably-named Westminster typeface, a staple of sci-fi proto-cyber stuff since the late ’60s.
(Screenshot: Disney via YouTube)
The physics of how this all could have worked are probably best left unexamined. Condorman and the lovely KGB defector somehow drop down into the Condormobile, even though the car does not seem to have any sort of opening roof? And the Condormobile was the basis of the truck all along, somehow, just driven from a secondary cab above? Sure, why not?
And, most importantly, just what the hell is the Condormobile? Perhaps not too shockingly for anyone who has dug into movie cars, it’s based on a Volkswagen Beetle. It’s a Sterling Nova kit car, or perhaps a Cimbria, as an earlier version was known, and it later was known as an Eagle in the UK, then a Viper 2000, then a Nereia – this basic fiberglass bodyshell has had a ton of names and lives. The first version, the Nova, was designed by a man named Richard Oakes, in the UK.
I thought this particular version is one of the Cimbria ones, which was an unsanctioned variation on the Sterling kit, made by Joe Palumbo.
(images: Amore Cars)
But I was wrong; it seems the Condorman cars were actual modified Sterling Novas, which featured, among other things, a canopy-style door setup, which you can see in action in this video:
Air-cooled VW fanatics may recognize that parking brake boot, too. The engine I think is still an air-cooled VW flat-four, but it has some big headers that make it sound a lot more ravenous.
What’s especially interesting about the Sterling kit is how relatively easy it seems to have been to assemble. This old 1974 Hot Rod article suggests you can do it all in about 40 hours, because so much of the kit is done for you – glass is installed, the canopy is installed, and it’s just 28 bolts onto a stock – as in no need to shorten – VW chassis and you’re pretty much good to go. That’s impressive.
Of course at $2195 (about $14,000 today) the kit cost almost as much as a 1974 Beetle would have back then, $2,625 ($16,914), but, damn, look what you end up with! Though, to be fair, the designer, Richard Oakes, did once say that the car was “designed for the enjoyment of the person looking at the car and not for the driver” but that’s also what made it perfect for its role in movies, like Condorman.
It’s also worth noting that the most recent official appearance of the Condormobile and Condorman was in a Pixar short called Small Fry, taking place in the Toy Story universe and featuring fast-food kids’ meal toys. It’s pretty funny:
…and here’s Condorman’s cameo:
(Screenshot:Pixar via YouTube)
That’s a pretty good likeness of the Sterling Nova/Condormobile.
Really, that car is very likely the best part of that whole movie. It’s certainly all I remembered about the film over 40 years later, so that has to mean something, right?
I have an official movie poster of Condorman somewhere in the attic. The chase scene where 5 Porsches get wrecked so that a vw can turn into a hovercraft was the coolest thing I’d ever seen as a kid.
That Romanian Camper truck is still what I dream of when van life fever hits me.
Off to find it streaming somewhere now.
I’ve hunted for a couple years to show this glorious cheese to my kids with no luck, if you find anything let us all know.
I haven’t read this yet but the title has everything I need. Going to read now.
How about the Last Chase, starring a Porsche Canam car?
Nice to see a film car capable of real speed!
Plot is a little close to modern anti-car reality.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0082642/
I have that on DVD. It is a Japanese release and the description on the back says it is a homo-erotic film between Lee Majors and Chris Makepeace. Really. That is what it says.
That’s hysterical!
I would love to have a copy of that one.
I haven’t seen it in years.
ahh, the type of movie you rented from the video store when you got there too late on Friday.
Yup! Especially when you were 8 and your brother was 3 and at least it was better than The Apple Dumpling Gang.
That is a very low bar.
Wow, totally forgot this movie existed. Heard about it when I was a kid, but never saw it, not even on cable or VHS.
I went to see the movie Arthur with my grandparents that summer, and they showed a trailer for this movie. And ever since then, I have been intrigued, but have never been able to see it. It never seemed to air on cable TV, and it never seemed to be in the Kids section of any video store we went to.
As an adult I am STILL intrigued by this film for other reasons, namely as an artifact of its time. Disney was finally branching out from the slop of the 1970s (starting with 1979’s The Black Hole), but they were also still putting out the occasional Herbie sequel and what-not. I think 1982’s Tron, though a financial failure, finally opened their eyes to the idea of modernizing their production pipeline, and then Eisner came in and the juggernaut era was established.
The Black Hole is still a favorite of mine for both nostalgia and that exact fact – it’s a shocking dark and weird movie for a Disney production of the time.
Disney’s first PG film.
I watched that again once we got Disney+, thinking I was in for a treat. I was not. It did not hold up well — many of the sets looked as though they were made cheaply for a TV movie. The space-based special effects, however, still look fantastic.
This is IP that is ripe for a remake.
For the longest time I conflated it with Silent Running, which featured a long Joan Baez anthem (probably not as long as I remember, but still) overlaying a montage of robots tending gardens on a somehow-doomed spaceship. Plus Bruce Dern being just a couple clicks more earnest than circumstances warranted, as one expects.
For me, it’s also the similar spaceship design – an improbable amount of giant windows.
And the Silent Running’s were also reused for the forgotten Canadian scifi show The Starlost. Cheap doesn’t begin to describe it (the sets would be rejected by the original Doctor Who), but the premise is amazing. Harlan Ellison even wrote for it.
Saw it as a kid too, but the only part I remembered was the wedge shaped car turning into a ramp.
Another fun fact is that there was Scholastic (remember them?) novelization of the movie too. Yup, proudly owned it b/c I loved this movie.
It’s right up with Cloak and Dagger (Dabney Coleman was never better) in my book.
I saw the mirrored tint on that slantnose and thought, I want that! I thought, mirror is perfect, I wont have to have a very dark tint, I’ll be able to see better at night than the traditional black, plus it looks sweet!
Then I found out reflective tint is illegal pretty much everywhere. Bummer.
Same.
My uncle built a Sterling Nova in the late 80s. It was originally painted a bright GM yellow, but too many people joked his car was the Condorman car so he painted it a Mopar red. It was a cool car, but the performance didn’t match the looks. The canopy was cool, but it was heavy and struts had a tendency to tear the fiberglass on the body trying to lift it. He kept it until probably 1995 and then sold it to the local high School auto shop.
Condorman sounds like Regis Philbin. Did somebody say “KITT” car?
He’s actually English, so maybe that was his “American nerdy comic book artist” voice.
Michael Crawford was a bit of a star in his home country of England he was a comedian and then had the lead charachter in ‘phantom of the opera’ on broadway for a few years after.
I love love loved that movie as a kid! Specifically because of that car chase scene. As an adult, I’m disappointed that the 911s did not sound like 911s. The sound editor must have dubbed in some SBC growl.
Still love it through.
I am going to try to find condorman to watch tonite. Yes for the campiness but this isn’t far from being a decent 1970 action hero movie.
1. Kurt Russell – every decent Disney Movie of the era had Kurt Russell he would have elevated the action.
2. The 911s were cool but not known for four wheeler so different vehicle coming down the mountain without a road.
3. You have to have the chasers lose a vehicle on every tier.
4. Evaluate the weapons available apparently a machine gun with 6 barrels can be avoided by a man driving a car, then speed of light lasers can also be avoided by a driver, but flamethrowers that actually wouldn’t really ignite the cars is the best weapon.
5. They are all VWs so no surprise they are equal
6. There has to be a better way to launch a vehicle onto water than cheap air filled bladders.
But I still want to watch it.
Rentable on Amazon, Apple, and Fandango. Personally I hoisted the Jolly Roger and have it on my Plex server. I may have to watch it again tonight just because.
I take issue with calling this a “crappy” 80s movie. I have fond memories of watching this in my elementary school gym for “movie night”. For some reason, I feel like I saw this movie a LOT during my elementary school years.
This movie has a theme song that pulled a “Shinning” on me: I saw the movie when I was a kid, but when I heard Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” I thought “That’s a rip-off of the Condorman music!”
(Not that anybody ripped off anybody, much less Henry Freaking Mancini, but kids are dumb. Or maybe just me.)
Ya know…in all these years I haven’t made that connection (probably because I grew up with the movie and not the song). But you’re quite right!
Soo many questions. 1981! So Knight Rider, and Terminator stole from this?
Now find Flaming Globes of Sigmund!
OMG. Thanks for bringing that memory out of the vault. I watched this so many times as a kid. On what must have been a pirated VHS recorded from the Disney channel.
So, six Volkswagens then.
*runs away cackling*
Hero car looks like it was stolen from “death race 2000”
The Porsches are all I remember from watching this as a kid too.
Wow, this must be a close second to Herbie Rides Again for most Beetles in a single Disney movie
Amazing that back in the day a B movie had the budget to destroy half a dozen 911s. That’s a shame.
Loved the rotating radar antenna on the slant nose. And it had quite the wing out back.
As for the acting, well, the damsel in distress was pretty.
I wouldn’t be suprised if the ‘911’s’ were just beetle kit cars. The offroad one that looses its nose a few times seems to ride a bit higher and its body skin flexes like a tamiya RC car.
I thought this was ‘The Wraith.’ Similar cars, stupidity, and on-scene location.
The Wraith was a far worse movie. At least Condorman had a plot that made sense and a budget backed by Disney. And the Wraith car was a Ford(?) prototype, not a kit car. That said, both movies are wonderful in their own way, despite how bad they may be.
Dodge. The Dodge M4S, aka The Turbo Interceptor
It was actually a legit PPG pace car.
Thanks!
I seem to recall laughing at some point in the movie when I noticed a large Chrysler PentaStar clearly showing on the car.
I LOVED this movie when I was a kid. It’s crappiness was part of its charm. It still holds up today, in the sense that it’s still crappy, but also stupid fun.
Condorman is one of my all-time favorite movies. The car chase is awesome, the camp is amazing.
Fun fact: The lead actor, Michael Crawford, was the original Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber version)
And when Oliver Reed showed up in Gladiator I screamed a little inside.