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Custom fabrication meets sci-fi in the Landmaster
For most off-road custom fabricators, the goal is to make the fastest vehicle possible. When famous vehicle designer Dean Jeffries (known, among other achievements, for painting James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder) was assigned to create the vehicle for the 1977 sci-fi film Damnation Alley, he had another goal. The Landmaster, as the vehicle would be called, didn’t necessarily have to outrace other vehiclesit simply had to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by mutated insects and barbarians.
True to form, Jeffries used as many standard truck parts as possible. If you’re going to define it in www.directv.com terms, the process was less SyFy channel and closer to Spike’s Xtreme 4×4. At its core, the Landmaster holds a 427-cubic-inch Ford industrial engine. The vehicle’s unique shape (a polygonal body with a pointed front-end) comes from the two large truck rear bodies that were used to build it. The transmission is an Allison automatic.
Unlike most Hollywood actors, the Landmaster was actually capable of doing most of its own stunts. The vehicle could actually crawl over boulders thanks to its tri-star wheel arrangement. In this design, each axle actually has three wheels arranged in an upright triangle on each end. Two wheels are in contact with the ground at any time, with the benefit that if any one wheel gets stuck, the system will actually rotate in order to move the vehicle forward. This also added more maneuverability to the Landmasterit could turn at a 30 degree angle and make a complete circle in 35 feet, according to an article in the March 1977 issue of Popular Science.
Despite its name, the Landmaster could handle itself pretty well in water as well. Jeffries waterproofed the lower part with an undercoating-like materialyou can see this at work in the scene where the Landmaster floats across Flat Head Lake, Montana.
Today, the Landmaster is in the hands of a private owner, who purchased it in 2005 (before that, it was parked next to Jeffries’ North Hollywood shop on Cahuenga Boulevard). In 2007, the Landmaster appeared in a special “film and television cars” exhibit at the San Francisco Rod & Custom Show. After suffering vandalism in 2009, the Landmaster required minor repair and restoration, but have no fearif it could make it through Damnation Alley, it can make it through just about anything.