The original Judge Dredd movie may be 26 years old, but some elements of it have aged very well. One is this Land Rover City Cab that still looks to be ahead of its time. This prop is for sale, and it’s just begging to be sent off-road.
Last week, I covered some sleek and polished movie cars going up for grabs in an upcoming auction. On the other side of the coin, we have this project Land Rover City Cab for sale on Craigslist for $25,000. It needs a lot of work, but I see some really fun potential in it.
So, what exactly are you looking at? Land Rover, with the help of Dunsfold Landrovers, decided to make some prop cars for the 1995 Judge Dredd flick. These props are fiberglass bodies sitting on top of the frame and running gear of Land Rover 101 Forward Control military trucks.
We’ve covered these machines before, and they have quite the backstory:
In the year 2139 few vehicles are left on earth, one of them driven by Judge Dredd, a cartoon character from the 2000AD Comic. The only safe way to travel in that violent world is in armored taxis- built by Landrover.
So for the Hollywood movie “Judge Dredd”, starring Sylvester Stallone, several 101's were equipped with a futuristic fiberglass body. Design work was done by Gordon Sked and David Woodhouse, the vehicles were built by Land Rover. After the movie was finished almost all vehicles were bought by Philipp Bashall and are for sale. The vehicles are not road legal as they are but can be easily made to. All the 101's mechanical parts are retained. This is a hot, noisy vehicle- but what a headturner!
The interior isn’t changed except for the one prototype used for interior shooting. Access is quite difficult and there are some other shortcomings like noise, heat and no ventilation. And no reclining seats- so forget about driving to a Disco
According to the BubbleMania website, many of those sold were turned into weird personal cars while some others, like the one we’re looking at today, were made over as advertising vehicles.
The seller says that this one was used by Crown Audio and JBL Audio for the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show, winning best in show that year for JBL. Information about this particular vehicle is scant. I cannot even find any actual data for CES that year.
But it does appear to be legitimate. The fiberglass and exhaust pipes match. Some of the blue that didn’t get painted over also matches. I contacted the seller, and he confirmed that this is indeed the Crown Audio vehicle above.
All I see in this is an awesome off-road rig. Forget a Jeep and forget a side-by-side. Storm down the trails in this. It has a 3.5-liter Rover V8 that is said to run, and the wheels are wrapped in chunky Goodyear Wrangler mud tires.
It’ll need some work if you want to use it for any practical reason. In addition to a gutted interior, it doesn’t have an odometer or a title.
It’s for sale on Craigslist near Lubbock, Texas, for $25,000 or best offer. That’s a lot of money to pay for a project, but it’s one of those cool vehicles that you’ll almost never see again.