The Australian actor has just been given an unvarnished assessment of the automotive love of his life: a 1974 Falcon Coupe. And it isn’t flattering.
“It’s a muscle car and I’ve driven lots of muscle cars,” says the host of hit British motoring television show Top Gear. “They all look fantastic, but all muscle cars are crap. They don’t handle properly. Six hundred horsepower and leaf springs ... are you mad?”
“I didn’t think I was,” Bana mumbles.
A muscle car belongs on a plinth, according to Clarkson, something to admire from a distance.
But Bana has just hauled his restored classic out of a ditch, its pristine bodywork and immaculate mechanicals a twisted mess. Entering one tight corner a little too fast during the Targa Tasmania rally was all it took to end up in the trees.
The crash happened nearly two years ago and since then Bana, 40, has made a film—his directorial debut—about his obsession with cars and racing: Love the Beast, which will be released on Thursday.
It’s dominated by his Falcon Coupe—the Beast of the title—and dotted with guest appearances by Clarkson, another high-profile car nut in US talk show host Jay Leno, plus his family and long-time mates.
“I felt like this was a film I was making on behalf of people who love cars, not just for them,” Bana tells Review. “A lot of women say to me, ‘I’m not into cars but I totally got it. I feel differently about my father and brother now, and so much makes sense to me that didn’t before.”
Love the Beast captures the power of all that on a boy growing up in the forgotten suburbs of Melbourne and turns a high beam on a car culture that has since changed forever.
Anxious not to alienate an international audience, Bana left footage shot to explain the Ford-Holden phenomenon in Love the Beast on the cutting-room floor. He aimed for something that can resonate with car lovers everywhere.
Unknown to Bana Sr, though, Eric was also getting a grounding in the vehicle’s nuts and bolts. “I was pulling the family cars apart when I wasn’t supposed to, pulling off bits and pieces of the engine, then putting it back together and hoping that when Mum and Dad came home it would still start.”
| 
|