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2026 Honda Ridgeline ReviewThe Cars of Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road
Thunder Road featured some of the coolest cars of the 1950s (and Robert Mitchum) in a thrilling tale of Tennessee bootleggers.
Bootlegger’s Elegy
Every decade has its car movies. The 1960s had Bullitt and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, the 1970s had American Graffiti and Smoky and the Bandit, the 1980s had the epic car chases in The Blues Brothers, the 1990s had equally epic car chases in Ronin. And, of course, the last two decades plus have had the Fast & Furious movies.
The 1950s had their car movies too, with titles like Hot Rod, Hot Rod Girl, and Drag Strip Girl. The original The Fast and the Furious was actually a Roger Corman special from 1954. Among these more disposable titles one has retained a devoted following for its depiction of the high stakes, high speed driving of Appalachian bootleggers in Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road (1958).
The Plot
Mitchum conceived and stars in Thunder Road, the tale of bootlegger Lucas Doolin who, along with his father and many others, produced illegal moonshine in Harlan County, smuggling it out to regional cities like Memphis in hopped-up cars. Doolin, a recently returned veteran from the Korean War, runs afoul of not only the Treasury Department’s enforcers but a crime boss, Carl Kogan, who’s determined to consolidate the moonshining business under his control. Doolin’s defiance of Kogan’s overtures manages to get several other moonshiners killed and even an ATF agent. As the Treasury Department cracks down on Harlan County’s bootleggers, Doolin attempts one last run. Though he manages to escape Kogan’s thug on the road, he fails to evade the police’s spike strip, losing control and crashing into an electrical transformer.
Though not the greatest thriller ever made, Thunder Road is notable for its depiction of (then) modern day bootleggers and the cars they drove at the time. The cars are fitted with upgraded engines capable of out running the cops in high-speed chases while also not losing control on the meandering mountain dirt roads of southern Appalachia. When Doolin visits Kogan’s garage hideout he noted the modifications underway on a ’36 Ford V8. Kogan’s henchmen nods, “That’s right,” he sneers, “we’ve got mills that’ll blow that heap of yours right off the road.”
And it’s not just the engines, either. The cars come equipped with moonshine tanks with capacities up to 250 gallons. Doolin’s kid brother Robin, played by Mitchum’s kid brother James, is a mechanic who works on moonshine cars and implements an emergency tank dump lest his brother fails to outrun the cops. In another scene, Doolin evades Kogan’s pursuing henchmen with the help of a grease slick gun, causing the baddies to swerve off the side of a steep hill in a fiery crash.
1957 Chevrolet 210
The movie opens with a chase scene between a police patrol car, a Chevrolet 210, and a 1950 Ford Custom De Luxe driven by Lucas Doolin. Throughout the film, the Chevy 210 is the default ride for Agent Troy Barrett and other assorted “revenuers” and police (others included Chevy 150s and Ford Custom 300s). The Chevy 210 is one of three versions of Chevrolet’s Tri-Five cars, sandwiched between the Chevy 150 and the high-end Chevy Bel-Air. 1957 was the 210’s final year of production, in which it featured a 283 small-block V8 borrowed from the Corvette.
1950/51 Ford Custom Deluxe
In that initial chase scene, Doolin’s 1950/51 Ford Custom Deluxe pulls off an improbable maneuver worthy of modern day Fast & Furious movies. In it, Doolin’s car is closely tailed by the agents’ Chevy, rounding a bend the combination of a gravel surface and oversteer cause the Ford to barrel roll seemingly one and half revolutions onto its side. But through the magic of editing, the car speeds away from the cloud of dust it’s kicked up, having somehow landed back on its wheels virtually undamaged. The cops, having slowed down for the wreck, don’t even attempt to continue their pursuit, content to marvel at Doolin’s maverick driving.
One images Doolin’s Ford Custom had a modified engine as the car’s two engine offerings, a 226 straight-six and a 239 V8, came in at 95 and 100 horsepower, respectively. We do know that Doolin’s brother Robin outfitted the car with a grease slick gun, used to evade Kogan’s henchmen.
1949 Oldsmobile 88
The Olds 88 in the movie is driven by one of Doolin’s Harlan-county acquaintances. Throughout the film we see a number of other contemporary cars in the background, including a Lincoln Premier in one body shop, a proper Chevy Bel-Air in another, Chevy 150s as police cars, a GMC New Design heavy-duty truck, and a Chevy Advance Design pickup among many more.
1940 Ford V8 De Luxe
The Ford V8, which arrived back in 1932, had by the late 1950s built up a deserved reputation as an excellent hot rod and had been a popular getaway car for bank robbers and criminals like John Dillinger. It’s unsurprising then that Thunder Road’s bootleggers, both Doolin’s moonshiners and Kogan’s henchmen, drove Ford V8s.
1957 Ford Custom
The 1957 Ford Custom was the favorite ride of Kogan’s henchmen in the movie. We see ’57 Fords in their body shop as well as in use in car chases, including the one where Doolin’s grease gun slicks the road, causing it to careen off a hillside to a fiery demise.
1957 Ford Fairlane 500
Back from one of his runs to Memphis, Doolin returns with a new car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500. Robin Doolin equips the car with a moonshine tank, complete with a dump valve controlled from a toggle switch in front seat. This is the car Doolin uses on his final run. Though he manages to run Kogan’s man off the road, Doolin isn’t able to see the spike strip the police have laid across the road which he hits, loses control, and flips his car into an electric transformer. Thus ends not only the life of Lucas Doolin but Thunder Road itself, the film totally dispensing with any type of denouement, allowing instead the cautionary tale of devil-may-care bootleggers to grimly linger.
Did they mention that the 57Chevy with the Corvette engine was also Fuel Injected and the 57 Ford Fairlane 500 was Supercharged?
Movie was filmed in and around Asheville, North Carolina, itself well known as a hotbed of moonshine runners coming down over Sams Gap from Tennessee, out of Madison County and others around Asheville. Many places used are no longer recognizable as roads have been widened and building razed, but the Sky Club, used for a bar scene, still stands. My mother’s best friend is seen in the background waiting tables, longtime Asheville restaurant manager and hostess Thelma Smith. Used to hear stories of bits and pieces of the car they destroyed over a mountain waterfall still laying about, and my father, Chief Investigator for the Buncombe County Sheriffs Deparyment, would point out houses used in the movie to me. Mitchum was one of his favorites, and I still know the words to “Thunder Road”.
Clyde Barrow drove fords Dillinger drove a Hudson essex straight 8