A GM-era Saab T-bones an innocent Peugeot out the side of a multistory parking structure and into the ground. Multiple VWs blow up – including a Eurovan (Caravelle) and an original Beetle – for no apparent reason. A Dodge van T-bones a gooseneck trailer holding a speedboat and, critically, many liters of gasoline; everything explodes except the boat, which is launched like a rocket off the back of the trailer and into traffic. Another truck drops its trailerload (a mobile home) while avoiding a wreck during a chase; a late-model Mercedes C-class smashes through one wall of the house (now on the road) and skids to a stop, but the occupants exit and dive out the house’s windows before another 18-wheeler turns the Benz into so much tin foil. Watch cars touch bumpers and flip end over end into oncoming traffic. Alfas, late-model Fords, a surprising number of American cars (a ’90s Buick Park Avenue?) all are crash fodder on the Autobahn. And that’s just in the five minute clip linked above!
For fifteen years and more than 200 episodes, the German TV program Alarm Fur Cobra 11: Die Autobahnpolizei (roughly translated, Alarm for Cobra 11: Motorway Police) has smashed thousands of cars, all in the name of … what, exactly? Drama? Cars don’t explode straight up, and cars who see a wreck a quarter of a mile away should be able to apply the brakes in time and not add to the pile-up. Dark comedy? Perhaps.
Dan Strohl has pointed out that car wrecks are a universal language, but we can’t help but think that there’s got to be some story bones holding up all that tasty car-wreck red meat.
We’re thrilled that we got to lose ourselves for hours the other day skimming through one of the fifty (!) home-made wreck compilations on YouTube (linked above). Rarely are fewer than half a dozen cars destroyed in a wreck, unless of course it’s a big-rig full of fuel exploding as it falls off a bridge. But we want more.
American TV syndicators, here is your next smash hit (literally). No need to re-do it and wreck more cars: Buy it, get some voiceover actors, put it on after the 11 o’clock news, and watch Alarm Fur Cobra 11: Die Autobahnpolizei become a cult hit nationwide in a matter of months. Is it really any less cheesy than that international smash, Baywatch?