Probably my favourite Indiana Jones film is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The combination of archaeology, mythology, nazi soldiers and lots of wonderful pulp action. Though we know it wasn’t real, and though we know that there was no actual historical version of it; I am sure most of us who have thought about recreating the Indiana Jones films on the table have wanted to use that tank. It appears at first glance to be a Mark VIII with a turret, the reality was that it was built specially for the film and was built up from an excavator.
See the full workbench feature on the Mark IX Beast tank.
Indiana Jones
A Mark VII tank was given by the Sultan of Hatay to the Nazi expedition sent to find the Holy Grail in 1938. It was used to defend the Nazi convoy on its way to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon. On the way to the Grail Temple, there was an ensuing fight on the tank. As Indiana Jones was busy fighting Colonel Ernst Vogel on the top of the tank, his father, Henry and Marcus Brody were making their escape. The tank was destroyed shortly after the Hatay driver was indirectly killed by a Nazi soldier knocked unconscious by Brody. With nobody at the controls, the tank drove aimlessly off a nearby cliff, killing everyone aboard except Indiana Jones.
Special effects artist George Gibbs visited a museum to negotiate renting a small French World War I tank for the film, but ultimately decided on building one.[2] The Mark VII Tank was a replica vehicle built on an old excavator chassis namely a HYMAC 590 and was powered by two rover V8 engines. drive gear installed and modified by a specialist engineer from Chertsey in Surrey, Diablo (Victor) Donnelly It was based on the real-world Tank Mark VIII which possessed no main top turret. The replica measured 36 feet (11 m) long and weighed 28 short tons (25 t).