Forgotten movie cars: The Triumph TR4 from "The deadly chase"
Today's edition of our series is something very special. Because this movie car is actually so forgotten that it is not even listed in the "Internet Movie Cars Database" (IMCDB), which usually contains even the most unknown B-movies and their background vehicles.
But the action film "The deadly chase", shot in Hong Kong in 1973, has so far escaped the attention of the site operators. Discerning cinephiles may well argue at this point that they haven't missed anything either – and they would certainly not be entirely wrong. The French distribution title "Karaté Motos" sums up quite well what the film has to offer: the fight against organized crime in the milieu of a motorcycle gang – without weapons, of course, but only with hands and feet.
And then at some point it drives into the picture, the blue Triumph TR4 with the yellow vertical stripe in the middle, accompanied by a much too fast-paced engine soundtrack added on top. It remains to be seen why a two-seater sports car was chosen to take four people to a drug handover.
Of course, things turn out as they have to: the delivery goes wrong and the poor Triumph becomes the stage and an unwilling participant in a wild karate fight. Until the two protagonists manage to save themselves in the car, the blue TR4 breaks through the enemy lines with spinning tires – and during the subsequent escape turns into a white TR6, recognizable by the steering wheel and the rotary control for the instrument lighting instead of the ashtray.
This marks the end of the little roadster's appearance. For the rest of the movie, the investigators switch to a Fiat 125. If you'd like to watch the film in the German dubbed version, it was featured by Oliver Kalkofe in the 2019 series "The worst films of all time". That says it all, really.
