Ford Australia has been given a challenge by TopGear Australia Magazine to come up with a modern-day version of the Mad Max Interceptor car, paying homage to the original jet black Ford XB of the 1979 blockbuster.

This could also be an exercise for post-apocalyptic car design! After all, what is going on in Japan currently showed the world that the idea of a likely apocalypse is not that outlandish anymore.

Anyways, from a bunch of design proposals Ford designers had prepared in this after-hour project, they picked up these two which will be featured in the April issue of TopGear Australia magazine. They are asking the readers to vote on which car Ford should take to the next level, so who knows they might actually make it and it could lead to a new Mad Max movie. The winning car will be turned into a clay model, and then a scale version, which is expected to be revealed later this year.

The two competing designs – by designers Nima Nourian and Simon Brook – are limitless in their imagination, technology and weaponry. Among the weaponry is an industrial-strength “taser” mounted to the bonnet to zap bad guys on bikes straight off the road. Other futuristic movie features include a titanium-lined body shell to interrupt police scanners and wheels with extendable spikes to shred enemy vehicles. Nourian said his design paid tribute to the 1970s Interceptor, but also drags the car into the future.

“Our entire team was very excited to be involved in this after-hours project and they approached it with a great deal of enthusiasm – even those that were too young to remember the first Mad Max movie,” Said Chris Svensson, Ford Australia’s Melbourne-based Asia, Pacific and Australia Design Director. “We had a special screening of the original movie so they could understand it.”

“There are some great scenes in the first movie with high-speed chases and clashes with the bad guys, and I thought I’d take that one step further,” he said. “So instead of having weapons and machine guns, we’ve got an industrial strength taser that’ll zap cars dead and out of the way. Brook’s car was equally threatening. “During high-speed pursuits, the wheel’s inner spokes on my design would pop out and start ripping up other cars,” Brook said. “They’d do some serious damage to other people’s vehicles.”