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Given the extremely tight production schedule on The Stunt Driver, the winning new tragicomic feature about Carter’s life, that did not happen.

“We put our car in the drink with scenes left to shoot inside it,” says Jay Baruchel (Knocked Up, This is the End), who stars as Carter in the film. “And so, we have all these closeups to shoot—all my closeups inside the car are after it was in the fucking lake. And it just smelled like shit and old tuna.”

Jay Baruchel as Ken Carter.

Despite both being Canadian, neither Baruchel nor director Michael Dowse knew much about Carter’s life growing up. (For your own primer, check out this stellar R&T story by amazing C/D staffer Elana Scherr.)

Dowse’s perception of daredevils was based mainly on the exploits of the grandiloquent ’70s/’80s showman Evel Knievel, who is a core antagonist in Carter’s life, and is played in the movie by Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, 3:10 to Yuma). Also, the antics of fictional TV stuntman Super Dave Osborne.

Baruchel’s affection for technical driving was derived from youthful exposure, by his film-loving parents, to cinematic stunting masterpieces such as The Road Warrior, Cannonball Run, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And from one personal experience. “My dad took me to see a monster truck rally at Olympic Stadium in Montreal in grade nine,” he says. “So, I did get to see Grave Digger live, which was pretty sick.”

Baruchel has since had his own on-set motoring experiences. For The Trotsky, he had to drive an awful Russian LADA. “I learned how to, quote unquote, drive stick on that particular vehicle, which if I slowed down too much, just shut off,” he says. “So, you had to keep it at a certain velocity, like the fucking Speed bus, or else it would just die.” And for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, he had to drive a singular 1930s Rolls-Royce rented to the production by his menacing co-star Nicolas Cage. “You don't want to spill anything in a fucking one-of-a-kind Rolls that Nicolas Cage owns,” he says.

Ed Helms as car creator Dick Keller, with the rocket-powered Mark IV.

Assembling an on-screen version of Carter’s Mark IV for The Stunt Driver was a laborious process. Needless to say, the original car did not survive. And though production designer Jean-André Carrière was able to speak with its creator, rocket-car mastermind Dick Keller—whose Blue Flame set a 1970 land speed record at Bonneville, and who is played in the movie by Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover franchise)—they were unable to locate any schematics. Further complicating the endeavor was the fact that the new film contains spliced-in clips from an in-period documentary about Carter’s jump, The Devil at Your Heels, emphasizing the need for verisimilitude. “Jean just pieced it together,” Dowse says. “Like, he found every single historical photo he could.”

A stroke of good luck was visited upon the production when it was revealed that The Devil at Your Heels documentarian owned a piece of the original car’s colored exterior fiberglass. Sadly, he refused to hand over the precious artifact. But he was eventually cajoled into taking it to Home Depot for a color match. “He gave that paint code number to Jean,” Dowse says. Still, three weeks out from shooting, the director found himself cursing the Montreal shop that was building the car. “They couldn't quite pull it off. We had to find another shop to make sure it got done.”

For a scene involving one of Carter’s early daredevil stunts, Baruchel was granted lap time behind the wheel of a 1950s Chevy, a car he describes as “a horrendous fucking pile of garbage” due to its lack of a properly functional gas pedal, transmission, or electrical system. But he never had a chance to drive the big, yellow, be-winged Lincoln. This wasn’t through any fault of his. “It didn't do jack shit. It had no motor. You couldn't mow a lawn with that fucking thing,” he says. “It had a steering system, but that was all. You couldn’t go anywhere if someone wasn’t pulling it.”

Still, both star and director ended up possessing personal mementos of Carter’s actual Continental. At the afterparty following the movie’s September premiere, two gentlemen approached them. It turned out the pair had been behind a musical docudrama about the jump called “Aim for the Roses,” and attended the opening event bearing remnants of the Lincoln that they’d scavenged from the original jump.

“They gave each of us a chunk of it,” Burachel says. “And Dowse and I, being soft old farts, both started getting super emotional because, like, we're holding chunks of the thing. The car that we'd seen explode on camera in the documentary, and in our movie.”

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Brett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.