How many cars can Iron Man destroy?

Even though Tony Stark may love his Audis and Shelby GTs, the life of a super hero is not easy on the people or possessions around him and the automobiles destroyed in the first two Iron Man flicks would have a value nearing $16 million if they were a part of the real world.

Super heroes exist to fight super villains and when they come around cars just seem to get in the way. As part of his origin story, Stark is riding in a convoy of HumVees when it is attacked by the nefarious Ten Rings terrorist organization, resulting in his capture and the ultimate development of his high-powered body surrounding and high-tech armor.

When he later tests out the capabilities of this new invention, he ends up flying recklessly into his vintage Shelby GT – we can only take solace in the fact it had to be a mock up in the movie rather than the destruction of the real thing, but still the horror of the mere suggestion is mortifying.

A real Shelby GT would cost something like $750,000 to replace and figure the armored HumVees at nearly a quarter million apiece. The franchise has only just begun and already Tony Stark has wiped out over a million bucks worth of vehicles.

Shelby GTs are very rare, though it’s easy to find a replica – The CEO of Stark Industries would not be satisfied with anything less than the real thing and there are too few of those left to even contemplate one’s destruction.

At the end of the first flick, Iron Man and his old buddy, in a Eastern Block knock-off suit of high-tech armor, go mano a mano and a host of cars in Los Angeles pay the piper.

One of these is portrayed in the film as a hydrogen powered Novabus, with a price tag of roughly $2 million each, and that’s just for starters. Just guessing, about another quarter million dollars worth of everyday vehicles get totaled during the final battle.

Iron Man 2 begins in Monaco, with Stark firing his driver and settling into a Grand Prix racer, in this case replicas of the 1978 Wolf F1 model. During the ensuing action, no less than four of these fabulous Formula 1 racers were destroyed, adding up to over a million more in cars completely consumed.

Notably the driving scenes actually featured Tanner Foust, with the vehicles supplied by the hallowed Historic Grand Prix Association.

Iron Man’s antagonist, known as Whiplash, also does a job on Stark’s 2009 Rolls Royce Phantom, adding another $350,000 to the total carnage.

The sequel also ends with the destruction of myriad cars on the highways nearby Stark Industries as Iron Man battles a bevy of drones and an old friend in out-of-control battle armor, wiping out another half mil in vehicles.

Though Iron Man or Tony Stark is just one of the super heroes in the Avengers film, that story begins with the destruction of Manhattan – at least all the automobiles in the berg. A conservative estimate would put that at $10 million and we haven’t even gotten to the second sequel yet.

In Iron Man 3, Stark is driving around in an Audi R8 E-Tron, the car Audi was supposed to release in 2012 and didn’t.

Perhaps the brand is trying to build interest in the electric exotic before they actually trot out the production model, but if this one goes down, it’s at least another $150,000 in vehicular damage.

Iron Man 3 just opened this past weekend, and we have yet to check it out, but we hope if there’s a forth in the franchise, they can turn their attention to destroying iconic buildings like the Seattle Space Needle, instead of wiping out these beautiful cars we all love and dream about.

Hasn’t it been long enough since the Twin Towers we can countenance the imaginary destruction of well-known buildings without freaking out?

After all, it’s only a movie and we know it’s not real, but it’s hard to watch the wasting of such beautiful and exotic automobiles.

Just keep telling yourself, “It’s only a movie.” That’s what we had to do watching George Romero’s second film.

It’s called Martin and it’s about a psychotic who thinks he’s a vampire – and Tony Stark thinks he has problems!

Related posts: Audi E-Tron adds to Iron Man hype

Source: Kotaku.com