There is a Swedish manufacturer of super high performance cars called Koenisegg, named after it’s founder, Christian Von Koenisegg. I just discovered that his inspiration to build fast cars came from a stop motion animated film he saw when he was five years old. The film is Norway’s Flåklypa Grand Prix (1975). Also known with the English title The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, it was a massive hit in Norway and other countries. This from Wikipedia:
The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (Norwegian: Flåklypa Grand Prix) is a Norwegian stop motion-animated feature film directed by Ivo Caprino. It was released in 1975 and is based on characters from a series of books by Norwegian cartoonist and author Kjell Aukrust. It is the most widely seen Norwegian film of all time…
To describe how popular the film was, here is a trivia fact from IMDB.
Since its premiere on 28 August 1975, the movie was shown at a cinema somewhere in the world every day of the week, for 28 years. Mainly in theaters in Norway, Moscow or Tokyo, the non-stop run ended in 2003.
The story centers around an inventive bicycle repairman and his two animal friends who build a ridiculously fast car to race against a villain who has stolen his technology.
The film is available for purchase on disc, and there is a trailer for it. But the trailer is poorly edited and doesn’t give the best impression of the story or animation. As a sample I am embedding a music video made with footage from the film. It’s much more enjoyable.
The centerpiece of the story is the race car, Il Tempo Gigante. Look at this gorgeous model. It’s undoubtedly the hero piece used for closeups.
And I have to include this BTS shot of the shirtless animators on set.
As stated, the story came from illustrator Kjell Aukrust.
While the film has many qualities, Aukrust may be the real discovery for me. Here is one of his drawings of Il Tempo Gigante.
Here are some other drawings he did.
Il Tempo Gigante is so popular in Norway, there is a full scale working version that still tours the country for charity events.
There is actually a theory that the pod race sequence in Star Wars, The Phantom Menace was modeled after the race in this movie. Watch this side by side, and see what you think.
I appreciate this review of the movie, from an English speaking Norwegian.
Finally, while the whole film is not online, this appears to be the first 8.5 minutes