Drive A Tank
At more than 3,000 pounds, a Chevy Malibu is a formidable vehicle with a crash-safety test rating of five-stars. But against a 60-ton Chieftain tank, it’s a mere speed bump. That is, if speed bumps came with the sound of crunched steel and shattered glass. Driving a tank that’s the weight of 20 Cadillac Escalades over a junked auto is the “Crush a Car” option of Drive A Tank, the Minnesota facility that offers customers maximal military sensations you’d otherwise have to enlist to experience.
An entry package lets you drive a number of tanks and shoot an armory of heavy-duty weapons. Crushing things comes at an added expense. But realistically, if you are making this trip (it’s about 90 minutes from Minneapolis) do you want to come back without having flattened a sedan? You can even return with a hood ornament as a souvenir of your kill.
After a safety and history brief, you are driven to the action in a five-ton military truck like the one Rambo commandeered at the end of First Blood. Depending on your package, you then take command of an increasingly large series of armored military vehicles that move on treads, working your way up into ever-more-heavily armored machines. At Drive A Tank, this begins with the “smallest,” a FV432 Armored Personnel Carrier. It’s a 15-ton machine with no gun turret, which you drive via periscope. Then, it’s the 18-ton Abbott FV433. Technically a self-propelled gun, it’s a British WWII tank with a 105-mm cannon that can fire long-range projectiles (not included).
The Abbott feels like plenty of tank—until you take the Centurion Mk 5 tank for a spin. A popular design from post-WWII through the 1990s, this was used in Korea and Vietnam and weighs 55 tons. Then it’s on to the Chieftain, a beloved Hollywood prop. The Four-Star package (they’re all named for army general ranks) comes with a car crush, but you can add them to the Two- and Three-Star packages at $649 for the first and $200 for the second. (Why not?)
Customizable Drive A Tank packages run from $374 to $2,599, but for an extra six grand, there’s a “rare opportunity to make a huge mess” and drive the FV432 through a mobile home—over and over until nothing is left standing. Target eliminated.
