New Life for Decommissioned Tanks

Although it's very cool that a New Zealand company lets tourists drive tanks over junk cars, let's not expect to see a branch office open in San Diego.

In a country regarded as the adrenaline-pumped home of adventure sports, one New Zealand company is offering frustrated drivers the chance to squash a car with a Centurion tank.

Tanks for Everything in Christchurch has a fleet of eight tanks, armoured personnel carriers and Jeeps, the largest of which can easily crush a family sedan pancake-flat in a crescendo of squealing metal and shattering glass.

"I think it maybe releases repressed frustration, to go and crush something with a tank," owner Jonathan Lahy-Neary said.

"If you've had a bad day, it's a pretty good stress reliever."

The pride of the operation is Maximus, a British-made Centurion battle tank, weighing 52 tonnes and powered by a V-12 Rolls Royce engine, which saw service with Australian forces in Vietnam in the early 1970s.

There's also a Soviet-era T-55, an incongruous sight in New Zealand's rolling green hills, which Tanks or Everything's Matthew Sandland said was surprisingly easy to purchase from an arms dealer in Hungary.

By: Brant