Dedicated to the memory of Bruce Ingram, who worked on the film as an assistant cameraman. He was the single person killed when the camera car overturned.
The root beer brown car featured in the movie was a real-life technological wonder, the Dodge M4S. A joint effort of the Dodge Division of Chrysler Motors and PPG Industries, one of the highly sophisticated PPG Pace Cars for the PPG-CART Indy Car World Series, designed on 1981 by Bob Ackerman. The M4S was manufactured and constructed at an estimated cost of $1.1 million, and featured performance and technology to match that lofty figure. The innovative body design was developed in the Chrysler studios, while PPG developed the finish - a special bronze pearl paint job formulated just for this car. The M4S was powered by a Chrysler 2.2 liter four-cylinder one-of-a-kind engine that exceeded 194 mph (312 km/h). According to Gary Hellerstein, transportation coordinator for this film, a total of seven versions of the M4S were needed for filming. The original, on loan from Dodge, was used for close-ups and details. Two more "drivers", consisting of perfectly detailed bodies on dune buggy chassis, were used for stunt driving chores. There were four "shells", empty bodies on bare, towable frames, that were sacrificed in various crash scenes.
Because of a tight timing window prior to filming Platoon (1986), Charlie Sheen's scenes were filmed in one day. He's on screen for less than 30 minutes.
While filming a chase sequence shot on a mountainside outside of Tuscon, a crew member was killed and another was critically injured. According to supplementary material on the DVD a camera car was overloaded and overturned. This was the only serious accident during the filming.
According to Charlie Sheen when he appeared on Jay Leno's Garage - "I shot this in a pit stop on the way to the Philippines to film Platoon (1986), Sheen said of The Wraith. "Oliver Stone went and saw it in the movie theater and called me so angrily afterwards," Sheen recalls, as Stone was genuinely worried that "Wraith" was going to soil peoples' opinions of "Platoon."