“Twisters” is big on the minds of the Jalop staff, for obvious reasons, and it’s got us all watching videos of the real-life storm chasers that inspired the sequel film. Lucky for us, storm chasers love to talk about their custom intercept vehicles, and Reed Timmer’s Dominator Three is about as good as they get.
Timmer has been storm chasing for decades, and has spent the past 14 years building ever more specialized vehicles to take him straight into tornadoes. The latest of those, Dominator Three, is the apex of the art — for now. Take a look as Timmer breaks down exactly what goes into building a true tornado-chasing lab on wheels:
Unfortunately, since the filming of this video, Dominator Three was taken out — not by a storm, ironically, but by a simple deer strike. The impact caved in the front of the Dominator’s armor, leaving the truck with a radiator leak and unable to continue the chase until it was repaired.
While Dominator Three is back on the road now, the crash appears to have shown Timmer some space for improvement on the truck’s design. He’s since announced the development of a new truck, Dominator Five, to be built in 2025. For the curious, Dominator Four is actually Dominator Fore — Timmer’s bone-stock Subaru Forester, which was also used for chasing until its engine seized.
Dominator Three may be far from Tyler Owens’ exoskeletonized Ram, but those hallmark features from the film — ground-grabbing spikes, exterior armor, a rocket launchpad — all come from real life. Maybe the next film, presumably Twisterss, will give us the Ram with gullwing doors that we all deserve.