I didn't want to watch the silent film, not once I learned that a anime version with English vocals was made. It's a magnificent epic story that varies a lot from the original, and I recommend it highly. The original was written about on Wikipedia, and seems to be a very difficult story to follow, and that must be why it was editted differently by anyone who could, resulting in every known copy that existed from the 1930's to the 1990's having about 30 minutes cut from it to make the story cohesive. Watch the anime version for enjoyment, or the original if you're a film afficianado. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293416/
Sounds like a Richard Pryor swearfest, but it's got Checker cabs throughout, car chases, good guys becoming a team and facing the bad guys, solving a kidnapping, and overcoming adversity.
There are differences, but the grill, hood ornament, and distictive doors are the same. The Leslie Special was made for the movie "The Great Race" and is not a vintage real car, it's a custom built to look like the Thomas Flyer that won the 1907 Paris to Peking race http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2010/08/winner-of-1907-paris-to-peking.html .
Both movies are Warner Brothers Pictures, and that makes it more possible that its the same car... what else would a movie company do with a movie car after the publicity is over for the first movie it was featured in?
and I was really surprised to discover this famous car isn't mentioned to have been in a 2nd movie anywhere on the internet. But it is undeniably the same car painted green, and until now, nothing was on the internet about it.
the car was made famous in 1973 when Martin Sheen (Charlie Sheen's dad) drove the cops into submission in a movie named "California Kid" (good movie, but slow) The story takes place in 1958, and involves a town, Clarksburg, California, with a famous speed trap, in which a disturbed Sheriff Roy Childress (Vic Morrow), whose wife and daughter were killed by a speeder, turns bad, with a habit of deliberately punishing speeders by pushing their cars off the mountain highway in his 1957 Plymouth Belvedere.