Military vehicle collector Arnold Schwarzenegger recently used his own tank to crush a Mercedes for reporters while promoting his new movie.

Army souvenir, Arnold Schwarzenegger style

The movie, “The Last Stand,” is the first film Schwarzenegger has starred in for a decade. And the tank was one that has great sentimental value for the former California governor and action movie icon.

According to Schwarzenegger it is “exactly the very tank that I drove in the Austrian Army when I was 18 years old.”

War stories

While in the Austrian Army, Schwarzenegger related, he and his fellow soldiers would use a flat spot of metal over the engine to cook steak and eggs. Also, while on maneuvers, they would sleep in holes dug in the ground under the tank to be safe from “the wild boars roaming the countryside.”

Getting tanked

Schwarzenegger purchased the M47 Patton tank tank in 1992, originally intending to use it for his Planet Hollywood restaurant in Las Vegas. Those plans did not materialize, and now the tank is housed at the Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio just outside of Los Angeles, where the car crushing promotional event took place on Friday January 4.

The M47 Patton is a 50-ton tank made between 1951 and 1953 that was named after General George S. Patton. The tank has also been used by Schwarzenegger for charity events for underprivileged children.

A passion for Hummers

Known for his penchant for military-type vehicles, Schwarzenegger became fascinated with the Humvee when he saw a military procession while shooting the 1990 comedy, “Kindergarten Cop.” At that time, however, the vehicle was not something one could just pick up at BJ’s Auto Sales. It was strictly available to the military.

Two years later, however, he took the keys to the very first commercial Hummer H1 to roll off the assembly line.

Since that time the movie star has acquired eight Hummers. Most of those he got rid of in 2006 in a gubernatorial show of support for greener technology in his state. However, he did keep one less-polluting hybrid model.

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A new monster truck

Schwarzenegger recently plunked down a quarter-million for an enormous diesel Mercedes-Benz Unimog U1300 monster truck that has been used in the military of many nations. The multipurpose vehicle had to be customized to make it street legal in the star’s home of Los Angeles.

“The Last Stand” opens on January 18 and co-stars Johnny Knoxville, Forest Whitaker, Rodrigo Santoro, and Jaimie Alexander.

video: ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger tank smashes Mercedes’

MCDE Editorial