Holden's old Proving Ground immortalised by Hollywood and a Ford

You know when a Liam Neeson movie pops up, it’s guaranteed to have tons of action, a few shootouts and an elderly Irish actor grunting about how he’s going to take out the bad guys unless they give up and walk away.

You don’t expect to see the home of Holden hosting the Taken superstar.

That’s exactly what happened as the Hollywood production for The Mongoose took over Victoria in 2025, filming at a multitude of locations including Castlemaine and Altona.

However, it was the streets of Lang Lang that got the least attention from the media and the public during production, yet it appears to have been one of the most widely utilised locations in the film.

We’re going to take you through what we have spotted in the trailer and show you as many of the real life locations side-by-side.

If you haven’t seen the trailer or heard anything about the upcoming action film, here's the rundown:

“Accused of a crime he didn’t commit and with nothing to lose, a war hero (Liam Neeson) leads law enforcement on a cross-country car chase with the help of his brothers in arms and a sympathetic public rooting for his getaway.”

So yeah, standard Liam Neeson affair.

The car in question is interesting too. An S650 Ford Mustang was chosen to co-star with Neeson. Dressed up to look like a Shelby Super Snake, the real cars were a mix of four-cylinder Ecoboosts and a “hero” V8 – none of which were supercharged like the real Shelby Super Snake editions.

The irony of a Ford Mustang taking the former Holden Proving Ground to the silver screen isn’t lost on us but Mustangs have a strong history of cinema stardom – Commodores not so much.

That said, if you look closely in the background of the police chase shots, you can spy a dressed-up Holden Caprice – a car that was actually built in left-hand drive and shipped to the USA as a police vehicle.

You can also spy a blacked-out Caprice meeting its demise in what we can only assume is a road worker's dunger.

We did share Lang Lang with the production on a number of occasions during 2025. At the time, we just presumed they would spend a lot of time in post-production using CGI to remove the obvious Lang Lang sites. Oh, how wrong we were.

They utilised roads throughout the facility. While these shots are completely out of context, we can identify a number of spots we've filmed our content at over the years.

In addition to those, they utilised what was known as the “truck route” for the dirt road shots where a very CGI Black Hawk helicopter is chasing the Mustang.

And the big finale where a car is seen flipping down a hill takes place out the back of the facility in an area known as “Tiny Town”. We don’t have any footage of this location, but if you have a look on Google Maps you can see it.

The hero car, as previously mentioned, is a Ford S650 Mustang with a Shelby body kit. There were a number of vehicles used during the production of the film – not all survive these sorts of shoots – but the ones that did are going on to live a second life here in Melbourne.

Mustang Motorsport, the official Shelby dealer in Australia, purchased the vehicles after the production wrapped up. This is common practice for a foreign film production to sell off production vehicles to locals in an effort to recoup some of the costs of the film.

James Johnson, managing director of Mustang Motorsport explained the rationale of purchasing these vehicles even before people knew there was a film starring them.

“The reason why we ended up purchasing them is because obviously we’re the Shelby shop and all those cars, the components and the vehicle, the parts they put on them is what we put on our cars… so if someone saw that movie and wanted one themselves, that’s what we sell," he said.

The hero of the film, the V8 Mustang, has been returned to showroom condition and is currently on display at Lorbek Luxury cars in Melbourne.

Mr Johnson has hinted some of the Ecoboost versions may end up getting a second life too.

"We’ve put them back to the original colour and I’m going to turn them into track cars. Because they’re left-hand drive, you can’t do anything with them… So I’ve got some engines… I’ll turn them into some track toys," he explained.

Mustang Motorsport is planning to release a content series documenting the purchase and reconditioning of the vehicles soon. You can follow along or get your own Shelby Mustang at Shelby Australia.

While the days of car testing at the Lang Lang Proving Ground are over, we take some comfort knowing that almost every square inch of the facility has been captured on camera over the past few years.

Established in 1957, the 877-hectare facility was responsible for testing and developing General Motors vehicles for 63 years, before it was sold to Vietnamese upstart Vinfast for $36,300,000.00. After failing to gain traction in the local market, Vinfast all but abandoned vehicle testing in Australia and opted to rent out the proving ground.

Here at CarExpert, we made it our second home, filming over 350 car reviews over the past five years.

Earlier this year it was sold to defence contractor Defendtex for $20,350,000.00, representing a loss of $16m plus operating costs over the six years Vinfast held the title.

Vehicle testing may have been replaced by rocket testing, but the memories of the Holden Proving Ground will live on forever thanks to cinematic masterpieces like the CarExpert YouTube channel, and films like The Mongoose.

The film is directed by Mark Vanselow and stars Neeson, Marissa Tomei, Ving Rhames and Michael Chiklis.

The Mongoose will be released in Australian cinemas on October 30, 2026.