Vehicle rig
The buried steel-ramp gag that lifts a moving vehicle into a barrel-roll without a cannon. Lower-budget cousin of the cannon-roll, used for chases where the rotation is less violent.
Mechanism
A pipe-ramp is a steel ramp — typically a length of large-diameter pipe welded to a baseplate — buried in the road surface so only a few inches of the ramp protrude. On contact at the precision driver's calibrated speed and angle, the leading wheel of the picture-car climbs the ramp and the vehicle is rotated into a roll. The geometry of the roll depends entirely on the impact: too slow and the vehicle simply pops up and lands flat; too fast and it over-rotates. Coordinators run the gag at progressively higher speeds with a remote-piloted dummy car before committing to the principal take. The pipe is buried at a calculated angle relative to the road centreline so the roll axis stays predictable.
Safety
Precision driver setup is identical to a cannon-roll — full cage, HANS device, fire suit, fuel cell. Camera-side windows are removed; tow-rig recovery is staged at the predicted landing zone. The biggest risk is mis-impact: hitting the ramp at the wrong angle redirects the rotation toward the camera or crew. The ramp position is surveyed in pre-vis and confirmed against the camera position before each take.
Governed by
Variants
Mounted across the lane to flip a vehicle sideways rather than end-over-end.
On screen
Sequences in the archive whose discipline tags overlap this technique's category. Click through for the full rigging breakdown of each set-piece.