Okay, I Don't Get It (Major Spoiler)

His wife died so he gave up.

Kowalski was hopped up on alot of drugs. He doesn't commit suicide in the sense he wants to die, but rather kills himself in the accident because he BELIEVES he'll make it through.


I don't want your watch, man. I want your friendship! - Lightfoot

The whole movie was a big middle finger to 'the establishment'. K was once part of that establishment. He didn't want to be a symbol for the establishment winning in the end, maybe? Could be he didn't want to disillusion his 'fans' who'd been following his exploits in real or vicariously through Super Soul (another anti-establishment character), and getting caught was his way to go out on HIS terms. Whichever reason you personally decide it is, it's the same modus operandi and end of many similar movies of its time; Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry... Easy Rider (some people say VP is a rip-off, not me)... similar to film noir in that there's no 'happy ending' and SPOILER: the main characters die.

>>Why the hell did Kowalski drive his car into the tractors and kill himself?

At the beginning he drives off the road and you see him looking at some derelict vehicles. He realises that he is a derelict on the side of the road with nowhere to go. Next stop, oblivion.

I allways thought, he saw the light between the bulldozers and somehow thought, he'd make it.
He thought, he could just keep on driving.
Because he sure as hell never wanted to stop. Just never wanted to stop in this world he couldn't stand anymore. Except while driving at full speed.



Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you f.ck.

I think similar mindset to the end of Thelma and Louise. Djust a desire to keep going begause to stop, to be apprehended, means death anyway.

I think what I took out of it was, he felt that he didn't belong anywhere but on the road anymore. Since by the end he had run out of road, he made a different decision.

Also, I'm not sure he killed himself. Did anyone see the body? I've been watching this movie since it came out back in 1971, and I've never seen them pull anything out of the wreck but his jacket. After the troopers put out the fire, they were digging through the wreckage, pulled out his jacket, but Kowalski himself is nowhere to be seen. I think he had vanished, hence the title.

A vanishing point (probably most readers here already know) is the place on the horizon where the two edges of the road appear to meet in the middle, but it's just an illusion. You can drive all day and never reach the vanishing point.

Kowalski reached it.

As Super Soul said, "This radio station was named Kowalski, in honour of the last American hero to whom speed means freedom of the soul."

The movie itself has fairly strong messianic overtones. Not saying he's portraying Jesus, not at all; just that, like you pointed out, he barely did anything wrong, yet everyone but a few are trying to kill him for defying their authority. When they finally think they have him and have killed him, poof! He vanished and they are digging through the wreckage and not finding him.

That's just my take. It's not about the car at all, and barely even about the chase. (I like Viggo Mortensen, but the remake did NOT do the story justice at all; the remake just turned the story into another overdone Mopar movie. This 1971 original was still the best and IMO shouldn't have been remade). It was really all about Kowalski the man behind the wheel. Why he didn't stop for the motorcycle cops, who knows. But with each increasingly aggressive intervention from cops and other drivers, it seemed to only reinforce in his mind that his resistance was the right thing for him to do, which was what ultimately led to the way it ended.

Because the makers of this movie wanted the "Easy Rider" ending that was popular with counter-culture movies of the time.