Restored 1981 Action Park Battle Tank With Working Tennis Ball Cannon Offered for Sale

A rare piece of Action Park’s Motorworld attraction is back in working order and being offered for sale: a 1981 Battle Action Tank, one of just 10 built for the New Jersey park. It pairs a single-seat cockpit with an air-powered cannon that fires tennis balls, making it a highly unusual survivor from a venue whose rides became part of its identity.

The tank is offered without reserve in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Its current condition reflects restoration work begun in 2022 and further mechanical attention by the selling dealer. The listing gives it a practical point of interest beyond its novelty: the cannon works, and the vehicle has received a replacement engine and several updated components.

A tank attraction built around direct hits

Battle Action Tanks operated inside a fenced enclosure at Motorworld, the motorized-ride area of Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey. Each tank carried targets around its exterior. Drivers aimed their air-powered cannons at rival vehicles, and a hit disabled the target tank for 15 seconds. Visitors watching from outside the enclosure could join in by firing tennis balls from stationary cannons.

The format turned the attraction into a moving target game, with participants navigating and shooting at the same time. The tanks were reportedly designed by park employee Mike Kraemer and built by fellow employee Bob Garby. This example is said to be number six of the 10 produced. All were fitted with protective sliding steel-mesh cages around the driver’s position.

Action Park opened in 1978 and ran until 1996. The Battle Action Tank was one of many attractions that gave the park its reputation for letting visitors take an unusually active role in the experience. Its history is part of the appeal here: this is a surviving original vehicle from a specific ride, rather than a later replica built in the same style.

Restoration and mechanical updates

Robert Gleason of Butler, New Jersey, began restoring the tank in 2022. The work included stripping and repainting the chassis and fiberglass body, refurbishing the sliding steel-mesh cage, replacing hydraulic lines and bumper mounts, and fabricating new steel tubs and plastic side panels painted to suggest tank tracks.

The selling dealer bought the vehicle in May of this year and carried out additional mechanical work. The original engine has been replaced by a 277cc Kohler Command Pro CH395 four-stroke unit rated at 9.5 bhp. The dealer also upgraded the electrical wiring and fitted a new fuel tank, battery and Turf Rider tires.

Those updates give the machine a more usable mechanical baseline, although the source doesn’t provide details on road registration, operating range or the precise condition of each system. Its intended role remains clear: this is a compact amusement-park vehicle, built for low-speed competition inside a dedicated enclosure, rather than a conventional road car.

Action Park’s wider story

The tank’s provenance sits within a larger and often troubling history. Action Park occupied the former Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski area. Gene Mulvihill, who controlled the ski operation, opened a 2,700-foot Alpine Slide in 1976, with sleds running down concrete and fiberglass chutes and a lever controlling their brakes. Action Park formally opened on July 4, 1978, and added attractions over the following years.

The Tidal Wave Pool arrived in 1981, with lifeguards recording as many as 30 rescues a day. In 1983, the park built the Cannonball Loop, an enclosed waterslide with a vertical loop; employees were reportedly offered $100 to test it. The state ride-safety advisory board shut it in 1985 after injuries. Reports for 1984 and 1985 listed 14 fractures and 26 head injuries on the Alpine Slide.

Motorworld’s other attractions included Super Go-Karts limited to 20 mph, though staff reportedly wedged tennis balls into the governors to let them exceed 50 mph. Licensed drivers aged 17 and older could pay extra to drive a Lola T506-series miniature single-seater. The original T506 used a tubular spaceframe, wishbone suspension, drum brakes, rack-and-pinion steering and a 28 bhp Sachs single-rotor Wankel engine. Lola built 41 T506s and 80 T506Bs between 1977 and 1984. The park also operated speedboats reaching up to 40 mph on a pond described as snake-infested.

Five deaths were recorded at the park, with a sixth fatality directly attributed to it. Incidents included drownings in the wave pool and cliff-diving pool, a death on the Kayak Experience linked by the coroner to an electric shock from exposed underwater wiring, and a fatal heart attack believed to have been triggered by cold spring water beneath the Tarzan Swing.

Mulvihill pleaded guilty in 1984 to six counts connected to London & World Assurance, an insurer he controlled that operated without authorization. He received suspended sentences, probation and $45,000 in fines; an SEC judge later barred him from brokerage work. Great American Recreation went bankrupt in 1996 with $48 million in debt. The park did not reopen the next year, and Intrawest relaunched its water-park section as Mountain Creek in 1998. Mulvihill’s group bought it back in 2010, and his son Andy revived the Action Park name for the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The story later reached film and documentary audiences through Action Point and Class Action Park.

A distinctive piece of amusement-park history

For a buyer, the draw is the combination of documented Action Park origins, a reported place among only 10 tanks, and restoration that includes both bodywork and mechanical updates. The source lists no asking price, so the auction result will establish what collectors are willing to pay for a working example with this history.

The tank is being offered without reserve in Seekonk, Massachusetts. The Bring a Trailer listing has further details and bidding information. Its working tennis-ball cannon remains the feature that makes this one-off survivor especially easy to imagine back in the fenced arena where it began.