CLASSIC ART: ESCAPE BID!

The droids make their escape attempt from the Jawas in this super conceptual art by Ralph McQuarrie.

Having been captured by those pesky Jawa scavengers, our droids C-3PO and R2-D2 make their bid for freedom when the creature's mighty Sandcrawler is damaged whilst traversing a outcrop, hit by falling rocks which knock it off track, in a sequence scripted for the Second Draft of the original STAR WARS in 1975, and likely staying as a filming idea for quite a while, until its disappearance later that year with George Lucas's Third Draft. It had also been planned as a lead-in to a scene featuring a Jawa encampment - which later was scene-rearranged to become a part of the Mos Eisley sequence of Tunisia instead- a Ksours location found by Production Designer John Barry eventually used in EPISODE I. Both Sandcrawler and encampment scenes were scrapped for reasons of time and money, as well as not enhancing the overall plot very much.

McQuarrie thumbnails of the droids escaping.

Joe Johnston's later, slight redesign of the Jawa Sandcrawler. Could that be the damaged front track?

http://starwarz.com/starkiller/adventures-of-the-starkiller-second-draft/