2016 USSV Rhino GX - Jay Leno's Garage

this is great for grab your kid off at soccer practice if your kids on the prison team pull up in this nobody is going to mess with it well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage next to me here c2 specialty vehicles which are actually built by the US specialty vehicle company this one is featured in a new Fast eight movie that opens well this week we'll meet F gary Gray the director of the film this is another one that vehicles is not in the movie but we're going to drive this a little bit later let's meet the man in charge of these uh Ernie Salazar Ernie come in you're the Sales Director client relation guy all that kind of stuff yeah that's me so how did you hook up with the fast eight guys to get this vehicle in the film well you know they saw the vehicle at the LA Auto Show here locally right and next thing you know they approached us about the vehicle if we could let them use it for the movie and two days later is on the road very cool now us specialty vehicles a lot of people might not know that company you're a licensed manufacture here in Southern California is correct and you take production vehicles and modify them correct that's right okay now give them a whole new look okay now this one is based on the Jeep okay and well they're both rhinos aren't they yeah we have the Rhino GX which is our flagship car and then I have the Rhino XT which this is a prototype that was used in the movie and production of the vehicles actually just started okay now I imagine powertrain drivetrain completely stock or you modify that as well yeah they're completely stock this one here is four-wheel-drive six seven liter Ford Super Duty f450 right and we change the suspension on it and put a hydraulic instead of the leaf spring on this vehicle here it's a stock four-door Jeep chassis underneath here with a stock motor v6 and we supercharged it okay give it a little more power because we're putting the bigger Toyo tires on it and you guys through quite a few of these correct yeah these are not one offs I mean I don't think most people are familiar with your company but you've done a few hundred vehicles or any yeah we done close to 300 of these vehicles here behind you okay this one here we're getting ramped up to do a hundred and fifty or so this year okay and these are 100% street-legal it's not what absolutely you're not waiting for certification no no no okay so my street-legal does do you buy the complete vehicle before to modify it you just buy the cab and the chassis how does that work we buy the regular cabin chassis right so it's just a two-door regular cab with a bench seat a chassis with dually wheels on the back okay that's what we get from Ford we cut the back wall out the roof we put the steel body completely together in our facility okay if somebody had one of these stock vehicles they wanted could they bring their car to you to modify it you only go through the manufacture no they could bring us the vehicle if they have that exact spec view right because all our panels are made for that chassis okay now what is this this steel as a car Memoriam steel it's all steel okay it's all steel body from the doors back the fender flares are composite right but yeah it's all steel body I mean the steps in the doors just a look thing but it they actually function it'll hold up to about 350 pounds okay this vehicle as tough as it looks it does everything that you think it would do right but still you can drive it on the road okay very comfortable and now those wheels don't look like any wheels I've seen those aftermarket you make them you say yeah those are aftermarket wheels we those are custom made just for us okay it's a one-piece forged wheel we actually had to make the four genes then have the wheels made and then because it was a dually chassis we had the wheels machined and finished on both sides okay so you can actually rotate the tires on this thing I got you so you have full cooperation with Ford all right there absolutely okay so that's I think that's important to people because these are not inexpensive with is about a quarter million bucks it's about 249 retail 249 so a little right just right underneath 4995 not quite a fun okay well it's and what is it weigh about 10,000 pounds this is actually sits right now at about ninety six hundred pounds five tons that's unbelievable well I mean how tall is it it's about seven feet two inches tall okay so and it's about eight feet wide okay well it's it's it's hilarious it's a it's almost I mean people might mistake it for a Hummer or one of those vehicles right you know when I was younger the Lamborghini lmo2 that seemed huge I seemed annoyed right but I realized that's not much bigger than this one no it's not okay no it's not Lamborghini did a great job with that car too bad they didn't continue it but yeah yeah this is you know we wanted to have that military off-road look breast of a vehicle right but at the same time we really wanted it to be comfortable and practical on the inside now are these popular overseas as well you just sell them in the states actually overseas is where it started for us yeah in China especially and the Saudi Arabia Dubai area but China being our biggest market really oh yeah it's very popular over there they love american-made vehicles yeah and they love luxury so you build them here you send them to China absolutely we send about well yeah but eight vehicles a month to China Wow okay very cool well I did and we're gonna drive this one a little bit later absolutely all right very good right good all right well let's bring in F gary Gray he's the director of that new fast eight movie and I can't imagine a logistical nightmare of doing a film like that where is he Gary come on it hey good to see him my friend see you again a Gary has done some amazing films The Italian Job and acosta hugely critically acclaimed straight out of Compton that is that the biggest movie to date just about um yeah just in terms of yes iscope response you know Compton Italian job now let me ask you about the fast eight movies because that's probably the most popular franchise since what the James Bond films yeah the Star Wars absolutely of course it's Star Wars sure sure yeah okay so you come along and they give you this job this job right is it just mine but I mean I can't imagine the logistics I know just getting a few cars here to do our stupid little tea show people of late trucks break down when you're dealing with hundreds of cars and write different continents and it's insane it is it's it's in some ways a logistical nightmare but it's all worth it yeah yeah we created a lot of cars we destroyed a lot of cars literally hundreds of cars don't say I know I know but listen some of them were shells of cars but you know it's just me entertainment but we had a lot of fun with cars obviously I mean was there any point during this film you said yourself man I'm over my head is crazy this is like nutty you know what I say there's a lot of pressure always you know always a lot of pressure but do you like that do you like pressure you work better you know what I I work better under pressure I don't like pressure it's just kind of that weird dichotomy where it yeah it always turns out really cool but it's still a lot of pressure I mean when you take on the global franchise um you want to make it better you want to satisfy the fans but you want to go beyond so that's a lot of pressure um you know making and designing new cars for the audience is fun for me though yeah I'm a car guy and once you get beyond kind of alright I'm doing the global franchise let's have some fun it's like being a kid now I walked in this place and I'm like oh my god this is a man's dream and so much so that in our movie there's a place like this it doesn't compare to this but we call it the toy shop all right we have millions of dollars worth of cars different types of cars but I'm gonna have to say hands down yours is cooler than ours no no that was what was your first car my first car yeah it was a Ford Granada oh yes but I was you know poor and uh I didn't know I wouldn't even have brought it up it was it I feel so bad but it was it was it was you know what it was my first car was a four-door I was awed or is I was living in Illinois and there was rust at the bottom and I could see the street dry and I think the radio was more expensive than the car that's really surprised come along with now you ought to want to be right yes yes I put this in the movie right and you know we have a lot of great cars in a movie Lamborghinis Corvettes Bentley's things like that but this one stood out to me Rhino XT and it's something really cool about and I told my picture car guy Dennis McCarthy and Leonard Jefferson I'm like you have to get one of these for me yeah you know and with all the cars special cars in the movie this one actually stood out I'm an off-road guy I'm Harley guy loved riding um it fits my lifestyle it's got a lot of cool lines and it's just like sounds good commercial I'm really I'm really in front of it the cool thing is a commercial right now it's so fun to have a car cuz I have so many cousin low to the ground every speed bump you got a tip - over short you always worry about scratches - I mean this is an off-road vehicle there's not a lot you you know you hose it off and you're ready to go that's right yeah well I spend a lot of time offroad yeah and so when I saw it it's a combination of luxury and of Rome yeah and I love the design and I just afterwards said listen I love that we put it in the movie for the character he's a wildling a game of Thrones name is Christopher Hibbs you yeah this is his car in the movie I said when we're done you got to give me one of these very cool yeah so you haven't taken delivery yet yeah well I'm probably the next pretty couple days yeah person already soon yeah very cool now when you doing them we'll be like the fast eight movie is a certain car you go man I like that car I don't mean of course yeah so you so you imagine you cast cars the way you cast actors that's absolutely right yeah yeah as a matter of fact in order for the audience to have a new experience I wanted to make sure that the cars were tied to the characters and a way that the characters are tied to the story so Roman Pearce was played by Tyrese Gibson has a two tone crazy Bentley GT right um I gave Michelle Rodriguez a 1966 Corvette Stingray that sounds like Michelle it sounds like Michelle yeah yeah compact but aggressive right right right that's why yeah pyaare compact but aggressive hey so woman goes I don't know is that good I guess that's good yeah yeah it's good sexy curio sexy guy they got him sexy compactor yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I got a volt yeah right ad that's it thank you for that yeah oh yeah oh yeah very cool no but I just think that's fascinating so do you before the movies starts you have cars in your head you would like to see well what I do is I build kind of a warm wall I have a room that has the film on the wall and then I put the vehicles next to the film so I can look at the movie at a glance and see all these kind of pictures and get some sort of visual sense of what the movies going to feel like then I have a wall filled with cars and then the characters next to the cars and so I just have this kind of holistic approach to tie it all together and I start to pick the paint colors the rims the the interiors based on how the movie fails sure and based on what the characters are doing it sounds really weird but no not at all when you have when you have 40 50 cars yeah it's very easy to overlap you know you'll end up on the set if you're not careful with ten black cars right or ten red cars and they're all in the same scene and all of a sudden they just kind of melt into the background right so we have this zombie car sequence in New York and I have to be really conscious of the color of the cars and because of the color of the buildings so now you have a lot of gray buildings if you have a lot of gray cars or black cars now all of a sudden you're shooting action sequence and they disappear right right you know so when you see the New York sequence we have lighter brighter cars with exception of John Dom's GTX it's a process and it's like casting you you're right about that but it's fun and what is just the automotive budget for a movie like this I cannot tell you I'm sure my producers are still in the fetal position from the amount of money it took to tow to buy perches and and and do these cars we shot a sequence in Cuba a sky liner and a fairly these are vintage cars that we raced through the streets of Havana did you bring them to Cuba where they causing women we brought them to Cuba but and we which is the first time Americans were able to actually put cars on a ship and take them to Cuba so you bring a 59 family to Cuba they go hey it's a new car that's right that's right with is this a 2017 now no right right right and and it had a real engine and not a boat engine right so we we actually had to build a bunch of those cars yeah and they're very rare obviously to eat and hard to find but on we had to retrofit them for the stunts cuz you imagine taking those cars 100-plus miles an hour through the streets ravana really tough so Dennis McCarthy I have to give a shout-out to my picture card yeah we've got Dennis he's been featured on this he's a genius yeah it just took a lot to ship everything there and get them up and running make them safe you know hitting corners at you know 40 50 60 miles an hour and a 1950s cars but a car without the suspension and the brakes is really really tough and you had to pave the roads correct well they paved the roads for us you know after they're going to be negotiating just to get there with the two governments of Cuban government and US government we told them everywhere we wanted to shoot and when we came back all those roads were paved Wow yeah well listen we even play in Cuba well they didn't love to see I believe so yeah I believe so I mean it would be a shame for them not to see it but I think that yeah I think they will they will play it there so you did Cuba not in the United States what other countries did you go to for this we went to Reykjavik Iceland oh and that was crazy because they had never had a Lamborghini on their soil more on their ice before everybody so we love it an orange one at that right and an atomic orange Lamborghini on ice very first time and that was cool because we had to figure out a way to get that up to 170 miles an hour on ice as the ice is melting so that was kind of an engineering feat and a crazy challenge and onto itself besides the movie you've also got to have fleets and mechanics and people doing in case these caused breakdown right all of that isn't it oh man well we started with a ship we had a ship and we this huge tanker ship that we filled with cars and military vehicles and sent it to Iceland because you can't just throw a car on a plane and send her out there given the amount of cars that vehicles that we sent up there but yeah we had mechanics engineers environmental guys it was really tough because it's one thing if you have a car chase or nice it's a whole nother thing when you have 500 people on ice with 75 cars just the weight alone was a problem and it was a safety issue so we had engineers drilling in ice every day to see if we could it could withstand the weight of our crew on our cast so it was a lot did you ever lose a vehicle through the ice yes really yes we we didn't lose any of the exotic cars but I think we lost a tractor it's just yeah the ice melted and it collapsed and we had to move to another place that was a that was low stronger than where they were we had the tractor so how long from when they said Gary you want to do this movie too it's completed how much time we talked to a year and a half oh it's pretty quick that's actually really quick you know normally you would have a little more time but I have a great relationship with universe so we just finished strata conference so I was already up and running had him had the momentum they move quick well we move really quick yeah yeah you know I remember uh Clint Eastwood told me he you know Matt Damon did that a victus movie yes and Matt Damon said to clay nice wit as a director you want me to try this again and this was hit why she can waste everybody's time is what well he I'm a big fan because he shoots eight-hour days yeah and he just kind of goes a couple takes and he's out yeah that's actually really impressive and yeah that's somebody to look up to actually have you been in this one um no but I actually wouldn't mind seeing what's inside that thing I think is massive well we're going to take up a ride once you're a stick of a ride and see what it does right it's just a big diesel right way that's power that's about 690 foot-pounds of torque in about 340 horsepower and it weighs five times Wow let's take of a spin feel like I've been some urban assault vehicle it does feel like a tank full tank but you got some comfort ya know it's very comfortable and you know the roads in LA are so bad this is probably what everybody would be driving right a luxury tank I mean the number of times I have I've got that Tesla in there with those big rims in it those are stock rims I would say in 5,000 miles I've blown out three tires just bang hit a pothole you know just entire bubbles on the unsure the sidewall boom you blow it out sure three times I mean it's crazy so you've got so many potholes I got the push car GT that's front splitter you're just gonna throw just rip it off because right yeah the road is cracked and that's awful this truck can go over traffic yeah yeah we're not put pot always you guys know I'm not worried about potholes or anything else it's extremely comfortable it is yeah I like the interior huh what's the story behind the interior well it is the interior I mean we got full power seats in the back this seats actually six people comfortably yeah the front center console can lift up and you can fit another person up there if you need to but yeah we wanted to build a car that was just really aggressive looking but yet really comfortable for the driver and anybody in it this I mean it looks bulletproof oh it does you know and back here I'm six-two and night I can't fit a guy back here that's literally said Lincoln could drive this thing look at you got all kinds of headroom right with the top hat you know with the top I did a hole buddy yeah yeah this car we when Hummer went out of business it was Hummer was a huge brand in China they loved it and then they ran out of buying all the h2s that were out there with low miles so then they were like okay we got a problem here can you guys make us a car that looks Hummer --is-- off-road ish but put a luxury and turn it so we pretty much drew it on a napkin they said build it so we built the car shipped it to China they took it to the Beijing Auto Show a prototype and it pretty much took off from there they sold 43 vehicles at the show right I don't know I don't know if this is blasphemy or not but this is cooler than a Hummer to me oh yeah I think it is I think it's cooler I think it looks cooler and sleeker and you realize have hummer been doing things the right way they'd still be in business oh yeah good point yeah I mean so the fact is all they did was screw up somewhere marketing I don't know what the problem what was a problem do you know I don't know what the problem was I really do but if that brand was out here today they would be killing it yeah yeah do you get a lot of looks when you drive oh yeah this is a magnet it's just a magnet stupid question I think what's the question you get the most um is it armored right right is it armored and what is it to me the logo in the front if you ssv right and it look at a rhino on it yeah it looks like what they used to do in in the Old Mission Impossible TV show when they wanted to something look like it's from Russia they just changed one letter you know right like telephone Z all of us via telephone yeah so it looks like something like that that's my girl oh there you go look at that yes there's a submarine yes your folks still with us yes huh so how proud are they like the cool son now uh you know they're they're they they are proud they honestly are not Hollywood people yeah so ho so they they they they're they're they're proud for a number of reasons obviously as an accomplishment but also my patients they're they they're like you have to be pretty patient to do a future I'm sure they're just happy knowing that you know you found something you really like to do and you're good at it yeah now did they think you acquit all our sons gonna movie biz why can't he get a real job did you go through that did you get a lot of that no you know what I was really supportive my mom my mom said I could do anything I wanted to do yeah oh I know that sounds cliche but no no um but you know I decided at 16 this is what I wanted to do yeah and directing my first movie in 2300 the rest is history so who were your mentors did you have some mentors that you know what I didn't have mentors in the truest sense but you know they I came along a little later yeah you know I had to learn on the fly I didn't go to film school so you know how in this business you're only good it's good at your last job so right you know you did one movie hope that goes well your last job was really great that was straight on a common strata Compton yeah that was a great movie like that one a lot really terrific and it and the fact that it crossed mainstream audiences who maybe didn't know the story right you know the thing you know it's always a story you know whether it's black white whatever rap with a subject you know nothing about if the if the characters are compelling and it's human that's right that's what makes it fascinating you know and that's what was good about the above because I know people know nothing about rap music right hard to believe but yes and they said why I like that movie because it was explained to them what it was about right the story it was it was a story and that that's what I thought was really cool about it it what is it it was really really good thank you and the fact that I've had the real guys on the show which is crazy you know like 25 years ago so you know it's just funny to see a movie about something I saw happen unfold in my lifetime you were right there yeah you know just when you know when they first broke and all that kind of stuff so it's kind of cool so Hadley interesting for you to watch the story right now knowing that you were right there and all the stuff was happening behind the scenes right right dr. Dre and anyway and all the stuff that's going on yeah that's that's what was really cool that's what was really cool about but even with one six hundred and how many foot-pounds of torque 640 it was 640 foot-pounds of torque movement 10,000 pounds is still 10,000 pounds but it gets out of its own way let me by foot in it here we go we move it Comfort drivability is very good did you have to upgrade the brakes with the extra weight no it didn't because actually we're underweight or about 4,000 pounds under the weight rating Wow yeah the vehicles rated for about 16,000 pounds up to 16,000 pounds comfortably at about 14,000 pounds so and we can also tow about 15,000 pounds with this vehicle so tow a small house at the same time this is great for grabbing a kid off at soccer practice if your kids on the prison team pull up in this nobody's gonna mess with it hey that's an idea for another movie there you go teen prison soccer team that's a good idea well very cool I want to thank Gary and Ernie Shayna and congratulations that in your movie man it's quite into consciousness what was the budget of that movie like a hundred and eighty twenty million dollars I was a lot it was a little uh well it's amazing it's amazing you could pull it off and it opens this week and go see the movie you know if you're a car guy you see the movie it's incredible Ernie thank you very much for bringing this vehicle thank you this is a little different episode this week a little taste of the personalities and you learn how a little bit about how they make the movies and you saw vehicle was actually in the film and Gary is a real car guy so that's what makes the film work and this is a real 10,000 pound vehicle this thing is actually drives great I mean it's amazing how comfortable it is it's a this is the world we live in now folks urban assault vehicles see you next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 809,676

Rating: 4.6764398 out of 5

Keywords: F. Gary Gray, Leno, Jay, Fast, Furious, F8, Rhino, XT, GX, Michelle, Rodriguez, Vin, Diesel, Tyrese, Dwayne, Johnson, Rock, Ludacris, Kurt, Russell, Universal, Pictures, New, York, Paul, Walker, Tokyo, Drift, cars, sports, exotic, supercars, ford, jeep, offroad, tactical, black, grey, green, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc

Id: BOQGurt6ztU

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2017