DK'S 350Z SPECS & STORY

hello fast fam thanks for tuning in I'm Craig Lieberman and I've been taking writing on cars since 1980 I've owned more than 40 cars in my life some we're heroes to some more zeroes but never in my wildest dreams would I ever guess that three of my cars would go on to star at a motion picture franchise my Supra my GTR and my maximum all had starring roles and universals fast and furious movies over the next three years I'd serve Universal as a technical advisor I helped choose the cars procure the parts oversee their builds and support both production and post-production I've got some great stories to tell and that's why I created this channel I hope you like the video this movie was written for me at least it feels that way it had everything I love JDM cars wide-body jet big turbo drifting and of course hot asian women what's not to love right it was universals best attempt at paying homage to the tuner culture in my opinion of course I'm talking about the Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift before I digging into our topic du jour I need to talk about the back story after the success of the first two Fast and Furious movies Universal realized that they were onto something Universal decided that they wanted a sequel there were some problems though director Rob Cohen has had hitched his wagon to Vin Diesel and went off to make the movie xxx fun fact about that movie was that Vin's pontiac gto s were built on the same picture car warehouse that we used for the first movie but I digress with Rob Cohen and Vin Diesel off working on in the other movie John Singleton was slotted to serve as director Paul Walker decided to return for too fast too furious too fast too furious was released in 2003 and this movie saw the return of tuner cars as an integral component but it also started to introduce muscle cars into the franchise this is all relevant stay with me despite a weak plot and lacking the star power of Vin Diesel too fast too furious fared only marginally better in movie ticket sales coming in at 236 million dollars on a budget of about 76 million after 2 fast 2 furious was released Universal did tons of research to see what they could learn from the audience's input it was clear that Universal needed to go in a different direction in 2005 Universal saw an opportunity capitalize on the growing interest in drifting and crafted a story around it with me called Tokyo Drift this was my favorite movie of the franchise in case you haven't guessed as we all remember this movie features a young country bumpkin who gets arrested for street racing and doing other hood rat like crashing through homes that are work that were under construction so when the comes down the parents of Shawn Boswell decide to ship him off to Japan the basically the freakin global capital of illegal street racing if you ask me that's kind of like putting a pedophile in charge of a Boy Scout or Girl Scout trip if you catch my drift the silly premise aside Universal smartly decided to ratchet up the stunts to make this film more exciting as in all films there has to be a villain the drift King played by Brian T was a perfect fit his Karb choice the Nissan 350z the 350 C was a good choice in my opinion it was an underrated car one that just didn't get the respect it deserved at least not at that time at the time the Z seemed to have all the ingredients of a fine hero car given that a relationship with Veilside Japan had already been established in the first two movies in no small part due to RJ Tavares influence it was only natural to enlist their help again given the aggressive stunts scheduled for this movie we would need several 350 Z's in fact there were eleven they all wore the same Veilside version three wide body kits and Veilside Andrew evolution V wheels five wheels size 19 by 11 in the front 19 by 9 in the back the stock Brembo brakes were retained and they were deemed adequate for our purposes the 350 seats also had Veilside carbon hoods and ganador side mirrors onto the hood is where this beast came to light an Australian company called ApS provided a twin-turbo setup and Magnaflow provided the exhaust system no coincidence given that I was the global marketing director for Magnaflow at the time the car made 430 horsepower although one source claimed it made as much as 475 horsepower but with the engine stock internals I'm not sure how safe that would have been if it were true suspension was limited basically to just our SR lowering springs as we needed to reduce the wheel gap with that body kit and beyond that there wasn't much else except that lip Nismo limited slip diff which made launching the car obviously a lot easier not much was done inside the cockpit though it's pretty much stock safe for a set of Sparco evo l seats harnesses a spark of steering and a custom roll cage which was only in the hero one car it's important to remember that only the hero one 350z had the engine mods this 350z doesn't launch easily the revs needed to stay up for the turbos and it will chatter the real rear tires after all it was built to slide not to drag race so there were some complications still in an end mins test it screamed to sixty miles an hour in about 5.7 seconds and ran the quarter-mile 13.2 at 114 eight 114 point eight miles an hour the last 2005 stock 350z that Edmonds tested took 5.9 to get to sixty 14 seconds to do fourteen point six to do the quarter-mile at about ninety nine miles an hour with a zero to 60 time only two tenths quicker than stock and a quarter-mile time nearly 1.4 seconds better this is a car with more power that I can use on the launch this is yet more proof that arguing about quarter-mile times for cars that have big heavy wheels lowering springs and low profile UHP tires is a silly argument to have but with a proper launch control and sticky tires the twin-turbo Nissan 350z would be running well into the 12s on the quarter mile to go any faster the car would need to shed some weight change the suspension setup and ditch the brick heavy wheels the Z had a couple of big scenes as remember the first being the race was Shawn in the parking garage that garage although portrayed to be in Tokyo was really filmed at the Hawthorne mall here in Southern California stunt driving for the film was done by Rhys Millen and Tanner Foust both of whom are well-known global stunt driving for the film was done by Rhys Millen who was a drift coordinator and Tanner Foust both of whom are well known globally if you're wondering what happened to these cars after the movies I have only snippets of information to share the hero one car was last reported in England where was up for sale for about a hundred and thirty five thousand US dollars to my knowledge is still there ultimately though this was a great car for the villain it was black low and aggressive looking the 350z was one of the best second only to the amazing rx-7 that Han drove it helped that there was a ton of drifting to show off what these cars could do so how did Tokyo Drift do at the box office well not so great in fact it was a disappointment here's the data the first movie costs thirty-eight million dollars to make and brought in 211 million dollars at the box office too fast too furious on the other hand cost 76 million dollars to make and it brought in 236 million dollars Tokyo Drift costs eighty five million dollars to make and have brought in a measly 158 million making it the worst performing movie of the franchise even by today's standards unfortunately Universal seems to have interpreted this to mean that audiences don't care about street racing as a central plot point of course the movie might have made much less because neither paul walker nor Vin Diesel were in it you have to factor that in right Paul Walker was not invited back to work on Tokyo Drift because the studio just thought he was too old to be drifting Vin Diesel was actually written into Tokyo Drift in Sean Boswell's world but VIN was busy doing Chronicles of Riddick a franchise in which he had a much higher stake but perhaps the concept of Vin trying to main maintain continuity without any of the other family members in this movie just wasn't desirable to the studio and so that didn't work out essentially it seems to have come down to timing other commitments and the fact that Tokyo Drift script had already gone through a rewrite so delaying production any further was simply not in the studio's best interests my theory is that street racing is only popular within a relatively tiny segment of the global population and some moviegoers who prefer action films largely stayed away from this movie frankly I don't see how Universal can ever go back to a street racing plot given that Vin Diesel is 53 years old so is Jason Statham and Michelle Rodriguez is 42 as of this airing in 2020 however there were a lot of positives about this movie for starters it gave miss on further street cred in the USA and it as it turned out it's not the only nasaan that got love in this movie we'll be talking about some of the other Nissan's in Tokyo Drift in coming video so stay tuned for that it also introduced us to the Han character who has become a fan favorite in later movies it's another positive unfortunately it was more or less the last time we saw highly modified tuner cars as the main focus of these movies yes I'm well aware of other GTRs and similar tuner cars making brief appearances and other movies but nothing matched their onscreen dominance in Tokyo Drift whether or not street racing will ever turn as the central focus of a Fast and Furious movies is a mystery we just don't know I suspect it best we'll see little more than one scene with some tuner cars as a focus and perhaps a few others sprinkled into the background here and there but I don't expect much else this seem to have moved on but as long as Universal is making a billion dollar-plus from every new Fast and Furious movie it would be hard to convince them to deviate from their present course of action that's all I have for this week folks thank you so much for watching I'd appreciate it if you could continue to share my videos and please please subscribe we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 309,493

Rating: 4.9508324 out of 5

Keywords: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, TOKYO DRIFT, PAUL WALKER, TANNER FOUST, RHYS MILLEN, BRIAN TEE, LIL BOW WOW

Id: ymwU8NcsUWA

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/VirtualVoices]

this is really cool! thanks for sharing!

[u/Gpeezi]

Perfect post for the Z loving world!