Every Car In 'Fast & Furious' Series Explained By The Guy Who Built Them | WIRED

hi I'm Dennis McCarthy the guy behind the vehicles and the Fast and Furious franchise I'm going to talk about every major car from the franchise 95 eclipsed yeah that was Brian's car in the very first film I think back at that time you know the paint was cool everything about it I think it really fit its character and I think that's a car that you know Paul Walker live actually driven 70 Dodge Charger I mean this is the car that I can go on for hours I mean I think that car is really more of a character in the franchise than just a vehicle to car with the supercharger the bug catcher through the years I've tried to always keep that theme consistent with everything that Dom drives part of the franchise and definitely parted on [Music] so the 94 super that's a car too that I feel is very iconic to the franchise I mean you know it seems like the cars that get a ridiculous amount of attention would be that super and Dom's charger and really it all stems from that final sequence of those guys going head-to-head I love the launch I love seeing the tires on Dom's charger wrinkle and that super pretty much had everything you could do to a Supra at that time Mazda rx-7 the rotary motor was I think unique the rpm capabilities it's kind of one of my favorite imports I bring that back to the franchise later on my favorite aspect of that was when Dom lifts up the seat cushion it has the multiple miniature nitrous bottles I thought that was just a great moment in the very the very first one so ladies 97 Nissan 240 yeah that was a cool car you see her running that thing out at race Wars in the year that the very first Fast and Furious came out that car was huge it was kind of like that transition from muscle cars into the beginning of the import scene 1994 Acura Integra very easy car to modify there was a lot of parts available you could buy you know intake kits exhaust kits camshafts clutch kits that's a car that was really part of that big movement of import racing back in the back in the 90s the Honda 2000 the first movie was so it was very heavy on the imports and that's really what it was about the s2000 was another car it was very nimble very fast weren't great right off the assembly line from the factory but just with some minor modifications you had a real performer [Music] 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse bright purple it had these gigantic polish wheels which I think Roman or Ashley will say Tyrese CEO was heavily involved in I think they went through three or four different wheel choices though the car doesn't fit my personal tastes I know that car was exactly what Roma wanted to drive and as far as the movie goes I gotta say it was perfect the 69 yangko when I saw two fast fierce ago man on that thing is absolutely awesome and it's sitting here with us today car has been restored front to back has well over 500 horsepower as a BorgWarner super t10 12-bolt all the key ingredients historic muscle car the GTR I believe there's been a GTR in every single movie it's one of those cars it was ahead of its time the performance is incredible the all-wheel drive like I said it's just some of this part of the franchise from the beginning up until who knows another Honda s2000 it was modified beyond the normal it actually had a supercharger on it that car can literally burn the tires through the first three and a half years I don't really like to be seen driving a pink car but the the horsepower made up for it so the Mitsubishi Lancer Fast and Furious the franchise really helped launch that vehicle into being how popular it became change them from all-wheel drive to rear-wheel drive maybe 20% rear-wheel drive you know we've done a lot a lot of work with those cars hopefully someday Mitsubishi comes back out with something similar because it kind of got away from that performance feel that the original you know Lance's and Evo's had but great car [Music] s15 this was a car that was perfect I mean when we went to do Tokyo Drift went out to Japan basically every car show we want every drift event we wanted to it seemed like 4050 percent of the vehicles there were you know going to be an S 14 or ness15 Silvia they're so easy to make drift or go fast or do whatever you want to do it's almost basically like the car was designed to become a drift car and today if you go to a drift event they're everywhere they put LS motors and these things they put everything in them so the Veilside Mazda rx-7 it was everywhere was in every magazine and we were able to make a deal with Veilside for their one and only hero car sad thing was you know of course we had a change of color so it's almost painful when you get a car that has probably a thirty forty thousand dollar paint job the orange worked out great it really popped on screen we ended up building I think six other replicas of that car I take that back we built nine we had to build a whole nother set for Japan as well but the one car that was our hero card that came directly from Veilside had somewhere around 600 horsepower a gigantic turbocharger and I dismembered one night down a lower grand where he literally had that car sideways just blown the back tires off of it for probably 300 feet so a good one once again we bring back the Evo in Tokyo Drift which like I said was just a car we had to have and that was the one that was completely converted to complete rear-wheel drive only we didn't have to do that much to the motor I mean we did do some some computer work some exhaust work but other than that it worked great just as this so the 67 Mustang when I read the script for Tokyo Drift the Mustang opened up a great opportunity to do something different we actually went with the r34 engine in Hans suit and Hans Silvia cool part about it was we actually built this car it was a hundred percent functional we actually did a bunch of you know drag race tests you know at brand I think 13 oh and 114 miles an hour 30 no doesn't sound that impressive but you have to realize we had a tires that were set up for drifting they were very hard compound so it burned rubber through the you know through half the quarter mile like I said everything you see on screen is real the shots were the cars driving without a hood and we got the camera with a shot that I I begged for just because I said look man no one's gonna leave this car actually is a functioning vehicle unless you actually show it with the hood off so you know we were pretty proud of ourselves because it was just such a unique vehicle in Tokyo Drift we actually had a VW van and this car was for Twinkie Twinkie was kind of a small guy you know looked fairly harmless but when you pissed him off it gets crazy so that's really the story behind the VW van the Buick Grand National from Fast and the Furious it's a car that was built in a time when American performance was really at one of the all-time low points but the Grand National somehow broke through with its turbocharged v6 it was a car that with very little modifications could dip into the you know 12 second quarter mile times and what we did is really just lower the car to the ground a little bit more with some black nascar-type wheels on it and goes down as one of my favorites so fast for we get into a another Subaru for Brian I read the script and I said hey they're down in Mexico they're driving through dirt roads I said oh hey this this has to be a rally car Subaru came up said hey we'd love to help you out we basically put a roll cage you know changed up the paint the wheels and the tires eliminate all the computer things that prevent us from doing the stunts we need to do and boom we're good to go so all survived up until the end where we had a launch amount of a tunnel I think we pretty much destroyed everyone we had but you know car performed flawlessly as they always do so the r34 you know once again this car keeps coming back around and around and again it comes around and around for a reason because they're so they're so cool I mean the skyline of GTR it's I think it's at the top of the list Paul Walker himself Ashley owned one he has an R 34 1970 Chevelle SS that's one of my personal favorites I Drive a 68 SS Chevelle myself it worked for his daily street car when the challenge came up to enter the race he had to modify it you know once again overnight Turner did basically the gray primer version with the American Racing wheels car featured a big-block manual 4-speed pretty much cool on every level the 71 skyline one of the worst positions you can put yourself in as a pitcher car coordinators to have one vintage car that needs to run and drive everyday and that's exactly what we did because it was obviously a car that I couldn't duplicate unless I you know flew one over from Japan did everything we could to prep the vehicle and we were driving that car and you know I think it was a hundred degree heat it you know falls into that category of the the perfect car for that scene the Gurkha military vehicle this is a car that when Hobbs is introduced into the franchise in five you needed that you needed something that just fit his character and when I saw the Gurkha I thought you know man it's not gonna get any better this vehicle is perfect it's big its burly it's mean drives through walls it drives through houses we actually had one that was a legit and then we had a couple that were basically fake without all the armor plating and everything else just to make them a little more nimble so we had a couple of you know what I'll call lightweight stunt versions to go along with that [Music] so the 2011 charge dodge has always been a huge supporter of the franchise and they just come out with a brand new model and we basically were working with a lot of prototype cars if you'll notice one car has the red and blues on you know and that wasn't scripted they somehow just got turned on by mistake but you know in the afterwards you know looking at the footage you know what Roman would be the guy to colonel red and blues on so we just left that as is so we get into our vault heist Chargers we basically assume that the team has taken the cop cars that they've heisted and you know tournament of these vehicles to grab that vault through through the streets of Rio which we're actually the streets of Puerto Rico and I tell you for those moments in the franchise when we destroyed a ridiculous amount of stuff that's right there at the top I think fate of the Furious might have it beat with a zombie car scene but I'd say we probably put you know 150 plus cars into the scrapyard shooting that one one segment here we open up and they're on this mountain road and this was an amazing scene we filmed us out in tenerife on this road that was far more dangerous than actually appeared and it appeared pretty dangerous it was really just a great contrast I think of the the GTR then the Challenger going head to head with DOM and DOM and Brian which is different than the normal you know fast and furious is straight line drag race [Music] so the Dodge Daytona this is a car that I really wanted to build I brought it up a few times the past I didn't really get anywhere with it but when we got to this film there was one brief moment we were asking to be out on the Autobahn I said you know what if we're going to the Autobahn we have to have a Dodge Daytona it's the car has the aerodynamics to keep up with you know European supercars I say that makes perfect sense well the story Devia the locations changed but the cars still stayed it's not a replicant replication of an original charger it's kind of my own version where we tucked the nose back in obviously we slammed the car to the ground we just streamlined everything and six we had a scene where it was kind of like a government-issued version of a charger so I had a lot of fun with that we basically did kind of like a battleship gray paint scheme you know once again lowered um change it up to a like a Mopar 20-inch wheel there's really not a lot you can do the exterior that car because they're so cool as is and when you do try to modify them they just don't look right and it looked like a car that Hobbs would have had built in the military facility for the crew so the Ford Escort Mark one this is a car that's a huge favorite one I went to the UK I realized very quickly that this is like the Dodge CUDA of the United Kingdom these cars are so popular there that when we had our team of mechanics that were the local guys I couldn't get him to work on anything but that car if we pulled up the set we would have a Dodge Daytona maybe an Enzo Ferrari and without the escort all the local you know fans and you know people walk on the streets with instantly flock to the escort so I will say that the UK crew made those cars as authentic as they look on screen I mean everything down to the correct valve cover the flip car this is a really interesting car I mean there's cars that we build that are you know a modification of something else and there's cars we build from from scratch and that said the one that came from scratch Justin came to me said hey man I want to build a car they can run other vehicles and launch them into the air I said man that's awesome that's a great idea and they were fully functional they had a 500 horse LS motor trooper 400 V drive unit so the motor sat in the back power supplied to a Dana 60 front axle out of a Chevy truck and the rear steer was basically a system that we you know Rob from them from the monster truck industry where he had a toggle switch that could a self-center or maintaining that angle as long as you want I think was the ideal thing for Shah to be driving it kind of showed Shahs technical side and what he was really about the Jensen interceptor is a car that Michelle Rodriguez still gives me a hard time about today she really didn't like that car at all she this cars idly I don't want to drive it I said look this car is perfect there's nothing better you're in London you've lost your memory there was no other choice I was totally just dead said I said this has to be in the movie it's the right car there's nothing that matches your character at this point in time and in this location then the Jensen interceptor [Music] so the Navistar military tried the cool thing with with that truck it was a real one that was loaned to us from Navistar it had every single you know piece or modification that you would find out you know in the middle of a you know a hostile military environment it took a ridiculous amount of abuse I mean you would be amazed what we put that truck through and it never you know never never flinched once the Ford Mustang this is a car that was originally built by pure vision you know that car was probably somewhere between 700,000 and the million dollar vehicle we had to build several replicas but the hero car that you see featured in all the close-ups a hero car you see with the hood off in the team's you know headquarters was the true you know anvil Mustang built by pure vision the car community recognizes them they know the car they know where it came from they've seen it at the SEMA show they've seen it in magazines so it's great that there's cars like that out there from you know other builders that we can borrow to you know keep it exciting so the the 2012 GTR at the very end of fast sex this is that moment you know the end of the movie there's not a lot of action I want to go out and try to find the best part car I possibly can and the only problem arose when we got to set and I said okay we want Brian to pull into the driveway like ah God the drive of Assistant gnarly approached angle and we accomplished that but then of course you know when I watched the movie that part was cut out but we did make it happen the 67 Camaro we did a lot of modifications to make this car off-road worthy you know coil over sway away how scaring Iraq all the good stuff [Music] the the Subaru that we see Brian driving in the plane sequence Rhys Millen did the roll cage seats rally car suspension we did have to give this car more boost basically as we were shooting the sequence up at Pikes Peak where we were you know obviously starving for air we up the boost as much as we could you know it's still utilizing the stock internals of the motor you know as always the car was flawless never misses a beat starts up every time compensated for the altitude and got the job done I think it would just disappoint every fan the franchise if Brian wasn't in a GTR at some point of the movie Brian's a little mature now he's a little bit older so we kind of eased up on the modifications just did some very minimal little carbon fiber treatment changed up the seats change up the exhaust system good friend of mine John comes in and reprograms a system so it basically divert snotty percent of the power to the rear tires 10% of the front which is just strictly done so we get those massive you know overseer characteristic rift scenes that we always have in the franchise the 95 super is a car that was a really meaningful moment for me because this is after the passing of Paul Walker the filming wasn't completed and the scene was bit you know script was basically rewritten where we had this kind of parting of ways between DOM and Brian so it was critical that I found you know the best to possible cars I could one of them being the Maximus charger which I saw in its raw finish widened body car had over 2,000 horsepower the only catch was it wasn't completed yet the Supra was actually Paul Walker's personal car and I think it was you know the the right ending for that film to have DOM and Brian in those two vehicles the Challenger and seven that Letty drives this is a car that you know once again takes Letty back to her her Mopar roots they were basically an SRT 8 six-speed manual trans we added a locking differential better clutch just to handle the abuse of all the stunt work some aggressive mufflers raised the stance to handle the drop out of the plane and the wing on the back was basically an after thought it was a story point I love the car Michelle Rodriguez loved the car and it definitely looked great on screen so the lykan Hypersport this car was a real tough one for me you know when I read this graph I think my guy this is Dubai these guys you know drive a Lamborghini Aventador you know to Starbucks in the morning what what am I going to feature what can I put in this guy's you know penthouse somebody on the crew did hey check this out oven oh my god I read about the car I go it doesn't get any better than this it's the first UAE produced supercar and they're only going to build seven had the hefty price tag of I think 3.7 million dollars but it was really disappointed that there was only seven produced and only seven guys we're going to have it you know once I met the guys at you know from like and we had a meeting discussed the car discuss what they could do for us we really had no way to create these cars because we had no moles we had no CAD data so they actually built us the bodies gave us some rollers on a you know based on a Porsche Boxter chassis everything was actual production quality just under the skin it was you know it wasn't a 200 mile an hour car but luckily we were only driving in the interior of the building so I think 35 was as fast as we ever had to go Fleetline Chevy is one of my favorites I just really love the fastback body style you know it just kind of set it apart Dom's the underdog he comes into this situation with you know half the horsepower of his competitor and all he has to rely on is his his driving skill and his knowledge of cars we have the nitrous gag we have the valve we show how Dom hooks it all up and it all makes sense so the ice charger is another one of these none of these vehicles that basically gets partially designed by the task at hand okay great we're on ice you know what can we do what can what's the right car with Dom you always kind of gravitate towards the 68 and 70 Charger is being kind of kind of like home base form so what can I do to that car to make it just plain mean and then the other key factor is of course making it all wheel drive you know you can stud tires you can do every you can but a 200 drive car is it a huge disadvantage on the ice the a arms are all custom fabricated basically sitting the motor back almost two feet to make room for a front differential we had to widen the track to make room for the CV axles really the final product did exactly what we wanted to do is one of the few cars that we took out to my first test session and out of all the cars I built for the franchise is probably my you know my new all-time favorite so the ripsaw something that I'd seen in the past I'd seen YouTube videos of this vehicle in action when you see the ripsaw it's really not that massive I mean it's really probably smaller than a Chevy Suburban you know it's like yeah we've always got cool cars and cool trucks but now we've actually brought a tank into it so like I said it was a fun one so we haven't I hope you guys enjoyed going through a little history of the cars at the franchise make sure and check out fate of the Furious you're going to love it

Channel: WIRED

Views: 6,358,156

Rating: 4.8605647 out of 5

Keywords: cars, fast and furious, fast and the furious, skyline, best cars, mechanic, fate of the furious, cars from fast and furious, picture car coordinator, car coordinator, fast and furious cars, fast 7, f8, nissan skyline, paul walker car, nissan skyline gtr, fast and furious skyline, mitsubishi lancer, lancer, fast and furious tank, mustang fastback, 1969 mustang, 2 fast 2 furious, tokyo drift, dennis mccarthy, yenko, wired

Id: 7k7anW4MptU

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/greendyes]

Another fun fact: the S2000 that was originally used in the movie, got returned to stock after the movie was finished. Years after someone bought the car and returned it to its original F&F looks

[u/_Hypnotoad]

Fun Fact: The owner of the RX-7 they used in F&F1 blew his original engine by installing a boost controller and upping the boost with no other modifications (e.g. additional fuel, tuning, etc.).

[u/theadmin209]

This fucking video is in my recommended 90% of the time lol

[u/Slimy_Shart_Socket]

I honestly wish I had that job, picking out cars for movies.

[u/boomheadshot7]

Didn't talk about my favorite car....

Monte Carlo from the beginning of Tokyo drift.

[u/mr_duong567]

Watched this when it first came out and was surprised there wasn't already a discussion on this sub.

Anyways, it's really cool to see the modded cars evolve as products of their eras, but Dennis has shown nothing but love to all the vehicles in the films.

Also, I get that the video is meant for the iconic vehicles of the main characters, but there were some notable icons left out for sure.

My personal faves:

• Jesse's Jetta (for no calipers)
• Toretto's Civics
• Leon's R33
• DK's 350z
• Sean's Monte Carlo
• Corvette Grand Sport and Ford GT40 during the heist (technically not built then)
• 996 GT3 RS in Fast Five

[u/Footballer217]

Interesting thing to note- Vince's yellow R33 GTR was imported illegally. It was seized and crushed after the films.

The R34s in the movie were imported by Motorex. The history of that company could be a movie in itself, absolutely fascinating. Outside of the 'show' vehicle import laws (which permits only specific Midnight Purple III colour R34s in legally) only 12 R34 GTR's are in the US legally.

[u/BmanUltima]

Wow. It explains the choices so well.

[u/az_is]

The Mustang with the Skyline engine is so blasphemous that no one talks about it, even though I consider it to be one of the best bad ideas of all time

Not alot of people appreciate what goes into making these cars.

It does suck when you realize alot of them are fake cars with fake badges, but that’s Hollywood for ya.

Dom’s Charger should be credited as a character already!