HE SECRETLY BUILT 4 FAST & FURIOUS CARS

hey guys back again if you're a hot rod or muscle car fan you already know this guy his name is steve strope and he hails from a little town in upstate new york the muscle cars he's built over the years have graced the pages and covers of many a magazine they've also won top awards at a whole bunch of legendary car shows and they've also appeared in several fast and furious movies what the anvil mustang was his that was from fast six and the beautiful 1970 roadrunner that we see at the end of tokyo drift was also his both of those were his creations for fast four the picture car department actually built three hammer clones of the car that he created both of those satellites that were used as substitutes for the road runner were totaled during production but the real road runner which was running a 383 with the four speed was saved and is in storage to this day at least last i heard one of his other creations the anvil mustang is a car that we see tyrese driving in fast six and while it might look like any old 69 mustang to amateurs you got to get up close to see what's going on steve stroke built that car from matt lasik of anvil auto in its masterpiece it's appeared at many shows including the sema show and in fast nine which is due out in theaters in just a few weeks you're gonna see another one of his works his black ops fair lane which debuted at the 2014 sema i got to tell you i've seen his cars in person steve's builds are on a whole nother level i've seen boyd coddington and chip builds up close and while those cars are great steve's cars seem to combine muscle cars historic racing and european pizzazz all together to create something that is nothing short of art i had to learn more about the work that steve shop purevision does so we paid him a visit so here is what he had to say in his own words hi my name is steve strop and i own a little company called purevision here in simi valley california i came from a very small farm town in upstate new york called appalachian where growing up i dove heavily into the deep end of hot rod magazine car craft popular hot rodding and anything else i could get my grubby little paws on every toy i had got modified that turned into the addiction of bmx which for many not just myself many other car guys that was their gateway drug into hot rodding and i'll explain with bmx you wound up modifying the bike you chose your colors my bike was chrome with red parts my friends david his bike was blue with gold parts so you got to learn how to not strip out stuff hopefully learn how to use wrenches learned how to personally choose your higher performance parts and that of course gave way to cars and i eat breathed and slept that stuff wound up moving to southern california and was very fortunate back in 95 when i moved out here to be featured by jeff smith then editor of hot rod magazine and gave me my first magazine feature with a 67 el camino that i built myself basically in between my garage at home and my aunt's garage down the street from me so that segwayed into building some personal cars in my underground parking garage in studio city california and in driveways of friends homes that turned into two separate top 10 cars of the year with hot rod magazine finally got the gumption up to open up a shop and it kept rolling from there been very very fortunate that a lot of the press and media as the aforementioned magazines and then different television stuff and movie stuff started taking an interest in the craziness that was coming out of my head and i've been super fortunate since i work with some of my best friends guys that work for me are good friends have been here for a long time two guys are i think on their 16th year of being with me and luckily also i've had great relationships with different sponsors and companies that make parts and pieces that we use on the car so a lot of hard work but a lot of extremely talented people around me coming together in a team effort to do some pretty cool stuff so my spiral down into the fast and furious world i received a phone call by a gentleman named dennis mccarthy awesome cat and he's the dude who puts all the cool cars in all of the fast and furious movies so dennis was actually on the hunt for a car they had already filmed tokyo drift but they had a new ending of the movie that just got written in it was bringing back vin diesel's character in there was going to be this nighttime drag race inside of a mall and they wanted quote the baddest mopar they could get their hands on so if i remember correctly dennis was asking around different people and was asking some of the editors then at hot rod magazine who's got a badass mopar and they said strop over at purevision has this car named hammer which we had unveiled at sema so dennis got my phone number from them he called up and introduced himself and got right to business and said sorry here you have a pretty badass mopar and i go yeah we do and uh he asked if we could bring it by for this um thrown in last minute bit of the movie we brought it down and as they say that's history it was used in the scene which was kind of important because like i said it brought vin diesel's character back into the movie franchise um and that was my first time of filming with the fast and furious people fantastic everybody in the crew was fantastic stunt guys were wonderful they uh i gave them permission to you know we did some gratuitous burnouts with the car uh there was no uh there was no faking we just nailed and leaned into it and just got big old burnouts with it so we had a lot of fun that was like we started i think at like 10 p.m and filmed all the way to six in the morning the next morning so uh that was my first time filming with the fast and furious folks and dennis mccarthy so the second time i uh was honored with working with the fast franchise was fast four and um they had dennis called up again dennis mccarthy called up and we had just finished a 72 torino a beautiful blue torino with white stripes that we had unveiled at sema and he had interest in that and we brought that down to universal three times for them to consider also they wanted to reuse hammer but what they were wind up doing is they said they were just going to build some copies of hammer which they did and uh i believe that is the car that letty dies in rolls is in hammer or a copy of hammer and the torino they were interested in using as the bad guy's car which they did but instead of using my card for some reason they thought it would be better green so they built themselves some copies of uh my torino they used our striping and our wheel design and how i laid out the car and you know it's still it's a it's still a huge compliment even though they weren't using our car as a hero car obviously it's a copy of hammer and the torino which it was very funny because a lot of people on my into the industry the hot rod side who caught the film knew because of my striping and my wheels like hey they copied purevision's blue torino and and they did but i had the car them for there for them to look at but again uh what an amazing opportunity and it's a compliment to my guys and my team and our shop so once again it was an honor to be involved with them so the final time hopefully not the last time ever but final time i was involved with uh fast and furious was fast six and they borrowed a lovely little mustang we built called the anvil mustang a very very trick piece uh it won up at sema won the ford design award car of the show tons of carbon fiber cantilever inboard coilover push rod suspension trick trick all the way around and they wanted to use it as a hero car and they wanted to take it overseas the aforementioned dennis mccarthy promised me that it'll be perfectly fine and safe so unbeknownst to me they are building stunt doubles of the car because the car is going to get ran over by a tank i don't know about this i just know my car is going to go get filmed and they're borrowing it and i i had become friends with some of the guys in dennis's crew and they were super nice and said hey man i'm going to be personally looking out for your car we're going to make sure it's okay i'm going to make sure who's going to get in it and who's not don't worry about it because it's a very high dollar car very high dollar car and it's somebody's property it's not mine it's a customer that i built you know allowing this car to go so anyway it's overseas and i get a text from dennis the text now when they built a stunt double sometimes it's a little loosey-goosey sometimes it looks just like the car and they did a very good job with the stunt double that they ran over with a tank which i didn't know about and dennis sends me a picture of what i thought was the car i built about this tall and just said something along the lines of we had a stunt go wrong or we had a mishap and i proceeded to have a mental meltdown and i'm trying to craft what i'm going to be politically correctly writing to him and while i'm crafting this he course sent another text going it's a stunt double don't worry about it you know your car is perfectly fine i'm like oh i'm going to kill you when you get back here so um a lot of fun and of course when you watch fast six you'll see uh it get uh run over by a tank but it's obviously not the original but uh i still gotta get dennis back for that i'm coming for you brother so a lot of fun again great guys and of course made my stuff look fantastic on the big screen even when it's getting run over by a tank so uh the specs on the anvil mustang a 69 mustang fastback we along with the people at anvil auto that specialize in carbon fiber panels for muscle cars so we redeveloped and re-engineered along with them the front fenders the hood front bumper rear bumper rear extensions deck lid rear spoiler so that's all bolt on on your 69 or 70 mustang carbon fiber bits and pieces it has a kind of a one off the rear suspension is from meyer from mike meyer is a inboard cantilever push rod coilover suspension that is sitting in the back seat area for you to look at when you're driving which is really dangerous because you should be looking forward but it's so cool to watch it working right then when you pop the hood uh sitting on either side of the engine is a set of inboard coilovers all of them are on aircraft quality quick release pins so at the track you pull the pins pull the coil over switch your springs pop it back in because we're at that pitching um it's got a john kazi you can look him up k-a-a-s-e one of the best engine builders on the planet uh john kazi boss nine he took the famous boss 429 got rid of all the little problems that they didn't get rid of back in the day this motor aluminum uh fuel injected makes all day long 803 805 horsepower about the same in torque and it will gladly rip your head off um fun to drive very spirited i should say of course stick manual car a lot of fun some one-off wheels uh from a fantastically talented company called evod uh shot with michelin pilot sports um i copied the rim design off of the gurney eagle you can look that up to a very famous uh road race car by dan gurney so bits and pieces around that we moved a few mustang guys stare at the front end and the taillight panel for a while see the little things that we moved around very subtly but lots of fun great car eric thorson interior on that car and of course you can see more about that on my site at purevisiondesign.com under the halo cars or just look up anvil mustang and i'm sure these guys will have some really cool stuff on the car too but that's a little bit about the anvil so my wonderful relationship with universal continues with new fast nine and for you eagle-eyed guys out there that have seen the new trailer uh you'll see a little home scene and parked out by the curb is our 66 fair lane and that is a very special little car also that like the anvil mustang won the ford design award a different year at sema car of the show and that has got oh it's set up like a prototype nascar and it's got of course an illegal motor for nascar it's got the uh sock motor in it and we did a one-off intake that i wanted it to look like there's a gentleman back in the day named mickey thompson that did lots of prototype and trying new things in the in the muscle car and speed world so we did an intake with four separate two barrels um kind of like a cross ram setup and uh the car has a hidden torsion bar suspension the torsion bars are actually going through the inside of the frame rails and kick out at the lower control arm in the front and the torsion bars for the rear suspension are up under the package tray in the trunk and feed down through rods that go through holes in the center of the upper frame rails and kick down to the top of the rear axle again some amazing rims by evod this time i copied the lamborghini mirror wheel and you're like mural wheel on an old nascar it works mate trust me um the little rear spoiler in the back of the car is hooked up to the braking system it's actually an air brake so when you touch the brakes the spoiler goes up vertical when you're off the brakes it goes back down so it works in conjunction with the braking system which was happening back in the day with you can look up jim hall or chaparral can-am race cars they had giant wings on the top of their car that they got rid of the sticks they went with an automatic and the extra pedal made this giant wing go up and down it was an air brake so i took from that technology of the day and integrated it kind of in my own way in the fair lane and again you can learn more online about about the fair lane either on our site at purevisiondesign.com or here i'm sure we'll be throwing up some cool photos and some tech about the car but really really neat piece and again thankful that universal wanted it to be part of their filming so my take on performance now it is the golden age it's kind of the best of times worst of times if you want to quote the old book um best of times oh my goodness back in the day you know when when the muscle car craze came out and the the big three are making 426 hemis with four speeds and ss-427s and sock motors and all these amazing things that you can go down to the dealership and buy and they were definitely following the old win on sunday sell on monday you know nascar and drag racing and all that stuff super stock classes you know you too can be part of this and now you don't even have to be at home building say oh because the generation before doing the street rod thing dry lakes racing thing bonneville and drag racing with uh rail jobs or doing uh street rods 30s and 40s cars and then into the 50s like 57 chevy you know you're swapping in the bigger engines and then it's evolving into now you can go to the dealership and buy a performance car right and of course that lasts about a day thus the term day two car you bring the car home on friday night then you buy your cragger mags your hijacker air shocks your liquid traction bars your three spoke chrome steering wheel your b m or her shifter uh you know and all the cool stuff uh under the hood your your aluminum valve covers and t-handle valve cover bolts and uh you know your yellow super stock wires from excel you know and the older cats know exactly what i'm talking about and those cars there were some that mustered under under 14 and 13 second quarters and of course limited suspension technology tire technology for those of you that want to be amazed look up fast fast drag racing series the factory appearing stock everything on these cars have to look like it came off the showroom and these cars are cutting like nines and eights on the factory bias ply tires go figure that out how they do that that being said today holy mackerel you go to a dealership and buy a 700 horsepower car or of course the dodge demon you can go nines with a warranty and ac and sat nav a little bit you know what the heck's going on let alone you go into the supercar world the hyper car world what's going on there oh my god you know the stuff as long as you got the bread you can go buy stuff that's outer worldly fast now and it can be argued that the cars do too much for you there's no visceral to it anymore there's no seat in your pants i'm terrified anymore unless you own a lambo they still scare the at you which is good keep that up so now we have a crossover evolution tesla let's go to them there's other electric stuff happening now porsche's got some great stuff a whole bunch of people ferrari's getting into that game lambo lambo by the way not doing hybrid they are having electric motors but they're basically using the kers system it's just three generate power good on them but with with your tesla uh those of you that don't know it they've got an upgrade called ludicrous speed which of course is taken from spaceballs go check it out great movie by mel brooks um ludicrous speed you have an electric car that i don't even know the numbers but it's pretty scary how fast those cars are so you've got a golden age of speed available but with worst of times why i made that comment we're kind of losing the the visceral watching like the electric f1 the e-series i hear tires squealing i've sponsored a couple of double-a fuel nostalgia funny cars and the newer fuel cars are running over 10 000 horsepower and when they go by you on the track they actually shake your innards that doesn't happen in an electric car they'll have an electric drag car i'm sure at some point that'll that will go even faster than our already 330 mile an hour cars but there'll be no ener there will be no wow factor it'll just be like turning a light switch on you know so we're our performance world has gained me this unbelievable ability to go unbelievable speeds and handle incredibly break incredibly do all these things that we've wanted our cars to be able to do but there's a conversation at what cost and for those of you who've never done it if you've gotten in a super car or a really fast and say new new 911 or go strap yourself into a gt2 get out of that car go drive an earlier 911 or even better a little 356 with like 80 horsepower that is what a real sports car experience is because you are tied to that thing you will feel the tire slipping around you'll feel everything and again it's visceral it's a contact and it's kind of what makes human human you know you can't virtually climb mount everless you can but that's not climbing mount everest so that's where that's where the crossroads are happening for me personally and for a lot of guys who are very knee-deep into this hobby industry sport that with all these amazing performance gains we're losing some of that earthy connection that sound that violence it's just like sublight speed and as incredible as that is so we'll see where all that goes picture car coordinator dennis mccarthy absolutely knows talent when he sees it and so people like steve strobe got the call and this is how his cars wound up in the movies it was great having him on hope you tune in for another episode if you're liking the content please don't forget to subscribe and if you'd like to get some cool apparel and merchandise i now have a merchandise store you can check that out the link is in the description below thanks again everybody we will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 34,967

Rating: 4.9594016 out of 5

Keywords: Steve Strope, Black Ops Fairlane, Anvil Mustang, Fast and Furious Mustang, Fast 9, Fast and Furious Roadrunner, fast and Furious Plymouth

Id: BS2PTrZkCx4

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021