HOW BRIAN'S GTR WAS ALMOST A NEON SRT4

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well hello there humans hooligans and earthlings wherever you are whatever you're doing and whomever you're lucky enough to be doing it with thanks for watching in this episode we're going to talk about Bryan's GTR from too fast to furious we all remember the car this is the car that Bryan acquires in a special DVD feature as part of the prelude to too fast too furious maybe you've seen that on one of the DVDs this car makes its grand entrance early in the movie when he raced a slapjack Orange Julius and Suki and of course the car is used in the now famous bridge jump sequence more on that in a few minutes there's so many myths and so much misinformation floating around I felt it was time to do a video but first let's start with a little bit of backstory let's go back in time it's June of 2001 and fast and furious had just been released in a Nibbana it by late 2001 everyone was talking about him I still had my orange Supra but I had already set my sights on his replacement I was doing many appearances with Paul Walker and my super to promote the first film but I was ready for a change I spoke to the guys at motor X and they told me that their Blackbird GTR was for sale this is the car that Paul Walker had been driving for about a month or two and was considering buying it but he ended up with a silver GTR v-spec he actually gave an interview for the max about video guys saying that he owned the car but that's not true he had not bought the car he was just test driving it for what we might call an extended transcribe since blackbird was now available I jumped on it I paid 78 thousand dollars for this car in July of 2001 as it turns out it would end up being one of only fourteen federally legal r34 GTR s that motor ex ever certified when I say one of fourteen I mean that this number is approximate even Sean Morris who's arguably the Guru Godfather of skylines in the United States and formerly of motor X he doesn't have the exact number so let's just say it was about 14 that were fully federally legal by mid 2002 too fast too furious had not even been announced so when I bought my GTR I would I didn't even know that it would someday become a movie car so that was not the moment one of the motifs and be buying the car I actually started building this car as a showpiece at the time I was the tuner marketing consultant for McGuire's and this car would serve as a perfect platform for Car Show something that McGuire has participated in often when I got the car knowing that magazines at that time didn't like to feature black cars I painted the car a custom candy blue my GTR build included 15-inch top tech brakes some engine parts custom interior and a pretty comprehensive sound system immediately the car got picked up for several magazines Super Street modified magazine and HCI all ran features on this car fast forward the late spring 2002 David martyr my former boss on the original Fast and Furious called me up this conversation was pretty direct and to-the-point he basically said hey they're doing another one we need to have a meeting the idea for using a GTR in the movie came from my meeting with Universal as we started to discuss what cars we should use for the film again I got up in front of a grease board just like I did in the first movie and started going through the food chain of cars Universal as it turns out was working on a deal to use a neon SRT 4 as one of Bryan's two cars oh god please no i strenuously objected to this and to his credit john singleton the director told me quite literally and I quote Lieberman I don't want no booty ash in my movie if this is booty tell me now I told him the truth that no matter how many nitrous bottles they throw in this car it was still going to be like putting lipstick on a pig to universe's credit they listened the neon was out and the GTR was in now the challenge would be getting more of these cars with my car now cast as Brian's car we had to get other GTR so that we could build copies of the car for the stunts that we had planned since motor X was the only game in town back then I contacted them we promptly ordered for more r34 GTR s from motor x we paid them $48,000 for each car and paid another $13,000 to ship them these four cars were never made to be federally legal so they're essentially gray market imports one of the action sequences of the movie called for a high-speed bridge jump we all remember that scene to do this we needed to buy another GTR the next one that we got was from Andy at middle Hurst Nissan in England this car was gutter than we installed a ten point stunt cage made from two hundred feet of tubing and a full safety harness to protect the driver for close-ups of Brian while he was driving we'd also need a mickray car the good news is that we didn't cut up a real gt-r for the McRib for those who don't know a mick rig is a custom platform on which we mount the shell of a car it is used to simulate actors actually driving the car for those keeping account we now had a total of six GTRs and one 240sx the cars were designated as follows hero one was my car hero two was the backup for hero one stop one did the primary stunts when that car was down will you stunt two for studio and CG work we had stunt number three and then last but not least we had the jump car so why don't we use real GTRs instead of G TTS simply put time and money was easier to get real GTRs rather than bringing over G TTS and converting them converting G TTS to GTRs as you probably know requires grafting in new quarter panels new fenders bumpers and fabricating a replica of the MFD on the dash and so forth it just wasn't worth it using my car as the hero one car was challenging enough as I mentioned earlier the car was already pretty modified before the movie those modifications also included an elaborate sound system in fact we included elaborate sound systems and many of the cars for two reasons one that was all the rage back in 2002 and two we were working with many sponsors including clarion panasonic rockford fosgate and others so i set about to design the sound systems for all the cars and handed the sketches to west coast customers who did a great job on the sound systems most of which were completed before the cars ever shipped to Florida despite the progress there was much yet undone for starters we wanted to experiment with glowing break letters I had shown Universal some footage of cars racing at night and thought it would be a cool effect to integrate into the film to pull this off our special effects team fabricated some semi transparent rotors with custom fab neon tubes the glowing light was adjusted by using a remote-controlled rheostat basically a dimmer switch unfortunately despite all the work that piece of footage didn't make it into the final edit of the movie that's a shame too because anything that adds more authenticity that Street race would have certainly been welcome considering all the CG that we used in that sequence it's not uncommon for a studio to cut out bits of footage we've all heard that before basically what they're trying to do is keep the story moving and anything that's not an integral part of the story it doesn't really need to be there another fun bit we wanted to work in was the nitrous purge bit when Brian pulls up to the race he's seen using the nitrous purge of course racers know of what this is all about the fun part was using it to blow up one of the girls dress as sort of a tribute to the famous Marilyn Monroe photo younger viewers probably have no idea what I'm talking about during the race scene we see the usual Hollywood interpretation of street racing 10 speed gearboxes downshifting whenever you're losing in an infinite supply of nitrous at your fingertips the icing on the cake is the bridge jump some people think it's unusual to jump a bridge during a street race not in Hollywood while we did actually jump a car it wasn't at a hundred and sixty miles an hour in fact it was more like 55 miles an hour and we used a launch ramp not a bridge elevated at about 45 degrees and true Hollywood style the GTR lands perfectly and continues on to victory in reality the car actually traveled about a hundred feet down the road and landed slightly nosed down ideally it should have landed level or a bit more on the tail end of the car as you'd expect there was damage a broken oil pan taco Tweel's busted suspension bits and frame damage was a result amazingly the car was up and running in just a few days believe it or not that car was eventually fixed and sold to a private owner with the race complete things seem to be going Brian's way the celebration has cut short when the popo show up do they still stay popo's I'm gonna say that they do predictably onlookers scramble and everyone flees the scene as the cops close in on Brian were treated to a new invention dubbed the ESD which presumably means electrostatic discharge Brian is distract by the effects of this device the device was custom made by a place called special effects Florida and it was actually pretty cool given that I was created from scratch in this scene Brian looses control and crashes into a parking meter what's interesting about this stunt is that it wasn't planned at all the producers left it in the movie because it felt and I quote more authentic the results of that little incident were pretty much as you expect the car suffered some damage and NISS my friends is why you always have backup cars the entire street race sequence was filmed in multiple locations over the course of 15 work days although most of it was at night of course second unit which is often referred to as the stunt unit handled the filming of the sequences as is customary unfortunately it is the last time we see the car it is presumably impounded by local police and tied up in red tape after the movie wrapped I got my car back at the time I was still living in Florida to work on the movie but as soon as I got back to California I sent the car straight to the paint shop it was sanded down to bare metal and restore it to its pre movie condition why did I change it back I think it's pretty much no secret that I thought the graphics on these cars were not to my taste and the tuner scene tuner fans openly mocked the look of the cars calling them rice mobiles and so forth the car didn't look the way I wanted to so I changed it basically that's what they can't take it all came down to I still had big plans for the car including more engine work different seats and things like that my plants got cut short when I got a ridiculous offer for the car I won't say how much but it was very generous the car was then sold to motor mavericks and tennessee who proceeded to change the car radically it went back to black the audio is removed some of the engine goodies were removed and the wheels were changed my GTR was sold again around 2012 or so I'm not sure exactly of the year and the current owner is keeping his ownership private I know who he is we've actually talked on many occasions and he does have plans to restore to its movie condition but as of this filming 2019 in June that undertaking has not yet begun and so the good news is that my GTR is still intact but it's now black and missing about half of the movie equipment but it still exists for me though the best part of this experience was hanging with Paul by this time Paul is really getting in the GTRs and had just purchased one for himself it's probably no secret that Paul was an avid car and and whenever we saw each other on set he liked to talk about stuff he could do to his own GT yard those were good times and good memories one last thing I wanted to add recently a tabloid website reported that this car was for sale and showed this picture unfortunately the people running that website couldn't count their balls twice and come up with the same number the car that is actually for sale is Paul's blue r34 from Fast Five the car is listed at 1.3 million but we'll have a better chance of selling in about 500 to 750 K that's it for this episode thanks for watching everybody if you're liking the videos I've been producing please be sure to subscribe and share them with your friends thanks again everybody

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 386,675

Rating: 4.8937826 out of 5

Keywords: craig lieberman, the fast and the furious, brian's skyline, brian's gtr, paul walker, paul walker's skyline, 2 fast 2 furious, john singleton, neon srt4, miami

Id: R8BvFMwJWE0

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Lleytonst]

I bet that would have changed a lot of culture for both of the cars

[u/ijustbrushalot]

I'm just happy they never used the Ram SRT-10, otherwise I'd have never been able to afford it. It's amazing how many young people ask me if mine is a F-150 Lightning because they remember Paul Walker's in F&F. I thought it was just one weird question but I've now heard it 5 times.

[u/Leche_Hombre2828]

If it were then the cop wouldn't have had to shoot the electro-gun at his car in the opening race, the Dodge would have suffered all sorts of electrical problems on its own

[u/The_Phreak]

I miss 2002, the 2000s car culture in general. Good times were had.

[u/BushWeedCornTrash]

Behind the scenes, I am sure Dodge/Chrysler was offering the production team unlimited cars and a hefty compensation for using the Neon. The SRT Neon was a quick car, but not hero car level by any means.

[u/Buster_142]

Oh man woulda made Srt-4’s ... legit isn’t the right word because they are legit fast... or can be. Maybe respected is the right word haha

[u/FeldMonster]

I don't care what anyone says, I love my SRT4 (Commemorative Edition).

If it had been in the movie, it would certainly have been more popular, possibly made beyond 2005 (existing model), and maybe even a newer/refreshed version instead of the Caliber.

[u/SkylineFTW97]

The SRT4 is an underrated car (really the Neon as a whole is). This could've been the break it needed to gain respect in the mainstream. But it does mean guys like me can scoop them up for cheap.

[u/Sonnycrockett262]

So why didnt the Mitsubishi eclipse get any fame? Lol