This Fast & Furious Car Caught Fire On-set

hello i'm craig lieberman if you don't know who i am you're not alone i'm a gearhead who's been ticking ring on cars since the 1980s i've owned more than 40 cars in that time but i never dreamed that some of my own cars would start in a major movie franchise my r34 gtr my toyota supra and my nissan maxima all had starring roles in universal's first two fast and furious movies and i served as a technical advisor to these early films i've raced open-wheel cars shifter carts and others i love all things automotive and my videos help me share my passion with like-minded people all around the world owning a classic skyline is a dream for most people getting your car cast in a fast and furious movie is a dream for pretty much everybody so you can imagine what happened when one fellow who owned a classic yokosuka skyline got a phone call to have his car get featured in tokyo drift let's go back in time to the year 2005. fast and furious one the first movie had been out for a few years too fast too furious had come out two years earlier and both of them were a bit of a surprise and now here in 2005 universal had decided to make yet another sequel this one was going to have a story line revolving around drifting which was all the rage at the time after the success of the first two movies you can imagine the excitement when universal put out a broadcasting call for cars to be used on set for one scene in particular the underground parking scene your phone rings you've been invited to have your car appear in this movie what do you do well if you're this fellow named wayne you're so happy you happily agreed to drive 3000 miles across the country just to get this tiny little roll as a background car in this garage scene not only that when the producer says to you hey you know would you mind painting your car from white to black so that it doesn't get all funky freaky with the lights that we're gonna have on set at night time you agree to do that good you're in right the big day comes and your car is placed on set with an elite group of rare and expensive jdm cars some of them flown over for japan just for this movie and just as final preparations are made to start filming the scene your car catches on fire that's what happened the car was wheeled off set and it didn't ever return as heartbreaking as this was there's actually a lot more to the story even the back story is pretty interesting and the back story started way before this car was cast for tokyo drift it seems wayne had purchased this car while living in okinawa japan while he was serving there in the marine corps as it happens with a lot of service people they fall in love with these cars and try and bring them home with them the car was originally silver but wayne had painted the car white while the car was still over in okinawa that in and of itself was pretty controversy you don't change the factory color of a collectible car but the story gets more interesting when wayne decided to export this car he apparently angered some local yakuza to the point that threats were being made to his life apparently the yakuza viewed this car as an important piece of japanese history but by the time the yakuza's threats reached wayne the car was already halfway across the pacific and so he was out of the woods fortunately wayne was careful enough to follow all the importation laws when bringing the car to the usa and so he's had no issues even after the motorex scandal and if you don't know about that watch my video on it's pretty good at the time the car had a dots on the l28 engine but the internals have been beefed up and the compression ratio was 13 and a half to one at triple 44 millimeter makunis an n42 cylinder head and a direct port nitrous system so with all the mods put together wayne says the car made about 165 horsepower before the nitrous and again this was a pretty nice car even though it wasn't a gtr it was just a skyline and so wayne as you can imagine was pretty excited when he got the call from universal telling him that they wanted to use the car in tokyo drift everything was set for the car's appearance in tokyo drift and then of course he had the fire however the director justin lin was so enamored with this car that he actually included it in the script wayne was paid 250 bucks a day even though the car never appeared on camera because of the fire but i had to get to the bottom of the fire story and wayne explains exactly what happened at some point one of the grips accidentally stepped on the glass fuse box and i started a small carpet fire at that point the car was wheeled off set and i just couldn't fix it fast enough to get the shot so the car was out of the film and that would have been the end of the story the car went back to wayne and i didn't hear anything else about this car until this year 2020 some 15 years after tokyo drift that's when wayne explained to me that it was actually his hakosuka that was the car that was used in fast five so i immediately got on the phone to him and we had a discussion not knowing the full story i was glad to reconnect with wayne through his friend javier tirado to get all the details this is where it gets interesting it turned out that back in 2010 when universal's work on fast five john weiser was once again tasked with finding right-hand drive japanese cars for the film john did this for many of the fast and furious movies even going back as far as the first movie so everybody knew john john remembered wayne hawkouska from tokyo drift and reached out to wayne to see if there was any chance he still had that car and if so could it be used for a scene in fast five a deal was struck and before long wayne skyline was loaded onto a boat in jacksonville florida close to where he lived and shipped off to puerto rico by this time though many changes had been done to the car the engine at this time was now an fj20et from the dr-30 skyline and this one had a nine and a half to one compression ratio but this engine was turbocharged while the original l28 that he had in the in the first go round was not go fast bits included many things an hks mls head gasket acl race bearings total seal rings stock pistons and rods were used for this application a gtx 3576 r-spec turbo all of this together made 255 horsepower at 5 psi there were other things like a pulsar gtir front mounted intercooler jet hot coated exhaust manifold intake manifold and valve cover brakes were just four pot calipers with endless pads front and the stock drum rear brakes and that pretty much rounded out the mods for those who don't know several scenes were shot for fast five in puerto rico atlanta and of course in brazil the car arrived safely said it was no problem but at one point john wiser finally called wayne on the phone he was a little concerned about answering the phone given what happened on tokyo drift on the other end of the line though was paul walker himself who was so in love with this car that he offered to buy it on the spot wayne politely declined paul's offer with the promise that if he ever decided to sell the car paul would be offered the car first so the car remained on set to complete its appearance in fast five unfortunately the car had another minor incident on set in fast five this guy's got terrible luck as you can see in this picture a camera mount was added to the front of the car this is pretty typical to tell the actors faces while grips are usually very careful they are used to mounting the equipment to cars other than the hero1 car but since we only had one car the lights would need to be rigged to this car some slight damage was done to the front fender and in the engine bay all of it cosmetic thankfully but wait there's more apparently the car also had a minor incursion bumping into something on set the damage looked slight but it was enough to push the front fender a bit closer to the door wayne tells me that there was no frame damage done just a little bend that was easily fixed but after filming in puerto rico the car went to brazil to do more filming and then to atlanta and total universal had the car for six months so he was getting paid per day worked out pretty well the car is now back in texas safely and now in the hands of javier tirado for more upgrades and more updates honestly it's not unusual for cars to get damaged on set it happened to my maxima my supra and several cars on the set of tokyo drift it just happens it's not always their fault sometimes it's the extras who are walking around the cars the universe was credited car owners are almost always paid out for their repairs with no problems it's a tragedy that this car had so little screen time but it's a victory that the car finally made it to the big screen especially now given the fact that it has appeared in the greatest car movie franchise of all time thanks for watching again everybody i hope you will take the time to subscribe to my channel we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 71,499

Rating: 4.9584608 out of 5

Keywords: Brian's Skyline, Fast 5 Skyline, Fast 5 GTR, Paul Walker, Brian O'Conner, The Fast and The Furious, Fast Five, Tokyo Drift, Sung Kang, Han, Fast 5, Brian's Hakosuka, Paul Walker Hakosuka

Id: 4GUM0WVkAkA

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020