It was easy to mock the cars of the Fast and Furious movies early on, wasn’t it? Little buzzbombs painted bright colors, with random-ass graphics, bad bodykits didn’t make a great impression. They were cars that seemed designed to piss somebody off. And they were successful at that goal, like a teenager who spits some dumb statement out of their mouth just to watch their parents go straight through the ceiling and into the stratosphere, true or not. It’s the only movie series I’ve seen where a black Dodge Charger isn’t enough to calm the hatred down for every other supporting star vehicle.
The trailers for Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift didn’t help matters. Nissan Z-cars, Mitsubishi Evos, an RB-swapped 1967 Mustang? It had all of the makings of yet another summer of old-schoolers bemoaning the rise of the rice rocket, plus a ton of bellyaching about swapping a Nissan engine into a 1967 Mustang, as if somebody somewhere had taken a leak right on Steve McQueen’s grave. Then, there was this ugly mother. Primer yellow and gray. Goodyear slicks at all four corners, sitting like some pissed-off Grand National outcast. No interior, minimal brightwork, all balls. And it was awesome in all of the right ways. Big cubic inches, big body Monte Carlo, ready to make a lot of noise, up against Zachary Ty Bryan’s completely unlikable football douche character and his daddy’s money Viper high-school ride. It might be my ultimate pick out of the franchise, certainly the highlight car from that movie, and this is the story behind how the car came to be, the anthesis to the other cars up to that point.
Im just sorry they killed all those chargers and other cool cars to do make those Real shit movies. No Real car guy would ever treat his pride to that level of stupid as they do in those movies. And no real car guy would try and use a dragracer as a getaway car. And this is just the stupid in the first movie. It just gets worse in the next Line of movies. It feels like you need to kill as Many cool cars as possible to make a car movie nowadays. Its just crap if you ask me
While yes, some good cars were “killed”, many were already rusted shells of cars built up to become usable again for these movies. why do you think the Chargers seen have custom wide bodies, homemade looking grilles, etc. Those were built with rusted shells that only the roof was salvageable. The Camaro used in part 2 for the jump scene was a rusty shell, too.
And like these movies or not, this franchise is helping to ignite interest in cars for kids and create the next generation of passionate car people. There just isn’t a lot of other content helping to drive interest in cars these days.
As a 20 year owner of a 71’ Monte Carlo SS 454, I enjoyed seeing a Monte in the movie. It was Great car.