6/7/2007
Tokyo Drift
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
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We've all seen it under the special features menu of almost every DVD; the behind the scenes reel--an especially boring part of the DVD that is only highlighted by bloopers, if anything. But the feeling is quite different when you are behind the scenes firsthand. The view is electrifying and the moment is surreal.
Six city blocks of downtown Los Angeles were closed down during the one night Universal invited us to the set of the latest installment of The Fast and The Furious series, entitled The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. They transformed the usually quiet and dark downtown into a light-filled replica of a Japanese city, complete with beaming vending machines and Japanese street signs. On this particular night, they were shooting a scene where a famous American drifter, Rhys Millen, is blowing rubber around another drift car with precision drifting circles."Wow, that's perfect!" says one of the producers, followed by the sound of clapping from the cast and crew. It was the first take of many, trying to capture the perfect angle and sound of the drifting car. This moment was just a minute part of the movie making process that took the cast and crew from Japan to Southern California.
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Justin Lin, director of the all-Asian American film Better Luck Tomorrow, headed the movie. He also hand picked all the cars chosen for the film, which he said was crucial to make the film as authentic as possible. Lin wanted to make sure that the movie doesn't sell out like the others and will appeal to both newbies and hardcore drifting fans alike.
It seems this third installment will be much better than the first two. There won't be any big actors stealing the scenes (Paul Walker and Vin Diesel), rather, straight-out drifting will be the only focus.
Every car lover has to have watched The Fast and the Furious and it’s sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious. I previously posted about the upcoming third installment in the series, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Let’s have a look at some of the the cars that will be used in the production.
Mazda RX7 with Veilside Bodykit
In total, Tokyo Drift used over 200 cars for the movie, and they came from all around the world. There are 11 Nissan 350z cars alone, and these were brought in from Japan because they required right-hand drive vehicles for the movie. Three of them were used for crash scenes. Most of the cars were second hand, as they needed some out of production cars like Toyota Chasers, Mazda RX7s and old Nissan Silvias. From the Mitsubishi stables came 10 units of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX cars. Volkswagen also provided some cars - four Volkswagen Golf R32s and a few Volkswagen Touran MPVs.
Most of the drifting cars had to be upgraded to drift properly, like the Nisssn 350Z which had to be upped to 475hp through the use of turbocharging. LSD differentials were also fitted. The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX four wheel drive cars had to have their gearboxes locked to rear wheel drive to allow for the crazy drifting action you’ll see in the movie.
East meets West: Nissan’s venerable RB26DETT in a Ford Mustang
The hero car is a 1967 Ford Mustang fastback - 6 of these were used. Part of the storyline involved the hero transplanting the venerable RB26DETT twin turbo straight-6 from the Nissan Skyline GT-R into a Mustang, so one of the 6 Mustangs had this under the hood. They took months to transplant it. The rest used V8 engines. Catch the The Fast and the Furious: TokyoDrift in cinemas on 15th June 2006 in Malaysia. Check out the movie trailer here. Oh BTW, the budget for the cars for movie? USD$7 million. Just for the cars!
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