Behind The Scenes

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Forgive the braggadocio title – I used it only to make search engines happy and to help people searching for this information to find it more easily. Like many car nuts, my predilection for cars back to my early youth. I was fascinated by the 1960s Batmobile and later on, the Mach 5 from the Speed Racer cartoon series of the late 1960s. Also like many car nuts, I couldn't afford the cars I wanted when I reach driving age. My family was not well off and I had to pay for nearly everything myself. By the time I was 19, I had moved out and was going to school and working two jobs. I spent money on only a handful of things: school. food, my girlfriend and my car. Still, I managed to have some fun with cars, and over the years, the cars I owned got better. As of this writing, I've had 43 cars. I'm not including in this list the several company cars I have been issued over the years. Here they are in order: 1981 Isuzu I-Mark sedan 1973 Mercury Capri V6 1970 260Z widebody 1973 240Z 1974 260Z 1967 Chevelle 396 1981 Honda Accord hatchback 1978 Fiat

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I get comments and questions about ten times a day on my Instagram about this: why isn't street racing coming back to the franchise? In the simplest of terms, street racing movies don't make money – action films make money. Let's look at the box office history of the Fast and Furious movies as of late 2018:   #1. Furious 7 (2015)
 Production Budget: $190,000,000 Domestic box Office: $351,032,910 WorldWide box Office: $1,526,748,684   #2. The Fate of the Furious (8) (2017)
 Production Budget: $250,000,000 Domestic box Office: $225,767,765 WorldWide box Office: $1,237,444,462   #3. Fast & Furious 6
 Production Budget: $160,000,000 Domestic box Office: $238,679,850 WorldWide box Office: $789,300,444   #4. Fast Five (2011) Production Budget: $125,000,000 Domestic box Office: $209,837,675 WorldWide box Office: $629,969,804   #5. Fast and Furious (2009) Production Budget: $85,000,000 Domestic box Office: $155,064,265 WorldWide box Office: $363,064,265   #6. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) Production Budget: $76,000,000 Domestic box Office: $127,120,058 WorldWide box Office: $237,410,607   #7. The Fast and The Furious (2001) Production Budget: $38,000,000 Domestic box Office: $144,512,310 WorldWide box Office: $206,512,310 #8. The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) Production Budget: $85,000,000 Domestic box Office: $62,615,510 WorldWide box Office: $157,794,205 Notice that the movies that focus on street racing rank dead last on this list. Proof positive that although we car fans like those movies more, audiences both in the U.S. and globally want to see action movies. The bigger

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You'll see this term mentioned online, on this website and in my book. When we're referring to a "Hero" car, what we mean is that it's the prettiest and most complete version of a car we use in a movie whenever we have to build clones (or replicas) as backup cars. I'll explain further. In every movie where you see cars being use, chances are that there are multiples of any one car. For example: In The Fast and The Furious, Universal would need multiple cars because we'd be shooting stunt scenes as well as primary scenes. In any case where stunts will be done, a movie studio will have multiple stunt cars depending on how much footage is needed of any given car action sequence. For Tokyo Drift, there were 10 Mustangs built. They needed so many because on any given night, they could have fender benders multiple times in mulitple cars. For every movie, there are basically two production teams – 1st Unit & 2nd Unit. 1st unit handles most of the footage involving the actors. 2nd unit handles the stunts. It's not uncommon for 1st and 2nd Unit to have a need for the same car, at the same time but

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I get this question almost daily, despite the fact that this information has been public for more than 18 years. I have to remember that a lot of people have only recently become fans of the Fast & Furious franchise and my efforts on Instagram might have just become known to them. For those who don't know, I owned the following cars that were used in the first two movies: Brian's orange 1994 Toyota Supra Vince's blue 1999 Nissan Maxima SE Brian's silver 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R All of these cars were owned by me personally before the movie. Universal rented each of the cars from me to use as "Hero" cars,  then changed things like the graphics, body kit pieces and/or wheels, to suit their preferences. We built four (or more) replicas of all the Hero cars for use in stunts and as backup cars for use during production. The cars were then returned to me after film production wrapped and I was free to do with them what I wanted. BRIAN'S ORANGE SUPRA In the case of the Supra, I left it as-is (more or less), then sold it about 18 months later. By this time I had changed the seats, updated the

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I’m often asked how I got involved with the franchise. I’d like to say that I had been working towards a goal of landing a career in the motion picture industry, or that I knew somebody who got me that big break, but none of that would be true. In the simplest of terms, my involvement came from blind, dumb, luck. In fact, other than briefly majoring in Film and Television in college, I had long since given up on that dream of even being in show business. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that I’ve been a passionate car guy from a very early age. Like many teens of the era, by bedroom wall was adorned with pictures of Porsches and Lamborghinis. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that I would someday own cars like the ones that distracted me from my studies. I had been bitten by the bug. By 1997, I was a die-hard American car guy. I was all about the big V8s and forced induction was a dream that my pocketbook couldn’t really afford. That all changed one day in 1998 when I lined up against a stock-looking, 1995 Toyota Supra. The Supra left me like