It has been 20 years since the very first Fast and Furious movie came out, and it has been influencing car culture ever since. It has been 20 years, and yet Dominic Toretto and his family are going strong with the 9th instalment of the franchise that has just been released. The Fast series has always been exciting for car enthusiasts and has been introducing the masses to a varied range of performance automobiles. Here’s what I think are the top 15 cars in the entire Fast and Furious series.
Tokyo Drift, the third instalment in the series displayed a magnificent number of sweet rides from JDM. Yet the most intriguing of them all (of course except Han’s RX-7) was the 1967 Ford Mustang. The car belonged to Sean Boswell’s father which was restored and swapped with the engine of the Nissan Sylvia, which Sean had busted in the earlier scenes. The reason this car is on our list is because of how ridiculous it is, an American muscle fitted with one of the finest JDM car engines which produced almost 500bhp.
Paul Walker’s character, Brian O’Connor is identified by the sets of fine JDM vehicles that he drives. Lancer Evo is among the many iconic JDMs he drives. The 2002 Lancer Evo VII had a custom paint job that made it look a bit unattractive, it was an ode to the Mitsubishi Eclipse that O’Connor drives in the first part. The Lancer Evo had a 2-litre, in-line four turbocharged engine and produces about 272bhp and 385Nm of torque, and does the 0-100kmph sprint in 4.8 seconds.
One of the coolest chase scenes in the Furious series with tanks and whatnot on road, wouldn’t be as good without the rally Escort Mk I in the sixth instalment. The Escort Mk I is owned by Tej and driven by O’Connor chasing Shaw alongside Roman Pearce who is in a 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback and well, it looks absolutely spectacular taking down the tank chasing them. The Mk I had a 1.6-litre, in-line four engine producing 115bhp and 152Nm of torque.
The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is one of the most iconic cars from the ’60s, popular for its design and power. The Stingray features at the beginning of the Fast Five when Dom, Mia, Vince and Brian are stealing cars from a train. You could say the Stingray, although short-lived, is quite integral to the franchise as it makes for one of the coolest stunts in the series. Dom saves O’Connor and runs the car down a cliff in an attempt to evade the bad guys. And guess what, a real Stingray was used in the movie, which is really expensive and quite rare. The Stingray had a 502 big-block engine which produces around 457bhp, massive isn’t it?
You are making a movie about cars in Tokyo, and you will leave out the legendary Mazda RX-7 FD with the rotary engine and power to take down anything that dares to challenge it? The RX-7 was easily one of the coolest characters in the series. The car had a custom body built and engine by a Japanese aftermarket automotive company called Veilside. The Veilside RX-7 won the best car award at the Grand Prix show in 2005. To be honest, Tokyo Drift wouldn’t have been the same without this iconic piece of machine in it. It had a 1.3-litre, 13B rotary engine that produced 302bhp and 347Nm of torque.
If you are talking about tuner culture then what is really better than a Supra Mk-IV? Although there are other Supras across the series, what makes this one special is that Toretto and O’Connor restore the Supra themselves for O’Connor. This plays an integral role in building a bond between the two lead characters, it becomes the primary car of O’Connor and can be seen throughout the movie. The Mk-IV with the original 2JZ engine was said to produce over 540bhp with 97bhp of NOS system and went up to almost 300kmph, phew! Might I add 0-100km in just 4.3 seconds, how insane is that? Fun fact, the orange Toyota Supra was recently sold for about USD 550,000.
The infamous GT40, the Ferrari killer. By now we all know why the GT40 is such an important part of history, not just for Ford but also the racing industry (If you don’t know why, please go watch Ford v Ferrari). It won multiple times at the Le Mans races, especially the 1966 Le Mans where the GT40 secured top three places in the race. It only makes sense to give the GT40 such an integral part to play in the fifth part of the franchise, although it is driven very little. The GT40 houses a chip that holds information on houses that have $100 million, in the movie.
After the 1970s, the S2000 was the first roadster that Honda made. . It was an icon, a small car with big numbers. The one in 2 Fast 2 Furious was supercharged and was exceptionally tacky with the pink paint job and body kit by Veilside. Suki (Devon Aoki) driving this car and doing the jump scene over the bridge surely made it one of the unforgettable moments of the franchise. It is also said that the S2000 used in the first movie by Johnny Tran was repurposed into Suki’s car. The S2000 had a 2-litre, in-line 4 engine with a Comptech supercharger, it produced around 345bhp.
Easily the most insane vehicle on this list, the flip car which was loosely based on an F1 car and was built by the Fast and Furious team to, well, flip cars. It had four-wheel steering which meant that it could move diagonally like a crab and it actually flipped the cars. It has a steeply raked metal plate on the nose, very close to the road, which made other cars flip the moment they collided. The Fast and Furious team says that the footage of the police cars being flipped in the air was all real. In addition, the flip cars were said to produce a massive 475bhp.
Skyline GT-R is considered to be one of the best cars ever made in the world because of how powerful it was. The 2.6-litre, in-line six, twin-turbo unit is one of the more iconic engines, not just in the tuner culture but in the history of performance cars. Skyline GT-R is much like a cast member across the franchise rather than a car, similar to Dom’s Charger. The GT-R was highly customised and produced between 418-447bhp. The hero GT-R is said to be the first fully legal R34 GT-R in the United States by Craig Lieberman, who was a technical advisor for the earlier Fast and Furious movies and owned the R34 during 2 Fast 2 Furious.
This car basically plays a major part at the beginning of the saga. It is loved by many. It is the very first vehicle that Brian O’Connor drives in the movie, which established the identity of his character. Specs-wise the eclipse had a Mitsubishi 2-litre, four-cylinder engine which produced 138bhp and did 0-100kmph in 8.9 seconds. Contrary to what was mentioned in the movie, it wasn’t actually a ten-second car, the Eclipse completed a quarter-mile in 16.4 seconds. Craig Lieberman documented over 100 replicas of this iconic Eclipse from the series.
The Roadrunner is an icon. The Plymouth is first seen in Tokyo Drift in the end during Dom’s cameo, later it is the car in which Letty dies, in the fourth instalment. It can also be seen in Furious 7, in the scene where Dom and Deckard Shaw crash into each other head-on. The Roadrunner came with a 4.2-litre, V8 engine that produces 390bhp and 664Nm of torque.
In Fast five, Toretto and O’Connor drive matte black 2010 Charger SRT8’s to steal an entire vault, ripping it off a wall and dragging it across the roads of Rio De Janerio. It has a 6.1-litre, V8 Hemi engine that produces 425bhp, enough to haul the ten-tonne vault around the city.
A literal tactical armoured vehicle, what is more badass? 6.7-litre, V8 engine producing 325bhp and over 1000Nm of torque. The Gurkha is made by Terradyne Armored Vehicles and was used by Luke Hobbs in the entirety of Fast Five. It was the boss vehicle breaking other cars, breaking walls and basically crushing everything that dared to cross its path.
The Dodge Charger keeps coming back in every chapter. The 1970 Charger has a 7.2-litre, V8 engine, produces 390bhp with 665Nm of torque. The charger has become a signature of the franchise and loved by fans across the world. Even with the cast members, many proclaim the Charger to be the most iconic and one of their personal favourite vehicles.
There are of course many other iconic vehicles in the franchise. These cars are special because they identify with the characters and are able to excite us, the viewers and fans of the series every time we watch the exciting stunt scenes. Most of the vehicles were customised by the developers and the tuners on set, to give them some extra oomph in terms of design as well as performance.