Ever since the first Fast and Furious movie, which has aged well despite being nearly 25 years old, the franchise has featured fascinating, unique, and famous sports cars. Gearheads may recognize some of the best cars in the franchise, even as they cringe at the sight of the cars dropping, crashing, breaking, burning, flying, and defying the laws of physics.
The most hyped sports car to make an appearance in the franchise is the Lykan Hypersport that Dom conveniently ᴅᴇᴀᴅlifts in Furious 7, adding one of the most frustrating Fast and Furious movie plot holes. He followed up that stunt with something more ridiculous – making the Hypersport jump between two buildings before inevitably crashing it out the window.
Tokyo Drift has the best Fast and Furious car scene where they drift through Tokyo, but the cars are weapons in the franchise now. So, the stunts don’t use the original cars to prevent damaging them. However, Fast Five, which changed the franchise’s focus, features a car so rare, they had to use a fake even when not doing stunts.
The Ford GT40 Is So Rare, Fast Five Had To Build A Fake One
The Producers Couldn’t Procure One For The Movie
The Ford GT40 is one of the most iconic and famous racecars in the history of the sport. The Ford GT40 Mk II was the first Ford car to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, leading to a triple victory for Ford in 1966, as all three race winners were driving it. It is perhaps Ford’s most famous car.
Ford V Ferrari, James Mangold’s racing biopic which was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in 2020, tells the story of the iconic triple podium finish at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans.
So, most of the real Ford GT40 cars in circulation are now in museums or in the collections of billionaires and car connoisseurs. They are extremely expensive and difficult to find. However, for a franchise like Fast and Furious, with roots in car racing, featuring a Ford GT40 is a must due to the car’s epic history and legendary status.
Since the car wasn’t available for filming Fast Five, the movie which saved the franchise, the crew created a fake lookalike for the two scenes in which it appears, one of which includes a stunt in the opening scene. Despite being fake, the gorgeous blue and white model resembles the car closely enough for laymen to tell the difference.
The Ford GT40 Sequence Is Still One Of Fast Five’s Best
It Ushers In A New Era For The Franchise
Fast Five starts with a heist where a crew intends to steal cars from a cargo train. Mia and Brian join them after crashing a prison-transfer bus carrying Dom, but they realize that the train has DEA agents who want to seize the cars. Realizing the crew’s leader, Zizi, only wants the Ford GT40, Dom has Mia drive it away.
The ensuing scuffle leads to a stunt featuring Dom and Brian, but the highlight is the theft of the Ford GT40, which is pulled out of the train with cables onto a trailer truck, which then lowers Mia onto the ground, who drives it away. In a later scene, Dom is seen dismantling the car to find a hidden chip.
The Ford GT40 stunt establishes that cars will do more than just race from now.
While daring robberies have been shown in the movies since the first one, stealing a car from a running train was still the biggest stunt in the franchise until the crew dragged a bank vault through the streets of Rio later in the same movie. The Ford GT40 stunt establishes that cars will do more than just race from now.
