Fast and Furious 4 Opening Scene Feature Car Project: Part 1

Some of you have heard the rumors already. Universal Studios had asked us to build them twin S2000 feature cars. The Honda S2000s will be used in a racing scene along with a few other feature cars for the opening sequence of Fast and The Furious 4. Currently the two cars are already completed and have started filming. It is a long and interesting story, some of which I can say now and some of which I cant. Here is part 1:

I was a consultant on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift for a short period of time. During that time at one point I was asked to design/build the majority of the cars for FF3 (they even asked me to have Top Secret build them a full built GT-R engine for the Mustang). I was given the car list and I started to plan some pretty serious cars. Shortly after the planning stage everything started falling apart and I left the project because their direction and my own did not mesh. I had big hopes to bring some of the hardcore Japanese functional design to the movie but ultimately the movie’s decisions were made for reasons other than purely the art form of building the best cars possible. The only tangible thing that materialized from my time with them was the article I wrote for Modified Magazine offering the world exclusive on the GT-R powered Mustang and an inside peak on the development of the movie. Continue reading…

As any of you who read this blog know, my gold S2000 was selected for a brief feature in the 4th movie as the center of a particular scene. Little did I know that the movie’s producer who owns the franchise was on set that day. He saw the car and from what I’m told, was blown away by it. A quick decision was almost made on the spot to remove the car from the scene and use it for the opening race sequence of the movie. However they were already set to do the scene and they completed the scene as intended.

Naturally once a car is featured in the movie, for continuity reasons they can’t use it again. However the visual impact of the gold S2000 still resonated with them. Shortly after, I was contacted about a last minute project idea… build them two new S2000s for the opening sequence of the movie.

This was a challenge on both my side and theirs for a number of reasons. First was the nearly non-existent budget they gave me to build the two cars. On their end it was a challenge because they had already built two FC3S RX-7s for the opening scene which would then be useless if they had me build them two replacement cars. Ultimately we agreed on a deal that had them not use the RX-7s that they had built and that would have me arrange 2 widebody S2000s for them.

So the project began. I had three weeks to build them two feature cars from scratch. I was fortunate enough to have Josh, a client of mine donate his car for one of the two vehicles (he’ll get his car back in a month or so). Short on time, I decided that I needed to buy the second one myself.

As a result of the unique circumstances and pressures of doing this last minute deal, the movie studio offered me two unique exceptions from the usual formula of building feature movie cars.

1. I was allowed Bulletproof Automotive logos on the cars whereas pretty much all other cars have no sponsor logos at all.

2. I was allowed full creative control of the car (or so they said at the time when I agreed to the deal).

So I was off on a mad rush to build two cars out of thin air with relatively no money and no time. I temporarily abandoned my office duties as the president of my company and was out of the office for nearly the full three weeks coordinating the build of these two cars. I wanted to show Fast and the Furious viewers something aggressive, unique and distinctively hardcore JDM. The cars in the past installments of the movie, from a JDM perspective, have let me down continually. As such, I felt immense pressure to bring something purely hardcore into the movie

Within 24 hours notice I had my photoshop master buddy Cedric craft up a concept for me. I was dead set on using the Porsche GT3 RS green. I wanted to accentuate the green with a set of matte black 19? TE37 rims with color coded green time attack stripes and black MS-Revolution graphics with a splash of gold foil. Of course parts wise I wanted to use our Bulletproof Remix hardtop, a standard off the shelf Tracy Sports widebody aero kit, Top Secret or J’s Type V carbon hood, JGTC NSX type carbon mirrors and Top Secret R34 rear diffuser. Oh yeah, and a green color matched roll cage visible through the rear hardtop window. Throw the usual details I like with unique paint accents on carbon parts, and agressive offset with stretched tire rims and I’d be content.

I’m in love with the color combo on the GT3 RS and nobody has ever done a green car quite like this that I’ve seen. I also love the challenge that the color combo poses because it doesn’t work on a car unless it is comparably as hardcore as the GT3 RS. I knew it would be controversial and challenging, and thats what I always go for when I build a crazy car project (I get no satisfaction when playing it safe and predictable). We all had fights about it in my company’s office because it was such an extreme color choice. But that was what I wanted to do and I fought for it, internally at our office and with the movie studio.

After the rendering was completed we at my office and at the studio all agreed this would be it.

Here is what I WANTED to build them (please excuse what was a couple hour rush color swap photoshop)

Every project needs inspiration, here was mine:

PS: Part 2 will be released on this project soon. Its great having such a large community of like-minded JDM enthusiasts (we’re getting some major visitor traffic on this blog). I’ll continue to give you the uncensored details that I think you’ll find interesting. If it’s a bit long winded then I apologize… but I’d rather give you too much than too little.