Another CarDomain member whose ride was cast in The Fast and The Furious 4 took part in filming over the weekend and, at great personal risk, snapped these awesome stealth pics. They were filming a nightclub scene, and these were some of the rides lined up in the parking lot. Our contact also managed to shoot a couple of brief cell-phone videos showing some serious donut-spinning—I wonder if that’ll make it into the movie. Thanks, man!

A new trailer for Speed Racer surfaced yesterday, involving a bunch more of the colorful CGI silliness that the movie is quickly becoming known for. There’s a whole lot of barrel-rolling and even a cool sequence featuring the Mach 5′s self-regenerating tires. Woo! Check it out the hi-res version at Yahoo.

Today I’m kicking off a weekly blog column on cars in film. And I’m gonna start with one of my dream cars–the 1967 Plymouth GTX convertible. Clearly, not all of the cars below are "real" GTXs–the orange car in Joe Dirt definitely has the wrong hood paint, and both the Joe Dirt car and blue Tommy Boy car have a bench seat, which probably indicates that they are Belvedere IIs. In fact, my buddy Scott thinks that owing to the David Spade connection, the Joe Dirt car may be one used previously in Tommy Boy, just painted differently. Of course, the blue car in Tommy Boy came to a very sad end–but they probably had several cars for the shoot. My favorite of the three is definitely the black vert in Lost Highway–David Lynch is a real Mopar dude. I definitely need to see that movie again. I have a few more Tommy Boy pics after the jump.

So, let me know what cars you would like to see featured in future posts. I’m gonna try to stick to one year/make/model used in two or more movies or tv shows.

Continue reading "1967 Plymouth GTX Convertibles in Film" »

Darkblade06 over at VWVortex staked out the FF4 set on Friday, and has posted a bunch of photos from the 9th day of filming. Most of them are pretty blurry (it was a night scene), but they do give you an idea of what cars are going to look like in the film. There’s an STI that’ll presumably be the one Paul Walker’s character will drive, though it’s got a different color scheme than the one Rob blogged last month. Dominic Toretto will be driving a Chevelle this time around, though a Charger will also be getting some screen time (the script has Dom’s original ride being "rebuilt" after the first film’s climactic barrel roll—yeah right!). Go below the jump to see more shots, and check out the backstory at VWVortex.

To be perfectly honest, I gave up on going to the Melbourne International Motor Show a few years ago. It had become boring and was filled with cars that you could see at most dealerships. However, that has all changed this year and there are three very good reasons why I will be going. Ray Bauman will be showing off his Monster Bike. The Bolwell Nagari is making a comeback, and David Walter’s E-Vade is making its debut! Walter, an engineer with the Australian Navy, developed the E-Vade with his wife’s encouragement. According to Just Cars Magazine, he built the car for himself “and if we end up making and selling more of them, then that’s something extra.” Looking over the E-Vade’s specs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Walter got a few orders. It has been designed as a car that’ll be at home on both the road and the race track. It features a mild-steel frame chassis and a fiberglass body and, powered by a twin-turbocharged Nissan V6, the E-Vade pumps out a quite respectable 500kw (670 hp!) in the track-tuned version. There’s also a more sedate 300kw (400hp) version available for cars used primarily for road driving. The feature I like the most is the built-in hydraulic jacking system, which gives the car enough clearance for quick tyre changes.

I watched the movie Brick last night. It was ok. My favorite part of the film was the black ’71 Mustang driven by Tug, one of the villains. Maybe it was a budgetary issue, but the car didn’t get nearly enough screen time for my tastes. I kept waiting for a really big scene with the Mustang, but it didn’t happen, and I was bummed. I figure if you introduce a gun, it better go off. And if you introduce a really hot car, you better do something cool with it. I like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino movies cause they tend to give the cars a lot of screen time and involve them in pivotal scenes (and I especially like Lynch cause he tends to put tons of Mopars in his films). After all, for gearheads, the cars are the stars.

Over the weekend, Rich King Casting hosted a special meet at Universal Studios for a few hundred of the respondents to its FF4 casting call—and pics of some of the insane rides in attendance are now up on LS1GTO.com!  At the event, each car was videotaped and cataloged, and owners will be contacted once their ride is needed for filming. Still, don’t despair if you missed the meet: Rich King is still accepting applications since they’ll need fresh cars throughout the filming, which is scheduled to continue through April.

Did YOU attend the meet-up? Is your ride going to be in the new movie? Let us know!!

Thanks to Michael for the tip, and to ForzaV12 for the pics. See them all after the jump!

Discussion of the recent casting call for The Fast and the Furious 4 has blown up since we sent out our newsletter yesterday, and now, even The Big Guy Himself is sounding off about what car should be featured in the new movie. God’s pick, it turns out, is His personal E30. Saith the Lord,

I will send my one and only car to this movie in hopes to save it, as I have sent my one and only Son to try and save you. An E30… because God’s Car is an E30 and there is no other like it.

We’re not about to argue, since a lightning strike on CarDomain Headquarters would clearly wreak havoc on our servers. Read the rest of the Holy Comment here, and if you live in LA, don’t forget to check out Rich King Casting to submit your own ride for consideration!

I know it’s long been considered cool in the movies to wreck a lot of vintage rides in the 20-30-year-old range. Hollywood studios do it because they can afford to: cars of this age tend to be at the rock-bottom of their collectors’ value, no one yet cares enough about them to complain about it, and big old cars look cool getting destroyed. Remember how the TV show Fear Factor went through hundreds of perfectly good third-gen Camaros for its "car stunts"? In another fifteen years, collectors are going to look back on that footage and cringe. Anyway, back to the current clip: whatever’s going on with this silly "step" fad, I hope it blows over in a hurry. Dance movies are lame enough to begin with, but I don’t want to see a whole lot more mint California sheetmetal (or glass, for that matter) get ruined for the sake of something this stupid.

Your car in a blockbuster film? Does this sound too good to be true? Well here’s the straight dope: Mac from Rich King Casting, the official casting agency for the cars of The Fast and the Furious 4, got in touch last night and said he’s interested in putting CarDomain members’ rides in the upcoming film! If you live in the LA area and you’ve got a sweet ride, get ahold of these guys right now for a chance to run your car in one of those amazing street-party, drag-race, or drifting scenes. You’d be surprised by the cars they’re looking for, too: while I’m sure they want a whole heap of tuners, their official casting call has requested American muscle, hot rods, and restored classics as well. We’d be so stoked to see one of you guys get your car into the film—so check out RKC’s new ride page, and the CarDomain Group they’ve set up to keep in touch with recruits. Don’t delay, filming starts next month, and next month is coming up fast!