(loud banging)
(upbeat, thumping music)
- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, time out.
I know what you're thinking.
James is such a sick driver.
Well even though I could probably do a 180
under a semi-truck if I really tried,
I'm not the one driving that G70.
That would be this dude: legendary legend and super, super
practically brother personal friend of mine Tanner Foust.
- Yo, Tann, nice angle dude, way to hang it out.
That's how we talk to each other.
- Right at this moment, Tanner is squeezing a 15.3 foot
Genesis through a 22 foot gap, balancing the throttle,
brake, and the craziest part is he's gotta do this
on command the exact same way every time.
- Feels lucky when it works.
- It's one of the hardest jobs in the world,
and I'm about to tell you exactly how he does it.
We're gonna get you up to speed on drifting a Genesis
bumper to bumper through the wheelhouse of a semi-truck.
This is one of the coolest things we've ever done.
(upbeat, thumping music)
We're gonna explain step-by-step how to do this stunt,
but first, let me explain how we got here.
I love The Fast and The Furious.
When that first movie came out,
it was a landmark moment from the very first scene.
I saw it in the theaters the weekend it opened.
There I was, 15 years old, sitting between
Chase Malone and Ross Leekites.
All of the sudden three blacked-out imports with buzzing
exhausts blow off valves and big wigs shot into frame.
I had never seen that before.
The kind of cars that me and my friends liked,
the kind of cars from the magazines,
were in a movie now, what, oh no.
Guys, the lane is closing up ahead.
What's he gonna do, oh my god.
He just drove under a semi-truck.
He just drove under a semi-truck, did you see that?
We dreamt of owning those cars, but even more than that,
we dreamt of pulling off those stunts.
Which brings us to Genesis, present-day.
A while back, they hit us up and asked us if we had
any big ideas for the release of their new G70,
and we were like yeah, Up To Speed, easy.
And they were like uh guys, we said big ideas.
That show obviously costs a dollar to make.
And we were like oh, there's money.
Can we drive one of your cars under a semi-truck
like they did in The Fast and The Furious?
And they were like yes.
We were not expecting that.
And now we had to figure out how to
drive a car under a semi-truck.
(upbeat, jazzy music)
Luckily, Donut is homies with some of the
most talented people on the planet.
We knew exactly who to call: creative mastermind,
co-founder of Donut, director of everything,
Ben Conrad, boom, on board.
We're gonna do a video on Ben later in this series.
I work here, this is my desk, this is his desk.
Next guy we hired: Robert Nagle, the number one
car stunt coordinator in Hollywood, boom.
We'll do a video on him, too, but today, we are focusing on
one of the top ten coolest guys in the Western hemisphere.
Practically my brother, Tanner Foust.
He's won the X-Games three times.
He's a two-time Formula Drift champion.
The dude has a degree in molecular biology
from the University of Colorado.
He's the host of the second-best Top Gear ever,
but most importantly for this particular job,
the dude has driven in a bunch of movies.
Dukes of Hazzard, Bourne: Ultimatum, Bourne: Legacy,
Need for Speed, Iron Man 2, Hobbes and Shaw,
and a little underground film, it might ring a bell,
Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, you ever heard of it?
Needless to say, we were stoked when Tanner
agreed to be our driver for this series.
There are literally hundreds of people working
on a movie set, but when it comes down to it,
your driver is the only person in the car when
the proverbial crap goes down, pardon my French.
- You're the guy that can either make it a
successful morning or a complete waste of
everybody's time on set, so yeah, the nerves are hard.
I get nervous doing these stunts.
- [James] This guy is an artist,
and every artist needs a brush.
- [Interviewer] What about a sculptor?
- What, shut up.
You need a car that can get the job done as well.
Because Genesis is the one making this whole thing happen,
we're obviously gonna use the coolest
car in their lineup: the G70.
It's got a 3.3 liter twin turbo V6,
365 horsepower, rear-wheel drive.
Those are all things that we can use to do this stunt,
and Genesis was kind enough to give us three of them.
Modern cars like the G70 have a bunch of safety systems
that keep them from doing a 180 under a semi-truck.
Normally, on the highway, during everyday driving,
doing a 180 under a semi-truck is a bad thing.
That's a bad day, but today, it's exactly what we wanna do.
So, we had to turn all that safety stuff off.
ABS, gone, traction control, turned it off.
Stability control, out the window.
Wheel speed sensors, bye Felicia, air bags, negatory.
- The car doesn't know exactly what's happening,
so it can't activate the brakes to try to save itself.
- Now that we have all the safety features turned off,
I have to say this: do not try this at home.
But if you do, here's how you do it, step by step, exactly.
- So first of all, is it this one?
What's happening on this particular gag right.
Coming up the Hill Street or 4th Street
Bridge onto, is this Hill Street?
- Put the car in reverse and place your right foot
on the gas pedal and press down hard until you
get up to about 35 miles an hour.
That's why we got rid of the wheel speed sensors.
At this point, it might be a good idea to
start looking in your rear-view mirrors.
- I'm just looking in the mirror for
whatever the back bumper could hit.
Like in that case, we've put
red and white tape on those legs.
- [James] In Tanner's case, he's using his mirror
to look for the legs of the trailer.
About a car length and a half away from the trailer,
go ahead and spin the wheel one-half turn
to the right to initiate your spin.
When you're 45 degrees into the turn, hit the brakes
to shift the car's weight onto the rear wheels.
This locks up the fronts, allowing them to skid,
which whips the nose of the car around.
- Ideally, it's completely sideways under
here with a couple inches of gap.
- Hopefully, you lined it up right,
and you're completely sideways as you pass under the truck.
As you start rotating out from underneath,
give your wheel a half rotation back to center.
When you're around the 45 degree mark again,
tap it back into drive, ease up on the brakes.
- Now, it's a matter of spotting the street.
- You do not want to over-rotate on this particular street,
because there's a pretty gnarly drop-off right here.
- Going left there is bad.
- When you're just about lined up,
completely release the brakes and gun it.
- And then we'll do that like 30 times or so.
Hopefully less, I've let them know that it
doesn't actually get any easier with repetition.
So generally what happens is they do it
until the car gets wrecked, just saying.
- So now that we know how to do this stunt,
all we got left to do is do it.
- I think we're gonna, you know,
maximum we're gonna get three takes on this,
so I wanna get as many cameras inside as we can.
(camera shutter clicking)
(soft car engine humming)
- I have a couple little cues on the road of
when it should happen, but my visual is kinda hard
to see because it's, you know, the underside of a truck.
It's sorta dirty, but anyway, fingers crossed.
- Alright, we're locked up all around, here we go.
(mechanical grinding)
- [Cameraman] Ready, and three, two, one, action, action.
(soft car engine humming)
(muffled tire screeching)
- [Director] And cut.
- We've been working on this thing for literally months,
but it was all worth it because
it looks so sick, you guys.
If you guys didn't watch it,
we wouldn't get to make any of it.
This is really a dream come true.
Thank you so much, hit the like button,
hit the subscribe button.
We're doing at least two more of
these videos in this series.
Thank you so much to Genesis for helping make that happen.
Follow Donut Media on Instagram at Donut Media, follow me at
James Pumphrey, follow Genesis at Genesis underscore USA.
There's gonna be more of this stuff on there, too.
I love you.