I fast man thanks for tuning in I'm Craig Lieberman and I've been taking on
cars since 1980 I've owned more than 40 cars in my life some were heroes and
some more zeroes but never in my wildest dreams would I ever guess that three of
my cars would go on to star in a motion picture franchise my Supra my GTR and my
Maxima all had starring roles and Universals Fast & Furious movies. Over
the next three years I'd serve Universal as a technical adviser I help choose the
cars procure the parts oversee their build and support both production and
post-production. I've got some great stories to tell and that's why I created
this channel I hope you like the video. Let's talk about Hans RX-7 the fd3s
Mazda rx-7 as most people know has been a favorite platform of tuners for
decades it's high revving 13 B rotary engine was unlike its piston-powered
rivals in many ways in the late 1990s of course modified arc sevens were fan
favorites at car shows around the world we knew this when we made the first Fast
and Furious movie I told Universal very directly that if we were going to have
the very best of tuner cars for that film and rx-7 should be one of them and
we gave him one to Dominic Toretto for too fast too furious the franchise moved
in a different direction as we all know but I was able to take the leftover RX7s
from the first movie and reuse them in the second movie for the
character of Orange Julius but in Tokyo Drift the rx-7 would
finally get the recognition and deserved and become one of the most spectacular
cars we've ever had on set and when Universal decided to put Han Lue oh yes
on had a last name it was Lue. Why? why not? That's Hollywood - what can I tell you?
Anyway this rx-7 broke a lot of rules about making movie cars it's important
to remember this in almost all movies the cars that you see on screen do not
have crazy engines, full audio video and suede interiors they just don't need to
if the movie doesn't show the engine or the interior in the film it's just not
an important part of the story and so there's no reason to build cars with all
that equipment because of this most movie cars have the stock engines with
absolutely no modifications except what might be needed to perform stunts that
stunts that we've written into the script. So generally speaking when we're
talking about movie cars from any movie ever made there are very few
performance modifications on these cars beyond an intake and exhaust and in some
cases may be modified brakes or even upgraded suspension bits depending on
what kind of stunts we're gonna be doing with the car and that's just the way
it's been done for decades but what made Hans rx-7 is special as some of the cars
like the super from the first movie the GTR from the second movie and a handful
of others is that Hans rx-7 wasn't just cosmetically modified on the outside it
actually had engine mods it had a functional audio/video system and
interior upgrades and that is what separates Hans rx-7 from most of the
other cars in the entire franchise since Universal purchased this card directly
from Veilside Japan the modifications were actually already done by Veilside
so the hero one car was actually built by Bill side in Japan for car shows the
car was unnaturally unveiled at Tokyo Auto Salon I think the 2004 basically to
showcase the company's fortune wide body kit which they've already used on mark 4
supers and if you remember the Veilside fortune kit for the March 4 super it
made a big splash love it or hate it it was recognized around the world I
actually visited Veilside back in 2002 as a guest of the owner of mr. Yokum
Akko and RJ devera and I were there for several days at that time his facility
and Scoob of Japan was a giant showroom for performance parts and it was
sprinkled with some of the famous drag cars that mr. yoko biochemical had built
including an Evo 5 and r32 and r33 was another showroom there was more than 150
JDM classics there many of them were fortunate wide-bodied kid in supras of
course but the rest of the cars were classics they had 240 Z's they had
celica GT s they had old precedence and ran the gamut GTR superest and so forth
it was amazing but today his operations been scaled down a bit and the giant
showroom that he was using in scuba is now basically turned into a tuning
garage rather than a showroom it's more functional
but after Vale sides participation breathe new life into the company when
Tokyo Drift came out and they got all that pop of popularity things are
looking very bright but or rewind back to 2002 when our 2004
when with Tokyo Drift was gearing up for production
what changed to everything is that the production team members went to Tokyo
Auto Salon to get ideas for cars they should use in the movie and once picture
car coordinator Dennis McCarthy saw the Veilside rx-7 which was read at the time
he knew he had to have this car for Tokyo Drift Dennis and mr. Yokum Akko of
L side Japan struck a deal and the rest is history we got the car the America
the stunning red paint job was covered with a house of colors sunset earned
orange pearl to create Hans rx-7 Dennis McCarthy said it was a damn shame to
paint over the red paint bed as we all know Universal wants what they want and
they get what they want and they wanted this car to be bright orange and so it
was under the hood the rx-7 had pretty much every bolt on part available for
that car for that time period so not much was needed upgrades already
included the HKS to4 Z turbo kit and HKS intercooler apex power FC controller
custom intercooler pipe er done in by the Veilside people and a few other
tweaks there was no reason to get into the street porting or a bridge porting
concepts because these motors you know are expensive and it just wasn't worth
the time or the outcome because that's not how the cars are gonna be used these
cars didn't need to click off a fast quarter-mile time or do top speed runs
or anything like that they needed only really to do donuts or drift one corner
and they needed sound good brake well and handle corners predictably the
exhaust was Veilside titanium the brakes were 13-inch two-piece rotors and four
piston calipers from a company called rotary and apex n1 coil overs handled
ride height to get that measured out ride and handling wheels were of course
the 19-inch Veilside and row evil fives and were shot in 255 3019 Toyo tires in
front and two and 305 25 19 s in the back the interior mods had already been
done by the L side Japan for the hero one car and modifications include the L
side d1 seats and other interior trim bits included the Sparco steering wheel
Sparkle 4-point harnesses and a bevy of gauges to monitor the data because this
car was built as a show car it also had a bit of audio/video equipment as I
talked about had as 1718 Divi head-unit alpine speakers and
an 8 inch monitor in the left side of the dash which was all the rage back
dead 2 Alpine 12 inch type our subs were fitted in the back and the whole system
was powered by Alpine MRV 450 amps as I recall there was a single nitrous
express tank in the rear tank but I don't think they used it but of course
the Veilside fortune wide body kit is what makes the car the body kit actually
makes the car almost a foot wider in court and also requires a ton of
fabrication work in the wheel arches for Tokyo Drift a total of nine rx Evans
were built not including the hero 1 car we needed nine cars because of the stunt
sequences that were planned and in consideration of the fact that there
were a couple of scenes that would actually be filmed in Japan which meant
that we were gonna have to leave some cars back for that unit even though 90%
of the film were actually 90% of the film was actually filmed in California
Dennis McCarthy said in the video many years ago about this car that the car
was making six on an horsepower no way and I'll tell you why if you look into
dyno numbers of that period of t o4 z equipped arc sevens and even with more
recent tuning tricks and technology of today I've never seen when I've never
seen one make more than 425 horsepower you can look it up for yourself as proof
of this there was a dyno test of the actual hero one car done after filming
of Tokyo Drift and that car made 305 horsepower and 256 pound-feet of torque
that makes perfect sense given the fact that it had been abused on set and the
car was 13 years old or whatever it was at that point as further evidence of
this onset the rx-7 stunt cars had trouble doing burnouts or drifting
because of the heavy 19-inch wheels and the lack of torque but these of course
we were talking about stunt cars would had absolutely no engine mods in fact it
was such a problem that they had to shave down the treads on the rear tires
to get them to break traction especially considering the stunt cars again had no
engine modifications whatsoever therefore it's more likely that the hero
one car was making maybe 400 to 425 max in perfect shape assuming they were
using the proper fuel and boost settings and everything in tune but this only
applies to the hero 1 car again for the stunt cars it is a complete
different story stunts cars again had none of the power upgrades and stock
engines that made 255 horsepower one new were probably making about 200
horsepower 12 to 13 years later given the fact that they were 13 years old
again that's not a surprise nevertheless none of this takes away
from the cars appeal to fans I actually spoke to Sun King last week and he had
this to say about the arch 7 it was one of the most the kind of cars of the
franchise there are our handful of cars from the first movies that everybody
knows and everybody recognizes the cars from the later movies just don't stick
in people's minds absolutely a great couldn't set a bit of myself so what
happened in these cars I'll tell you since nearly all of these cars were
right-hand drive cars they were Japanese spec cars meaning that in America they
could not be sold here due to America's 25-year rule banning imports if you want
more information getting up to Google it in America basically if a company like
Mazda is already making and shipping left-hand drive are exceptions to the
United States private citizens are not allowed to bring right-hand drive
versions of the car until they are 25 years old there are no loopholes there
are no exceptions and there no workarounds Universal brought these cars
in on bonds as props the cars had to go back to Japan after the filming in order
to get those bonds released and no you can't do that yourself in any case after
the movie wrapped the surviving cars were sold to a place called New Era
imports in around 2006 I spoke to the owner of New Era a couple of weeks ago
and he told me that they were able to buy all of the undamaged Tokyo Drift
cars after the movie wrapped over the years they've been sold and then sold
and resold again in addition to that there were at least a dozen replicas of
this car floating around the world almost all of them in foreign countries
outside the United States the good news is is that if you want to build one of
your own it's still possible the body kits are still available although
they're pricey about 20,000 bucks and of course the painting and fitting the kit
will easily run you another ten thousand bucks the wheels if you can find them
will easily cost you six thousand bucks and if you're a hardcore fan replicating
the interior and the audio-video should run maybe
another ten thousand bucks you may not find the exact equipment but you can get
close enough rebuilding the engines because all rotary engines that are that
it will probably need a real rebuild anyway right and having the T 4004 Z
turbo the supporting bits will probably run you another ten grand so with the
price of a clean donor rx-7 running about twenty five thousand bucks you're
gonna end up spending around eighty thousand bucks to build an exact replica
although would it be slower than say a stock mustang GT of today's times but
it's still a legendary car but this car also isn't about speed it's about
showcasing Hans skills with building cars and since Sun King actually builds
cars in real life he's arguably the most hardcore enthusiast in the franchise
today in fact Hans rx-7 is one of my favorite top three cars in the entire
franchise I feel it's left an indelible mark on the history of iconic movie cars
and the con character will always be the symbol of what true car guys aspire to
be that's it for this time everybody thanks for watching