Opinion: Car Mistakes in ‘Fast and Furious’ Franchise

“The Fast and the Furious” is the most iconic car movie series in the world. But, this series has gradually turned from a movie with street cars to James Bond’s pimped-out rides. As a car geek, it’s impossible to ignore some of the mistakes that they have had. Mistakes from having no brakes on a tuner car to the most non-realistic situations a car geek would be in.

“The Fast and the Furious” (2001): Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) races in a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse, but it had everyone fooled. As the resident car geek Jessie examines Brian’s car, he points out that he has a cool air intake (which is true), NOS fogger kit (which also true), and a T4 turbo (lies). In the movie, the engine doesn’t have a turbo. This is because Brian’s car is a base model of the Eclipse and not the GSX model, which already has a turbo installed. 

Another mistake that this movie had was that during the first race, Brian’s computer starts to flash: WARNING: DANGER TO MANIFOLD. As he ignores this, the floor panels start to unbolt and fly out from under his car. This had nothing to do with the manifold, and there shouldn’t be a floor panel in that car as well. 

The final mistake that has been a mystery is when Jessie had to race Johnny Tran at the desert Race Wars. Right before the drag race started, the director had a camera angle right beside Jesse’s Volkswagen Jetta, but the strange thing is that if you looked closely, he had no brakes on his car. How would he stop or even get to the race without crashing? It’s a careless mistake but is yet so obvious. 

“2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003): This movie starts out with how Brian gets his new car, which is a Nissan Skyline GTR R34 from a used car dealership. The biggest question is how the car got there. During that time, the R34’s were not available to buy in America and were illegal in the U.S. and are super hard to ship from Japan. Someone either had to illegally ship it or ship it under the impression of having it for a show display, which is also very hard to get. 

Another mistake was in the first race where they had to jump a gap in the bridge. Before the race, everyone pitched in their wager for the race, which totaled out to be just under $10,000. Street racers driving their car off a bridge for $10,000; that wouldn’t be the ideal thing to do in any situation for racing.

Fast 4,5,6,7,8 (2009-18): The reason these movies are clumped together in one category, is that they all are similar or they have common story plots, which would be that Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew come together and solve a problem. Weather it would be taking down a drug lord or teaming up with the government to buy back their freedom from being criminals. All these movies at this point of the series, it’s no longer about street racing or having those tuner-looking cars anymore; it’s all about who can have the fastest car with the biggest guns on them. From impossible jumps off of bridges with explosions behind it, to driving under semi-trucks and jumping from car to car at 140mph, all these movies have ridiculous and non-realistic stunts in them and is in some way predictable.

“Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”: Some people would say that this movie is the black sheep of the series. It is made up of a whole different cast and it was out of place in the timeline. One mistake that was in the movie is that this movie made was the garage race in Japan. Although it looks typical and is a cool location for the race, it makes no sense to have a race in a tight space such as a parking garage. Basically whoever can pull first from the start of the race, wins. Unless that person crashes or spins out, the other person won’t have a chance to overtake them.

There is one scene that many people found interesting, and this isn’t a mistake in the film. In the scene where Sean Boswell (Lucas Black), learns how to drift on the docks, there are two fishermen judging his drifting skills. Of the two men, the one with sun glasses, is an actual formula drift racer in Japan; his name is Keiichi Tsuchiya. He is also known as the “drift king” in Japan for his smooth drifting and precision turns. Tsuchiya is actually the stunt double for Boswell in the film and the directer didn’t like that he was so good at what he does. He didn’t like it because he wanted the drifts to look terrible and amateur, which Tsuchiya had a hard time doing.

The one mistake that I find interesting is the scene where Han (Sung Kang) tells Boswell to punch it on the freeway and they speed pass a cop. Showing that he went 197 kph (122 mph), on their radar gun, the cops don’t even try to catch them. Han saying that “You can do better than 180kph, they can’t catch you, so they don’t even try.” Although that may be true, it didn’t fit the real life scenario. In the cities of Japan, they do have factory tuned police cars such as the Nissan Cedric and the Toyota Crown Royal. But on Japan’s expressways, they have a special force of cars that are meant for catching modified cars such as Hans. these special force cars include Nissan 350Z, Subaru STi and at least three generations of Skyline GTRs which are all making over 300HP without modifications and tunes. If they would have put these special force speed chasers in the movie, it would have made it a little more exciting for the car geeks.

One last thing that really grinds my gears is that in one of the garage races, Sean drifts his way up to the top of the garage winning his race. But as he burns his tires as a victory dance, only the rear tires are smoking. To any real car geek, that looks suspicious because all Mitsubishi Evo Viiii come in AWD or All Wheel Drive, which should have all four tires smoking. But Tsuchiya thought it would be better to have a RWD or Rear Wheel Drive for precision drifting.

With another movie of the series coming out, “F9”, us car geeks are curious to how many mistakes this movie will have. Having been three years cine the last movie release date, the trailer for “F9” came not too long ago. There are so many things to take in with the four-minute trailer. One thing that not only car geeks would notice, but everyone who watched all the movies, would notice that Han (Sung Kang) is in the movie. How can someone come back from the dead? Another thing that car geeks probably won’t like is the fact that he is driving the new 2020 Toyota Supra. Han is known for his wide-body Mazda Rx7 in ‘Tokyo Drift’, but in the trailer of ‘F9’, he is seen driving the new Supra which has gotten a lot mixed reviews from the public being that it basically has a BMW engine in it but it’s a Toyota car. Car geeks would have loved to see Han in his old car, which would make more sense and giving the car geeks an ease of anxiety. But who knows, maybe there is a valid reason behind him driving the new Supra.