Despite its temporary nature, the Tokyo Drift shop was equipped with hoists, welders and stores of parts. Behind and beneath those signs in back is a paint booth for quick resprays. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
At 39, Dennis McCarthy is a movie veteran whose resum includes Jarhead, Batman Begins and Herbie: Fully Loaded. But he ran his own shop in the San Fernando Valley before being recruited into show business. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
McCarthy bought crate engines from Bill Mitchell Hardcore Racing Products for the production's Monte Carlos. But the valve covers lie; the big-block V8 under them displaces "only" 572 cubic inches. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
Tokyo Drift's story had the lead character installing a Nissan Skyline engine into a '67 Mustang overnight. It actually took McCarthy's shop team a couple of weeks to work out the transplant. But it worked. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
While most of the action in Tokyo Drift involves, no surprise, drifting in Tokyo, the production took care to include domestic cars in the action. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
The featured Veilside "Fortune" wide-body RX-7 started as the Grand Prix winner at the 2005 Tokyo Auto Salon. It was repainted and Veilside produced duplicates for the movie and supplied parts to make more. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
McCarthy brought out these cars and more for Inside Line to test. We'll share the results later this month. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
McCarthy's shop built this cut-down Suburban to which engine-less "bucks" could be bolted. With a 572-cubic-inch V8 under the hood, the Sub would drift while cameras captured close-ups of the actors "driving" the buck. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
Some '67 Mustang fastbacks are in museums, while others were wrecked filming Tokyo Drift. Despite superficial damage, this Mustang was mechanically excellent, and bashed along with the 350Z all afternoon. (Photo courtesy of Randy Lorentzen/Planet R)
Canon P-Touch labelers made keeping track of the cars simple. This, for instance, is 350Z #17 with a limited-slip differential. No, we don't know why it's #17 when there were only 11 350Zs for the production. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
Did you know that Fords and Nissans use the same five-bolt lug pattern? So the Tokyo Drift shop could use the same wheels on both old Mustangs and Silvias? The things you learn. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
abs from Japan were imported to help create the illusion that Downtown Los Angeles was actually Tokyo's Ginza district. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
What are very ordinary commercial vehicles in Japan are exotic micro trucks in California. But they help L.A.'s Wilshire Boulevard double for Tokyo. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
Cars were expendable commodities on the Tokyo Drift set. Pieces were occasionally ripped off one Evo IX to keep another filming. But all the Evos were converted to rear-wheel drive to facilitate drifting antics. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
In the tradition of the first two "Fast and Furious" films, no aftermarket wing was dismissed as too large. The yellow/orange sedan is a Toyota Chaser basically a four-door version of the early '90s Supra Turbo. (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
Who knew the garbage trucks in Japan were so eensy teensy? (Photo by Scott Jacobs)
For most movies, cars are just another expendable item in the budget; right there with the film in the cameras and 24-hour on-call foot massages for the actors. But for this summer's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift as it was for 2001's original The Fast and the Furious and the 2003 sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious cars are at the heart of the story.
Even Universal Studios must now admit that the real stars of any movie carrying the "Fast and Furious" brand name must be the cars. And the man in charge of getting and preparing all the cars for cinematic glory in Tokyo Drift was Picture Car Coordinator Dennis McCarthy.
Cars right and left
"We bought cars all over the place," McCarthy told us. "We have over 200 cars for this movie, so they came from different places."
Before they could get anything they had to know what they wanted, and that started with an audition of sorts at Southern California's Irwindale Speedway last June. McCarthy attracted about 40 cars to the oval track, including some from manufacturers like Volkswagen, others from race teams and aftermarket companies, a good chunk from shops that specialize in supplying vehicles for film production, and a few from individuals with homebuilt machines.
McCarthy took director Justin Lin from car to car, grabbing inspiration from some and rejecting ideas from others. There were no final decisions that day, but the outlines of the cars to be featured were coming into focus.
"Justin is very hands-on," McCarthy related. "We usually gave him four or five to choose for each character. The Nissan 350Z for D.K. [the 'Drift King' who is the film's heavy and is played by Brian Tee] was one of the first cars we decided on. At Irwindale there was a 350Z with a Veilside conversion kit on it. That was one he liked, so he got some photographs of the car, sent them to the art department. The art department starts doing different renderings, different colors and different graphics on it."
Once a design was agreed upon, McCarthy would gather the cars and take them to the 35,000-square-foot warehouse leased for the production in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale for fabrication. But McCarthy couldn't simply go down to the Nissan dealer and buy a bunch of Z-cars. After all, as this movie's name implies, much of the action takes place in Tokyo, where cars have right-hand drive.
Tokyo, California
"Originally it was going to be about 90-percent filmed in Japan and 10-percent here," McCarthy recalls. "Then it was going to be half and half, and then the ratio just kept changing because things weren't available there." Ultimately, most of the film, and virtually all the action, was filmed with Southern California doubling for Tokyo. And in order for California to pass for Japan, the production needed a lot of Japanese-market vehicles.
"We had to go to Japan, buy the cars and bring them back," McCarthy explains. "I think we ended up with 11 350Zs. We bought three of them locally for crash scenes for when it goes off a cliff and we converted them, but not for the hero cars. Nissan gave us two 350Z convertibles for free which we used as background cars and we did get some very good deals from Nissan Motorsports [Nismo] on differentials and quarter panels and miscellaneous stuff like suspension parts."
McCarthy scoured used car lots in Japan, returning with those 350Zs, and a flock of Mazda RX-7s and RX-8s, Toyota Chasers and Nissan Silvias. In addition, Mitsubishi contributed 10 Japanese-market Lancer Evolution IXs to the project and Volkswagen (which has a co-marketing partnership with Universal Studios) coughed up four right-hand drive Golf R32s and four Touran minivans. McCarthy also imported background vehicles from Japan for authenticity cabs, nondescript sedans, tiny vans and dinky little garbage trucks.
The almost all-Americans
Beyond those right-hand drivers, the story also needed all-American machinery for the opening of the movie (which takes place in California and California plays itself) and for the final race between "D.K." and the film's hero "Sean Boswell" (played by Lucas Black). For the opening street race that leads to Boswell's exile to live with his Navy-lifer father who is stationed in Japan, McCarthy's crew built a stock car-style 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo (actually nine Monte Carlos) and a Dodge Viper roadster (actually two one new and the other a salvage to be wrecked again). For the final showdown, they built six '67 Ford Mustang fastbacks; five with V8s under their hoods and, as part of the film's story, one powered by a Nissan RB26DETT turbocharged 2.6-liter straight six ripped out of a Nissan Skyline GT-R.
Multiple examples of each of the featured cars were needed to perform various stunts and keep both the first and second filming units working. For example, one of the Monte Carlos was built without an engine to rotate on a large rotisserie in order to simulate a roll. And a lot of cars were there just to be wrecked. But just as importantly, it costs somewhere around $60,000 or $70,000 an hour to sustain a film crew whether they're exposing film or not. No producer wants his crew waiting around for a car to be fixed.
Building multiple examples of featured cars is standard practice in Hollywood. So is chopping cars up so cameras can move within and around them. And there's no mystery to bolting on body kits and aftermarket wheels or spraying paint. But many of the cars in Tokyo Drift were built, no surprise, to drift. And that was a whole new challenge.
The drifters' greatest hits
In order to drift effectively, for example, two of the 350Zs were treated to APS twin-turbo systems to boost their output to around 475 horsepower and fitted with Nismo limited-slip differentials. The Evos were powerful enough, but had to be converted to rear-wheel drive. The Mustangs were an even greater challenge.
"For all the stunt work initially I figured just some nice 302s you know, with headers," McCarthy recalls about building those Mustangs. "But the first night we went out and drove the cars and [stunt driver] Rhys Millen was like, 'No, no. Not even close.' So OK, the next night we put a 347 stroker motor in with like 350 or 370 hp. He still wasn't satisfied. So for the next night we put a 430-inch Windsor motor in with a 9-inch rear end and a spool. That one he was happy with. That one motor made closer to 500 hp so we built a duplicate of that."
Fix, wreck, fix again
Building all those cars was just the start of the challenge for McCarthy. Because during four months of filming, cars were constantly being wrecked, fixed and sent back out to be wrecked again. With a fleet of flatbeds and transporters, McCarthy would send out cars from his shop in the morning, only to have his guys go out and retrieve their carcasses that night, fix them and send them out again.
Whether the movie is good or not is beyond the control of Dennis McCarthy. But McCarthy spent his $7 million budget well and no matter what Tokyo Drift's merits may be, the producers can't say they didn't have enough cars around to get the job done.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift opens June 16 at every multiplex in the known universe.
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source:http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=110205#2
