You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and you can’t film a Fast & Furious film full of stunts without destroying a couple of hundred cars and the occasional submarine.
Don’t fret about your favorite hero cars like the Toyota Supra or other luxurious vehicles; they’re safe.
‘Fast & Furious 7’: Heroes and Clones
When you see a close-up in one of the Fast & Furious films, those are generally the hero vehicles. These cars usually survive the films unscathed. Their stunt backups, however, usually don’t. For example, the Toyota Supra had eight backups, according to Motorbiscuit
. What are these stunt car backups? Also called clones, these are a mirage. Used cars or junk cars that don’t fully work are gathered up and given a makeover to look like the hero cars. And they get absolutely destroyed. Sometimes literally.
The Picture Car Department usually gets in touch with local used car lots and junk car companies. At the end of a day of filming, they’d call and the companies would come and collect all the totaled cars and leave new ones for the team to destroy.
Why do they have to be destroyed? Legal reasons. People love collecting cars, especially cars used in films. But these cars are no longer safe to drive, even if someone wanted to try and repair them, so they must be destroyed for safety and legal protection.
However, not all of these vehicles get destroyed, the damaged Charger from the first films sold for over $85,000 and has since been restored, and many of the salvageable movie cars, and stunt cars have been sold and either sit in collectors' homes or museums.
For the Fast & Furious 7 film, 230 of these cars were destroyed. In the Colorado mountain highway pass stunt scene. (For a refresher, think of the bus hanging off the cliff) Over 40 cars were destroyed in this scene alone. You can only imagine how many were for the airdrop stunt.
When the series is done, there’s a good chance the total Fast & Furious vehicle destruction will be well over 2,000 vehicles.
Building beautiful frankenstein vehicles for ‘Fast & Furious 7’
Movie magic can not be underestimated. According to Craig Lieberman
, a technical advisor on several Fast & Furious films, the Picture Car department can be applauded for their hard work in rebuilding vehicles for filming purposes out of junk parts. The goal for the films and within the industry is for the cars to look real from 20 feet away. For at least one of the Dodge Challengers that still exists, it was built out of three different junkyards' salvaged vehicles and combined to restore one working Dodge Challenger to the world.
Other cars, however, are total mirages. The Yenko Camaro looks beautiful and you can thank Your One for covering a junk car with replica parts. The same with the Porsha 996 GT3 RS, a 2001 996 Carrera 2S in disguise. The Slapjack Supra? A non-turbo automatica Supra.
$527 million in damages for the first 7 ‘Fast & Furious’ Films
With the first seven films, if all the vehicles were truly themselves, the combined destruction would equal $527 million, according to Insure the Gap
. The British company decided to take fiction as fact and add all the damages to buildings, cars, property, and more for all seven films. If we’re letting our hearts break over movie magic destruction, the most expensive destroyed vehicle in the franchise would be a Lykan Hypersport, valued at about $3.5 million alone.
But as a reminder, the actual Lykan Hypersport wasn’t destroyed, so no one had to file that insurance claim.
MORE: We Bet You Don't Know These Juicy Details of the OG Fast & Furious
Saving on your car insurance isn’t movie magic
Speaking of car insurance and car accidents, no matter where you live in the USA, you need car insurance to protect yourself and others in case of an accident. You also need to protect your wallet in case your car gets destroyed, or in insurance terms, totaled.
There’s a lot that goes into car insurance and a lot of different companies and policies and types of coverage. It’s overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be. With Jerry
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