Here Are the Secrets to the Insane Car Scenes in Fate of the Furious
The latest installment in the $Four billion Prompt and the Furious franchise drops this weekend in theaters nationwide.
It’s called The Fate of the Furious, and it is the exploding cherry that completes the series’ testosterone sundae. By the time you get to the car pursue scene in the streets of Fresh York, which involves a giant wrecking ball (and an automaker’s greatest nightmare when it comes to autonomous driving), you will think it seems totally normal. A pursue across an ice field to outrace a nuclear submarine? Just another fine Tuesday.
More than three hundred cars were used in the filming of the eighth installment of the Swift and Furious franchise.
It’s also funny. A scene with a baby on a plane will forever win British bad boy Jason Statham a spot in your heart. The cars steal the demonstrate, tho’—as always. Even as the amount of car racing drops with each fresh film, the caliber of the whips—and the extreme stunts engaged in them—increase exponentially. We spoke to director F. Gary Gray about his beloved scenes, and how he made them happen. 
Credit Dennis McCarthy, the picture car coordinator, for the cars' sheer beauty and surprise in each film. He’s the grand wizard who led the team that conceived, purchased, built, and/or modified every car in the movie, from Vin Diesel’s mint-condition Impala to Michelle Rodriguez’s cherry-red Stingray Corvette. Not to mention the screaming orange Lamborghini Murcielago that somehow survived a high-speed pursue on a Russian ice field.
Vin Diesel plays Dom Toretto, hero of The Fate of the Furious. The film goes after Furious 7, which made more than $1 billion worldwide in box office revenue. It was the sixth-biggest global title in box-office history, according to Universal Pictures.
“I would desire about these crazy things, and [McCarthy] would just produce them with a smile,” Gray said. He means that McCarthy would make the decent purchases and modifications for each car he dreamed. “I’m sure I took a few years off his life, just in terms of stress.”
I spoke with McCarthy by phone on Thursday. Here are the juiciest tidbits I learned about how he made what will be the most epic car movie of the year—maybe ever.
Michelle Rodriguez starlets as Letty Ortiz in The Fate of the Furious. Her character drives several vehicles, including a Harley-Davidson motorcycle Rodriguez helped create.
The Corvette driving on two wheels was a last minute idea.
But it took a entire day to get the shot.
“It happened in the park in Fresh York: We thought we should have Letty get up on two wheels, which made me cringe because I know it’s not going to be excellent for that car,” McCarthy said. Sixties-era muscle cars aren’t exactly made to withstand forward movability on two wheels. (Fortunately, the team had made several replicas of the original car, and they were up to the task. Three main models were used in the shooting.)
“It was a yam-sized challenge; it was very raunchy on equipment,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we went out and did it.”
Tyrese Gibson’s Lamborghini indeed did make it out on the ice.
But it took three versions of the car to do so. And only two of them survived.
There was nothing computer-generated with the Lamborghini: It was real driving. It was a real six-speed manual, all-wheel-drive Lamborghini Murcielago. Grey had requested a car for Gibson that was absolutely the wrong car for the environment, and he got exactly that.
Witness for the line “Make it rain” in the movie. This is what happens next. 
“I felt so bad for that car,” McCarthy said. “It just went through manhandle after manhandle. It went through a snow bank. We shot out the tank. It went through two or three clutches, and it performed like a champ.
“The fact that we came back from Iceland with two running Lamborghinis is truly a credit to the vehicle. We put it through hell and back.”
Everything came together in a mere three months.
“We don’t have a lot of time when we do these films,” McCarthy said. “It‘s a full-throttle battle to finish the cars in time for shooting.”
McCarthy starts his work for each film meeting with the writer, Chris Morgan, and the segment's director to begin developing ideas. He embarks sourcing cars from auctions and wrecking lots, then starts modifying them. Ideas are in a perpetual state of flux.
“The script is always evolving and switching,” he said. “We did know the ice and the submarine that stayed consistent from the initial concept. That was a big help, knowing we would have that location, that sequence on ice. But everything else was pretty much up in the air.”
Michelle Rodriguez almost didn’t get her one thousand nine hundred sixty six Stingray Corvette.
“Michelle loved that Corvette—it fit her flawlessly,” McCarthy said. “When the photo went around of the one I dreamed to use, people thought it was excellent. But it’s such an expensive car to embark with, I knew it would truly deep-throat through the budget.”
Tyrese Gibson starlets as Roman in The Fate of the Furious. His special car was, among other things, a bright-orange Lamborghini Murcielago that has a six-speed transmission and all wheel drive.
Rough Corvettes from that era commence in the low $30,000 range, and a nice one can go for $50,000. But once McCarthy and his team found the base models they dreamed to use for the shots, he knew they had a winner. (He declined to say just how much money he spent on buying them.)
“You have to pick and choose how you spend money with these big-budget films, but this was totally worth it,” he said. “The car looked amazing on screen.”
Jason Statham demanded a stick shift.
McCarthy originally visualized Statham’s character, Shaw, as a connoisseur of fine, classic European vehicles. But the film budget didn’t permit for such a massive expense. So he chose to put Shaw in a Jaguar F-Type.
“Statham was very adamant that he would not drive a Jag that was an automatic,” McCarthy said. “It was actually less power than the automatic car, but it turned out superb—we basically just disabled all the safety features that the car comes with, and that made it basically stunt-ready. It was good to go!”
“Russia” was actually Iceland.
Film planners had originally planned to use Alaska for filming the snow scenes, but that fell through. And, well, things are, you know, tense with the Russians at the moment.
“It was unfortunate for me that the location required a five-week transport time, which cut into my build time,” McCarthy said. Parts were scarce, to say the least. “We don’t have the facility or the resources in Iceland to build the cars like we desired. And to demonstrate up and find what you need on-site was a risk we weren’t willing to take. So we had to fly over five or six cars.”
There are three main acts to the film, and numerous destinations include Cuba, Berlin, Fresh York, and Russia.
The stunts are real—indeed.
Okay, some CGI is used in the Swift and Furious films. Obviously. But almost everything on screen involves real cars with real drivers (not the actors) and no computer graphics.
For example, in Cuba, everything looks and feels authentic because it is; it just wouldn’t be right any other way. Even the part when Diesel’s car flies off the side of the road into the water is real.
“Did we indeed do it? Of course! It’s a Prompt and Furious movie,” McCarthy said. “Ninety-eight or ninety nine percent of the time, there is a dude behind the wheel. The fact that we do these things behind the wheel is very significant. We are actually truly doing stunts. We are indeed putting guys in cars. We are truly rolling cars in cannons. I never heard the stunt team say, ‘We can’t do that.’”
Rodriguez loves motorcycles. Truly. 
“Michele was very very involved with what she railed and drove in the film,” McCarthy said. “She had a lot to do with the actual look of that bike. And it’s just a cool bike, flawless for Cuba: It’s ready for filth, it’s ready for pavement, it’s ready for anything. She was railing it all around set totally, with zero hesitation.”  
No one truly knows how many cars were involved in the film shoot. But it was a lot.
To wit: It took eleven copies of the car Dom raced in the opening scene in Cuba to finish the sequence. It took seven replicas of the car he raced against. They weren’t all ruined, but they didn’t all bear, either.
Producers and directors need that many cars because they don’t shoot the movie sequentially. Sometimes they shoot a scene from the middle or the end and go back to work later on the opening sequence. They always need a supply of fresh, clean cars to use at any given time.
“I never truly know the exact response to how many cars we use in each film,” McCarthy said. “It’s hard to keep track. There were three hundred to four hundred cars that were purchased or built, vehicles that we had. Then in Cleveland we had zombie cars—cars we would rent and wreck and comeback them. We’d go through sixty to seventy of those a day.”
Kristofer Hivju (famous for his character in Game of Thrones) drove a Rhino XT in The Fate of the Furious.
The List
That said, here’s a list of the primary cars the main characters used—all strenuously modified, of course. 
Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto)
1961 Impala (“A very cool car—one of my favorites,” McCarthy said.)
Dodge Plymouth GTX
1968 Dodge Ice Charger (nine were used in the film)
Michelle Rodriguez (Letty Ortiz)
Dodge Challenger SRT Demon
1966 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray
2008 Local Motors Rally Fighter
Modern Mercedes AMG GT
Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce)
2008 Bentley Continental GT
Jason Statham (Deckard Shaw)
Dwayne Johnson (Luke Hobbs)
Modern Dodge Ram three thousand five hundred (five were used)
Scott Eastwood (Little Mr. Nobody)