MEAN MACHINE

Vehicle co-ordinator Dennis McCarthy on Dom’s constantly evolving Dodge Charger…

‘There’s nothing that we put as much effort into as Dom’s Dodge Charger. Obviously, it’s the most important car in the film. The designs always vary a little bit [from film to film]. If you’ve seen the trailer for Fast X, there is a shot of a car that looks very much like the Charger from the first movie doing donuts in a parking lot. We tried to recreate the original car, and when we go and see Dom’s act-two and act-three Charger, that one we tried to really make something new that we haven’t seen before.

‘Now, I will say this: I did reel it back quite a bit. If you go back, in Fast 9, we had the mid-engine Charger, which was very extreme, a very wide body. We stretched the wheel base on it. Go back to Fast 8, we have the ice Charger, which was the all-wheel driver with the huge fender flares – also very unique. On Fast 7, probably the most unique out of all of them was the off-road Charger, and one of my personal favourites.

‘So I felt like we were getting pretty crazy with our Charger designs. For Fast X, I just tried to bring it back a bit, with more of the feel of the original Charger, but modernised. When you see that car next to the opening Charger, it’s vastly different. The body is very close. A slightly longer wheel base, slightly flared fenders, but still trying to bring it back.

‘It’s always fun building those Chargers, as Vin’s always very appreciative with what level we take it to. I’m already stressing about: what am I going to do for the next movie? After all these movies, we’ve done so many various versions of that car. But we’ll come up with something.’ JORDAN FARLEY