Well, well, well—it turns out The Fast and the Furious lied to us. We know, it sounds crazy! After all, if we can’t trust blockbuster studios, then who can we trust?
Hopefully, the film’s technical advisor Craig Lieberman. Now that he’s no longer under the influence of Big Cinema, Lieberman’s going out of his way to give fans of the film franchise the inside scoop on how the movies were actually made by way of his personal YouTube channel. His latest video debunks the myth of Dominic Toretto’s (played by Vin Diesel) famous 1969 Dodge Charger. And get this, it turns out the car used in the film isn’t even a 1969 Charger, but a 1970 model with 1969 parts!
That’s only the tip of this iceberg, though. Another myth Lieberman debunks is that of the big supercharged V-8 engine that powers the old coupe. As Lieberman shares, the Charger only actually had such an engine under its hood in one scene: when Dom first shows Brian (played by Paul Walker) the car in his garage. Once filming of that scene finished, the film’s team took the big engine out of the car and stuck in a more plebeian powerplant with a faux supercharger.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Lieberman then shares the lies the stunt team had to spread. For instance, the Charger was unable to both pop a wheelie and do a burnout at the same time, so the stunt team fit hydraulic wheelie bars to the car and added computer-generated smoke effects to make it look like it was doing the impossible. Blasphemy!
To hear all the tea Lieberman spills, you’ll need to watch the video below. If anything, it serves as a good warmup for Fast 9, the upcoming ninth movie in the series.