Working “Fast and Furious”


This story begins on a day back in 1987 when I moved to Okinawa, Japan and was introduced by some new friends to the world of illegal street racing.



I lived on an Air Force Base where the cars we were permitted to own were subject to strict motor vehicle regulations. The required motor vehicle inspections typically took a week or more. Most of the time, our Hondas, Nissans, Mazdas, and Toyotas were innocent looking enough and barely conformed to military regulations, but were the equivalent of your average Volkswagen Jetta, Nissan Maxima or 280Z.



One member of our “team” drove an average looking Toyota mini van with no numbers or custom parts of any kind. He was the most important person to us all…

Every Friday night around 7PM, we’d all meet up in the parking lot of the base Auto Hobby Shop or the Burger King and drive to the main gate with our daily drivers. Just across from the guards at the main gate was a little Japanese mini-mall parking lot. Once safely outside the gate, we’d park and unload the van full of custom wheels, suspension parts, safety equipment and performance upgrades…

… and tools!!!!

An entire workshop crammed into a van with all the spare parts we needed to convert 4 average vehicles into weekend race cars. (A process we’d reverse later in the evening, in full view of the Gate 1 guard post, before being allowed back on the base.) We’d begin our two hour long ritual, upgrading all our cars with all the things we’d need to go quarter mile racing along the Aja Sea Wall, Miagi Island, or the back streets of Naha.



The Aja Sea Wall was mile long stretch of road, one whole side of which was a 3 foot tall concrete wall which served to keep the sea water out during the day, and made a fantastic grand stand on Friday nights. The other side of the road was typically filled with the vehicles of tourists, scuba divers and the occasional picnickers. But around 9 PM the cars arrived with custom modifications, strange vinyl graphics, numbers, and purple, pink, orange, blue, red or yellow headlights.



Showtime… The street racers had arrived.

Custom cars with modifications that are only reaching the states some 20 years later. Outrageous body kits, aircraft type wings, performance upgrades worthy of Formula One race cars. Most of the parts we bought from friends of friends who’d left the island and their racing days behind. For some parts, the lucky few who could handle the weak dollar vs. the yen, traveled to Naha City to the HKS racing shops or to the high-end Japanese Custom Shops like RS Okinawa and Speed Shop Shinohar. These places were filled with everything you needed to win and look great doing it. All you had to do was put down every penny you earned, raced for or borrowed, and then some. For the glory of a winning Friday night, you did…

Some nights we watched, some nights we raced, some nights we won, some nights we crashed and some nights we made excuses for why we lost.



Almost every night we ran when the police arrived.

My memories of those nights are filled with images of incredible cars, unbelievable speeds, and hundreds of people running for cover like a Godzilla movie.

Flashing blue and red lights transcend any language barrier and even the Japanese Racers could be found calling out…

COPS COPS COPS!!!

The street racing was over and the race to keep your car was on. You weren’t in THIS race to win respect or a little bit of cash, you were racing to stay out of jail.

Well, I survived those days, I only lost one car in 2 years and I stayed out of jail for the most part.



And it wasn’t until 2001 when I again saw brightly colored, extravagantly decaled, Japanese custom cars scrambling like mice against the blue and red lights.

The Fast and the Furious had come to America.

It wasn’t long after the film was released that car museums, auto show promoters and private collectors started inquiring about the whereabouts of the original cars and the possibility of ordering replicas. The film cars hit the usual auto auctions and auction websites at outrageous prices. But the cars were new and the prices for the parts were high and the interest stayed low. I myself was still too preoccupied with the impressive Shelby GT 500, “Eleanor” from the film “Gone in 60 Seconds” to pay much attention to working on another custom Japanese “Pocket Rocket”. I’d done that many times in the past and the local custom shops did that for a living anyway.



The announcement of the sequel, “2 Fast, 2 Furious” changed all that and the phone calls and emails started pouring in again.



“Can you get me the feature cars from the new film? What will that cost? How about replicas of the new cars?”

I first looked into obtaining the picture cars used in the sequel, but most of the feature cars were customs built by well-known tuning shops who knew enough to hang on to their cars after filming was completed. Background cars turned up all over the place, but had little fan recognition. An auction turned up in Miami with some truly fantastic cars at great prices, but some miscalculations in timing lost us those cars. Still the interest was there to have display cars ready for the premiere of the second film.



“How fast can you make me the Orange Supra, the Red RX7 and what will it cost?… That much? How about the Green Eclipse?”

If we were going to produce all the requested cars in time for a June delivery, we were going to have to work…

“Fast and Furious”

The first donor car to meet our requirements was located on the Internet in Wisconsin. Quite amusing to me because background conversation can be heard in the film explaining that the Green Eclipse was “purchased on the Internet.” As luck would have it, I would be traveling out in that direction to drop off another movie car and I picked it up on the way back to the East Coast.

Our first Eclipse arrived at our new shop on a snowy day on Christmas weekend. This car was a “Gunmetal Purple” for want of a better description and in very good shape. Almost immediately the girls who visited the shop began bidding on ownership of this “cute little car.”



As this is the computer age, the first place to find all of the parts was on the Net as well. Searching the fan sites, manufacturer sites and the official film site turned up a list of just about every original part used on the car. Custom auto parts shops and racing shops were well aware of the film and most of them had film posters hanging on their walls and similar custom cars in their photo galleries.

We acquired all the parts to this car in less than a week! Shipments came in three times a day and the major shipping company deliverymen and my U.S. Postal Letter carrier knew each other by name at the end of the week. The custom shops rounded out the specialty part needs.



One of my favorite custom shops, Car Parts FX in Whitehouse, NJ, has an import specialist there by the name of Ryan, who is today, as involved in the street racing game as much as I was years ago. He is himself, a big fan of the film and had nearly all the manufacturers and part numbers for the required items in his head, and the phone numbers on speed dial.


Some of the fun reference material available came in the form of the Racing Champions and Revell Model company scale replicas of nearly every car that appeared in the film. Each supplier was presented with a scale model of the car with respect to interior parts, paint color and vinyl graphics. (Personally, I’ve never seen this much vinyl lettering on any ten cars.)



Decals were acquired from original manufacturers of parts, graphics shops, the Net and the rest were replicated directly from scans of the models. The coordination of all the sizes and locations of the decals was handled by Eddie, the graphics designer at the Auto Creations Custom Shop in the nearby town of Raritan. A single visit to their shop will explain why I chose them to consult with the authenticity of the replica. Usually parked outside their facility is one of the most impressive Mitsubishi Eclipses I’ve ever seen. A custom orange vehicle owned and built by John, the owner of the custom shop. Some nights, the car club they sponsor, “Intense Image” meets at his shop and the parking lot is full of very impressive custom imports. These guys really know their cars.



Monday morning.

After all the parts had arrived, the first step was to pull the panels that were going to be discarded from the donor vehicle. The hood was removed and shipped to the paint shop with the gas door, the only two parts of this car to be painted black for that “carbon fiber look”.

With the exception of the front bumper cover, this was accomplished in a few hours. The mounting of the front bumper cover remains a mystery to me to this day and to those import customizers that I’ve spoken to, as well. According to the automotive manual, one of the steps in removing the front bumper cover includes the prior removal of the headlight assemblies. Skipping further into the manual, you will find that removing the headlight assemblies requires the removal of the front bumper cover. I would have found this strange were it not for the later discovery that for the removal of the driver airbag assembly you were asked to see section 12 of the steering assembly. The directory of section 12 asks you to view page 12-23 for the removal of the steering wheel yet the section ends at page 12-18 and begins again at 13-1. Seems this car is full of unexplainable procedures.

Never the less, when it came time to remove bumper cover bolts that were blocked by the headlight assemblies and headlight assembly bolts that were obstructed by the bumper cover, I was not at a loss for ideas. I creatively found the longest blade screwdriver in my shop and one of the biggest hammers and sheared off all four mounting bolts. Fortunately, the new front bumper cover had no use for these bolts.

As a matter of fact, it had no use for the front bumper assembly at all!



With the nose successfully removed we test fit the new fibreglass rear bumper cover, which incidentally, had no use for the rear bumper assembly either. This part fit remarkably well for an after-market product and we permanently secured it to the car.



Tuesday…

The new side skirts fit quite well until we attempted to close the doors. These parts were going to have to be modified. A little cutting, glassing and filling and we were able to silence the annoying door chime by closing the doors once again.



Moving back to the nose we secured the front end with a little creativity, a few clamps and a lot of pop-rivets.



Wednesday…

The signature roof scoop, advertised as “being custom designed for the 95 –98 Mitsubishi Eclipse” quite frankly, wasn’t. But it was made out of fibreglass so that wasn’t going to be a problem either. We cut the part as much as we dared and pop-riveted the rest into the shape of the roof line with so many rivets that you’d probably be able to lift this car from the ground from the scoop. The scoop was then prepped for glassing and body filler.



Thursday…

All that remained was the filling of the unbelievable amount of holes left in the body by the factory wing… over a dozen. The designers at Mitsubishi must have planned to use this car as a ski-tow as I’ve never seen so many mounting screws on a wing before in my career.



The remaining donor cars were immediately ordered without factory wings.

We test fit the custom Konig wheels and low profile tires that were featured in the film that are finished in a satin gunmetal surface, so high-gloss, that they almost appear silver, but hide brake dust much better than traditional chrome rims..

Friday…

From there, the car was stripped and packed off to the paint shop for a coat of Lime Green paint so bright, you could see the car from space…



While the car was gone for a few days, we unpacked all the toys that were going to be added to the inside as well as some of the exterior parts that were going to be added. The large Modern Image “MI” logo was added to the hood as well as the simulated hood pins. “Simulated” only in the sense that they were going to be mounted only to the hood and not to the frame. (This was only supposed to “look” like a race car, being able to quickly access the battery for displays was still important here) The real hood pins were chopped and the visible parts were permanently mounted to the hood only. When the hood was closed, this would give the illusion that they were functional hood pins and cables.



One of my favorite “custom” accessories was the racing gas cap. When I researched the on-line Auctions of the original cars, I came across quite a few studio replicas that tour auto shows, studio events and the NOPI racing circuit and discrepancies started popping up all over the place. It was not surprising that the touring cars were built with minor differences. (The touring cars seem to change decals and wheels on a weekly basis depending on who was sponsoring the event or who promoted the show in the first place.)



What I did find interesting with the NOPI cars was that since they were going to be displayed at events that draw the most knowledgeable racers and custom car enthusiasts, they were actually constructed much better than the film cars themselves. Complex Roll cages were added. Simple wings were replaced with thousand dollar multi-level carbon fiber ones, front air dams were added made of aluminum and carbon fiber, and the factory gas door had been replaced with a very expensive custom billet aluminum racing gas cap assembly.



Of course that’s what they had in the film so it’s not so strange right?

Look again…



I went back to the DVD for a close inspection of the gas door and sure enough, production simply painted the factory gas door black and added a $29 gas cap decal to the painted surface. The simplicity of this concept remains my favorite design feature of the production car.

“That was an 80 thousand dollar vehicle officer!” is the line from the film.

With a 30 dollar decal for a gas cap?

And… according to the film script, only ten thousand dollars worth of performance upgrades? That must be one heck of an expensive sound system? Or maybe the FBI was up to some government spending practices at that time.

Still… the decal gives the illusion that the gas door had been replaced and a custom fuel cell was substituted for the stock gas tank. It works on film and it makes me smile just to see it on the cars.



Tuesday Morning…

We pick up the car from the paint shop and the crew asks us if we saw the other car on the side of the building when we drove up.



We took a few moments to sight-see and sure enough, we locate another 1997 custom Mitsubishi Eclipse with the Konig wheels, Blitz body kit and Lime Green paint. This is my first clue as to the popularity of this particular car.



We get it back to the shop and begin installing the custom parts. The R1 Racing carbon fiber wing installs easily and looks fantastic. The hood mounts back up and the look of the film car begins to appear. The factory wheels are removed for the last time and replaced with the Konigs. The rear drum brakes (only the Turbo models I’m lectured by the racers are equipped with 4 wheel discs) are covered with a remarkably simple product that fits between the drum and the custom wheel to give it the look of thousand dollar custom anodized vented racing brakes.



This car is full of fun little off-the-shelf accessories. The factory taillights were reinstalled (much to the dismay of the street racers who thought the film car should have featured the newer style custom clear taillights). As were the stock reverse lights, plate lights, large exhaust tip and a custom “Fast and the Furious Paul Walker” license plate featuring a film clip of the Eclipse… also found on eBay.



Tuesday Evening/Wednesday Morning…

With the car scheduled for a 10 AM morning visit to the graphics shop for the installation of the 7 foot blue “Screaming Eagle” graphics (which in this case were only 5 feet long, but more about that later) and pitch black limousine tinting on all the windows, there was no such thing as “quitting time” that Tuesday. That night’s work rolled right into Wednesday. Before we could load the car in the trailer for the trip to Auto Creations, the supporting decals were going to have to be added (to be used as reference points for the birds) and the interior door panels would have to be reinstalled to facilitate the operation of the side windows.

The sun came up as we began loading the car in the trailer. The custom wheels, had lowered the vehicle just enough to keep it from clearing the trailer door. I was shocked as this trailer has hauled the mammoth original Green Hornet Black Beauty, low profile Porsche race cars, unnaturally low concept cars, insanely long Batmobiles and countless long-nosed Knight Rider cars and none have ever come close to touching the ramp door. At this point I was thankful that I didn’t take the racers’ advice to lower the vehicle as they informed me the film car had been. We pulled the extra ramps from the other trailer and the car just cleared. I say “just” because my trailer door now sports a lime green stripe “autograph” where the nose of the Eclipse had once been.

With the loading complete and a quick stop for cappuccinos, we delivered the car to Eddie at Auto Creations. With one shot at adhering this massive decal, the job was left to a seasoned professional. Eddie’s resume hangs of the wall of the custom shop and features several dozen photos of custom imports, trucks and even Humvees sporting huge vinyl graphics that he’s personally installed over the years.

I watched… and I learned.



A few hours later the birds were skillfully installed and I grabbed a few hours sleep while they installed the limo tint. I returned that evening to pick up the car and came to find that a Lime Green Eclipse with blue and red custom graphics, custom wheels and limo tint will draw quite a crowd when parked in front of a custom shop on the side of a highway.

This car had fans!

Fans worthy of a Batmobile, KITT from Knight Rider or even a General Lee. Flashbulbs were snapping, people were posing and cars came to a stop on the highway as drivers strained to get a better look at the car. And this car didn’t even have headlights or an interior! Perhaps this movie had a greater impact on America than I had first realized?

Thursday…

With the car back at the shop, the attention increased. Throughout the day, faces could be seen in our windows of people wishing to get a glimpse of the Lime Green celebrity.



Back to work…



The factory seats were removed, as was the driver’s side airbag and steering wheel, and the headlights were reattached. Cables were added to the hood pins and the final exterior trim pieces were re-installed.

All that remained was the custom interior. Here is our “grocery list” of custom interior parts:

Two custom Tenzo R sport seats in black and grey
Two Sparco 3-Point racing harneses
D&D Sport Pedal Pads
An AutoMeter Racing Tach with Upshift light
An AutoMeter Turbo Boost Gauge, Air Fuel Ratio Gauge and Water Temp Gauge mounted in a custom “A” pillar assembly
An AI Billet Aluminum Shift Knob
An AI Billet Aluminum Cigarette lighter
An Isotta racing steering wheel, with Sparco billet adapter and twin NOS buttons
A NOS guarded racing switch
A chrome flame-etched passenger “A” pillar mounted halon fire extinguisher
A passenger side “simulated” floor pan with authentic green body bolts welded to the floor.



And NOS!!!

One of the most memorable scenes in the film to racers, is the moment where the driver of the Eclipse reaches back to open the valves on two 50-shot bottles of Nitrous Oxide “NOS”, an amount which, as quoted by the film itself…

“He got enough NOS in there to blow himself up… period”

is enough to put the vehicle in some very serious risk. If you seen the film, (and I assume you have, or will have shortly) then you can understand my desire NOT to use the large “scuba tank” like 50-shot bottles in a show car.

Fortunately, an audio company called SAS recently provided an alternative…

A new product hit the scene last Christmas called “Bass in a Bottle”. SAS, the makers of the Bazooka Tube car audio subwoofer, creatively came up with the idea of encasing their speaker system inside a plastic cylinder in the shape of a Nitrous Oxide Racing bottle made famous by the NOS company. SAS even went so far as to replicate the NOS company decals (with a little creative license).



Now we had a safe alternative to the dangerous, yet familiar, twin 50-shot bottles in the car. And unlike their film counterparts, they would sound great.

Thursday night saw the addition of the pedals, seat belts, the Bass tubes and the interior panels.



Friday “Last Day”…

With a photo shoot booked for Sunday morning this was going to be the last day to put the finishing touches on the car.

We installed the racing seats, the steering wheel, the “A” pillar gauges, fire extinguisher and the huge dash mounted tachometer.



We were done.

Well not exactly…

One of the last things I do before I sign off on a replicar is to stand back and stare at it for a few moments to see if the look of the car “feels” right. The “feeling” is a bit hard to explain but I’ve seen the visual expression of this many times at auto shows on the faces and lips of visitors who get to sit behind the wheel of a famous movie car.

Almost every visitor to sit behind the wheel of the General Lee, says “Yeee Haaa!!! under his breath followed by an impression of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.” Would-be drivers of the KITT car from Knight Rider invariably make the “whoo whoo” scanner noise and Batmobile guests almost always hum the Batman theme song or look up at me and say “It’s the car, chicks dig the car!”.

So an authentic replica has to give you that “feel” that you’ve somehow magically stepped inside the movie for a moment and you expect the characters to walk up to you at any second quoting memorable lines from the movie. When you have this bizarre experience in your head, your job is done.

It wasn’t too hard to see why this car had fallen short…



One of the necessary items for this car was the pair of screaming blue eagle decals running almost the entire length of the vehicle. The decals were purchased on-line and were proported to be the “exact” decals used on the film Eclipse. Well, they fell a little short, 2 feet short to be exact. They were the correct designs, but the scale was a bit smaller than required for the job. For the two days that they were on the car, I kept trying to convince myself that they were “close enough”, but I just couldn’t do it. At the final hour, I put a call into two graphics shops to see if they could match the vinyl purchased from the Internet. Auto Creations came through again with 8 feet of vinyl in a near perfect match.

As we didn’t have the computer EPS file for the graphics (we do now) this was going to have to be a free hand cut. I used some paper that we usually use to “tape up” a car prior to painting, as a sketch pad and taped it to the side of the car. Using the quarter panel section of the car as a guide, I re-drew the front half of the bird to a more authentic scale. Just a little short of where the original had been to keep the Eagle from becoming an Ostrich, and transferred the sketch to the vinyl and onto the car.



Now I was able to step back and hear Dominic Toretto in my head…

“You are in my good graces, but you don’t get to keep your car.”



The voice in my head told me that it was done, (This is one of the few careers I know where the “voices in your head” are not only permissible, but occasionally necessary.) But also reminded me that no matter how much I liked it, this was no longer MY car and it was time to take it to the car wash and get it ready for transport to the West Coast.

But there was still time to take a few great photos.

With the weather unusually cold in Central Jersey, we hit a streak of luck with a single day of clear skies and about a ten-degree increase in the temperature. Quite a warm 40-degree day so it seemed.

Try telling that to a model in a pair of jeans with holes in them and a halter-top.



With a fur coat just off camera, Lisa performed as a true professional and for a short time acted as if she were on the beach in the Caribbean.



After the photo shoot, I took the car to a nearby gas station to fill it with enough fuel to meet the transport company’s needs. This was my final lesson in learning just how popular this car was. Before the gas tank was even halfway filled, local import cars raced into the gas station and again the cameras clicked and jaws dropped. The neighborhood kids were now well aware of the vehicles being built in their small town.



From that day on, as has been the case in every location we’ve opened, I’ve not worked a day without visitors.

As this story is being written, the car has arrived in California and the next two Eclipse donor cars, one red, one white are on their way up from a Florida car dealership. I wonder what the local racers will think when they start seeing double?