Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is a 2006 action film directed by Justin Lin. It is the third installment in the Fast & Furious franchise.
We put the limelight on the Mitsubishi EVO IX. When it comes to ‘casting’ the cars for the movie, the producers decided that one of the ‘hero’ cars should be a Mitsubishi rally machine. You might be thinking to yourself, but standard this car is an all-wheel-drive EVO and it was featured as the star in a drifting movie… How?
Amazingly, instead of using ‘movie magic’ to make this car look like a drifting car, they had the car modified so that it can do the sliding around corners on its own!
Other cars that featured in this movie were: 1967 Ford Mustang, 2006 Mazda RX-8, 2006 Nissan 350Z, 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and a whole bunch more. A drifting movie featuring an all-wheel-drive EVO
This was the EVO from Tokyo Drift:
The image above is the exact car that was used in the movie. This is one sexy, mean, aggressive-looking car that means business!
From Mitsubishi stables, 10 units of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX cars arrived for this particular movie. This demon of a car was Sean Boswell’ car.
Sean was played by the very talented Lucas Black.
This EVO was an illuminating orange color that had stickers and vinyls all around the car.
Let’s take a look at some of the changes that needed to be made to the car in order for it to drift around the streets of Tokyo.
Changes made to the stock EVO for the Fast And Furious Movie:
Firstly, it was lowered over Eibach springs and fitted with APR’s wide-body kit. The over-sized fenders were filled with 19-by-8.5 inch Ray’s G-Games 99B wheels as well as 255/35R19 Toyo Proxes T1R tires.
RMR was called upon to prep the movie EVOs so that they would be able to drift. The first thing they had to do was convert the car to a rear-wheel drive. All they really had to do in order to achieve this was to disconnect the differentials and things that send power to the front wheels and then cap off the holes.
Some tuning had to be done on the engine which gave the car some extra horsepower. Let’s be honest, the stock standard of the EVO is pretty quick and powerful so some extra tuning made this car rocket even more.
Now it was time to change the look of the car. APR aero pieces were added which gave the car a more of a muscle look and feel to it. A carbon fiber front canard was added to help keep the nose of the EVO planted whilst a massive APR carbon fiber wing kept the car’s rear end firmly on the ground.
The carbon fiber mirrors were added just to tie the whole design of the car together and it made the car look finished and really cool!
A lot of people were surprised to see that Neon and LED lights were nowhere to be seen in this car. People thought that because it was being shot in Tokyo, they would see Neon lights and picture vinyls all over the car but to everyone’s surprise, they kept the car looking sharp and ready to race.
Changes made to the cockpit of the EVO IX:
If you look at all the cars in this movie, simple seems to be the theme of the cars. All the cars look awesome and after you watch the movie, you want to go out and buy yourself a car so that you can learn to drift. With that all being said, they tried to keep the cars as stock standard as possible to show the ability of the cars themselves.
The stock Recaro seats are kept in the EVO. The seat belts were upgraded to JDM-tight Takata 4-point harnesses. This was more of a safety precaution as well as made the inside of the car feel like a racing car and not a general car.
A Sparco quick-release steering wheel was placed in the car and an APR carbon fiber insert that was complete with gauges, replaced the factory stereo.
How did the car feel when it was driven in real life?
This car was designed to do one thing in the movie, drift. It looks like a machine that can drift anywhere in the world and can get through tight spaces.
An EVO is tougher to launch when it is rear-wheeled instead of all-wheel drive. This meant that driving this car without the help of modern image graphics and CGI, the car was slow at the start. Drifting on this car though was lots of fun and there may as well be windshield wipers on the door windows because once this car gets into a drift, it drives itself in circles!