When we talk about the Fast & Furious franchise, we speak about Dom and Brian, who started it all, played by Vin Diesel, and the late Paul Walker, whose death in a fiery car crash added to his posthumous appeal, because that’s the kind of world we live in.
We also talk about The Rock, as in Dwayne Johnson, and Jason Statham. We talk about all those gorgeous, gorgeous cars, many of them ending up in fiery flames, even if the cars that were destroyed in reality were mere fakes, shells of the actual stuff.
Finally, we talk about JDM – the Japanese Domestic Market, something that is making Americans happily import 25-year-old cars from Japan, mostly because they are advanced and also because they can be built upon into dream machines.
What we don’t talk about is Justin Lin, what drives him, and the cars he drives. So here’s what we could dig up about the man who changed F&F into a multi-million-dollar franchise, and the cars he truly fancies.
Meet Justin Lin, F&F’s Visionary Director
The Fast & Furious franchise did not start with Justin Lin, a Taiwanese-born American film director. The first movie he directed was The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) and he continued with the movies all the way till Fast & Furious 6 (2013), after which he gave up the franchise, believing he had given the movies his all. In between, he did Star Trek Beyond (2016) and then suddenly had a cool idea for F&F, so he’s back, for F9, due to be released in 2021.
For all the car-movies and let’s face it, the spaceship ones, Justin Lin is not a car guy. He was born in America to parents who were illegal immigrants at the time, and while he did grow up in Southern California in the ‘90s, money was tight. He got introduced to cars and racing back in 1988 as a grad student in film school at UCLA, where students shot footage of tuned cars racing in the desert. The import cars vying with American muscle was tied to Asian-American pride, and when Fast & Furious broke out in 2001, Lin knew this was just the beginning.
From Tin Foil Toy Cars To A G35
According to an interview of Justin Lin with Wired, his childhood was one where his father would work 364 days a week, enough to put food on the table but not enough for luxuries like cars, or even toy cars. Hot Wheels were a big thing back then, but Lin’s parents could not afford to buy him one, so one day, he stole one.
He was caught and the incident was reported to his parents. Needless to say, that was Lin’s first and last encounter with “breaking the law” and from then on, he stuck to make tinfoil cars that resembled Hot Wheels and playing with them.
He built a ramp out of scrap wood to race his cars, complete with a Sharpie-drawn flag, and his neighbor’s kids, the one who had all the Hot Wheels they wanted, offered to trade him three cars for it. Lin says his creativity was born from that ramp because it made him realize that he could make things that people would pay for.
In 2009, according to an interview in Super Street Online, Lin admitted that earlier, he had finally bought an Infiniti G35, a dream car for him and a future classic. And if he had to build a car, it would be an R34 GT-R, mostly because Paul Walker had one in white. Growing up, his family had a Pontiac Grand Prix which Lin called “bullshit” because it was recalled “37 times”.
Driving Better & More Rapid Today
The number of cars that F&F single-handedly killed off is in the three figures, and with F9, must have crossed into four-figures with ease. Lin remembers that they were running out of cars to smash so for one scene, they retrieved a car that had undergone a 200-foot-drop, banged it back to shape, and used it again for a shot.
Apparently, the more cars they kill, the more money the movie makes. In 2016, the kid who could not afford Hot Wheels and played with tin foil rip-offs owns an Aston Martin Rapide in all-black. And there was a child seat in the back for his then six-year-old, Oqwe. Things have come a long way for Lin and his son’s childhood is a far cry from what his childhood was.
And just to prove that Lin has not left his childhood behind, there’s a Hot Wheels movie in the works too, like an F&F for kids, with all the action and thrilling stuff, but none of the violence and the heists. For a man who is “not a car guy,” Lin is sure moving up in the car-movies world…
Sources: Wired, SuperStreet, DriveTribe, VanityFair