Sometimes a movie car steals the show. The all-wheel-drive, spike tired "Ice Charger" from Fate of the Furious is one of those cars. The moment Dominic Toretto roared onto the screen, side-exit exhaust belching flames, audiences' eyes were glued to the car. This fully custom Dodge Charger was exactly the vehicle our hero needed to beat the bad guys and escape with his crew.

But if you're like us, you may wonder what happened to that unforgettable movie car. Read on to find out the origins of the ice charger, who actually built it, and where you can see it for yourself.

The Origins Of Dominic Toretto's Charger

Here's Where The Ice Charger From Fate Of The Furious Is Now
Via Superfly Autos

Months after Dodge launched the iconic second-generation Charger, the bad guys in Steve McQueen's 1968 Bullitt used one to chase him across San Francisco. The 1968 Bullitt Charger captured the attention of America. Then in 1979 moonshine-smuggling Luke and Bo Duke drove their 1969  Dodge Charger "General Lee" in and out of trouble, all across Georgia. Critics proclaimed the Dukes of Hazzard TV show the most memorable use of a Charger, period. Then in 2001, unsuspecting audiences walked into The Fast and The Furious.

In this first film of the franchise, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) pulls back a barn door to reveal a black 1970 Charger R/T. It is a drag-racing beast, with fat tires and a BDS blower jutting through the hood. Dom adds that he built the car with his dad to make 900 horsepower, and since his dad's death he has been afraid to drive it. But at the end of the film, he uses the menacing car to dispatch the bad guys, and win a quarter-mile race to boot.

As the stakes rise during the world's biggest movie franchise, Dominic Toretto's superpower seems to be his Dodge Chargers. He customizes them for whatever job is on the horizon, uses them as an extension of his own body, smashes them up, and fixes them again. The sixth Fast and Furious features a priceless Dodge Daytona. Then in the seventh Fast and the Furious Dom builds a lifted offroad Charger--and parachutes out of a plane in it! The new Fast and Furious 9 trailer features not one, but three Dodge Chargers.

During the eighth film, Fate of the Furious, Toretto finds himself cut off from his crew and working alone. The master mechanic returns to what he knows and builds the most gnarly custom Charger ever seen on film. He must race against a nuclear submarine, across a frozen Icelandic fjord, carrying a huge electromagnetic pulse device. The ice charger proves just the tool for the job.

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Dennis McCarthy Build The Fast And Furious Cars

The F&F “Ice” Charger
via YouTube

California-based Dennis McCarthy is the owner of the Vehicle Effects custom car shop. He is also the Fast and Furious picture car coordinator, having been the driving force behind the franchise's vehicles since Tokyo Drift. With each new film in the Fast franchise, Universal Studios gives McCarthy a list of stunt-ready custom cars for the movie, and he builds them. Read about his career in the LA Times. His shop creates eight or more versions of most hero cars, each with a different purpose. McCarthy estimates that half the cars he builds are destroyed during filming.

The Ice Charger built for the Iceland chase scenes is one aggressive muscle car. It is held together with a fully tubular open frame. The composite second-generation Charger body is defined by one of the widest body kits available.  The fenders are riveted to the body, and a row of rivets line the windshield and all the window openings. The engine rumbles and shoots flames through a gaping side-exit exhaust. See the car on AutotopiaLA.

McCarthy must balance building engines with enough power to perform stunts yet enough reliability to operate in adverse environments around the world; he has settled upon a standard drivetrain for most Fast and Furious movie cars. The  Ice Chargers built for filming Fate of the Furious are powered by Vehicle Effects' standard 400+ horsepower built LS3 V8 mated to a Turbo 400 transmission. A sidewinder shifter perches atop the blocky transmission tunnel. A series of dashboard toggle switches operate visual effects and the drivetrain.

Though the Ice Charger shares its powerplant with other Fast and Furious cars, its drivetrain is entirely new. The Ice Charger boasts four-wheel-drive and three locking differentials. For the Iceland scenes, its traction was enhanced with over one-thousand spikes in each tire. For a hot rod stance, the Ice Charger features much larger rear wheels than front wheels. Locking the differentials on any surface with more traction than an icy fjord would completely destroy the drivetrain.

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The Ice Charger Is In A Museum

Dodge Charger with nonfunctional jet engine
Via: Facebook

Many of McCarthy's creations are destroyed while filming Fast and Furious movies. McCarthy cannibalizes most of the remaining vehicles, installing their drivetrains in the next installment's vehicles. But occasionally, a very unique vehicle survives.

The Celebrity Car Museum is located in Branson Missouri. The attraction boasts over one-hundred vehicles on display at all times. The museum is the current home of the Velvet Collection, curated by the Velvet family. Kathy Velvet hosts guests at the museum while her son, Scott, travels the country to acquire new vehicles. The museum is home to many unique cars from Toy Story, Jurassic Park, Inception, and RoboCop. But the Celebrity Car Museum's specialty is The Fast and The Furious franchise. The Velvet family advertises a Fast and Furious collection with over ten vehicles used in the movie. These have included the Fast and Furious 5 Charger, Roman's Fate of the Furious Bentley, Tej's Fate of the Furious Tank, But the pride of the collection is Dom's Ice Charger.

NEXT: Here's Where Paul Walker's Toyota Supra From The Fast And Furious Is Today