The Fast and Furious movies feature a great many of the finest cars currently available. Some of the vehicles are so limited, extreme measures were needed to get them into the action movies. Some automobiles of 2 Fast 2 Furious needed to be borrow from the Austrian Rally Team to make production time.
As noted by Craig Lieberman, a consultant and car enthusiast who work on the first two Fast and Furious movies, some EVOs were required in 2002, at a time when the particular model wasn’t on sale. To circumvent the problem, Mitsubishi took some Lancer Evolutions destined for Austria, and brought them to the set of 2 Fast 2 Furious.
One problem, though: the EVO VII, which these were, wasn’t going to be available in the US. So filmmakers made them look like EVO VIIIs, whose release was imminent. This involved giving the taillights a temporary makeover. As Lieberman notes, this has caused some confusion over the years among fans who believe the cars are EVO VIIIs, when really it’s just some good old fashioned movie magic.
The cars were sent back to Mitsubishi once the feature had wrapped, and not seen again by the crew. This was because the studio only had temporary permission for them to be in the US, and once that period was over, they had to be relinquished.
Fast and Furious cars have only gotten rarer and more extravagant as the franchise has gone on. Possibly the most famous of these is the Lykan HyperSport seen in Furious 7’s Abu Dhabi tower stunt. Only seven exist in the world, making it an extremely limited item for high-end collections.
Perfect for Dom Toretto to run out of a window. We wonder what’ll appear in Fast and Furious 10.