MORE FAST & FURIOUS @ INSIDELINE.COM: www.edmunds.com What Clint Eastwood did for the 1972 Gran Torino in Gran Torino, Fast & Furious will try to undo. Because in this movie, the very nastiest bad guy — you know, the chief henchman who does the dirtiest deeds and dies just before the big boss bad guy gets his — drives a ’72 Gran Torino Sportsroof. The inspiration for the Gran Torino in Fast & Furious comes from a similar Torino built for Dan Widmann at Steve Strope’s Pure Vision Design — the same shop from which emerged the Hammer Road Runner that’s also featured in the film. Strope brought Widmann’s Torino to a casting session and a star — well, a co-star — was born. The one significant visual change between Widmann’s Torino and the replicas built for the film is that Widmann’s car is blue, and the bad guy Torinos were painted green. It seems that blue was already assigned as super-dreamy Paul Walker’s color in Fast & Furious, so the bad attitude character “Fenix Rise” (played by Laz Alonzo) would have to wear green. Little matter, however, as the Gran Torino looks dang good in green. To portray Fenix’s FoMoCo, the picture car department acquired six ’72 Torino Sportsroof models and one ’73. As with the Charger, some of the stunt cars were fit with Chevy crate V8s and automatic transmissions, but at least one of the cars was originally equipped with a 429 and four-speed manual transmission. Five of the cars were either destroyed during production or ripped apart for …
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