The Fast and Furious films are anything but serious - but they have done a lot for car culture

Auto Car

04-07-2025

No, The Fast and the Furious films are objectively not very good. But I doubt that even the greats can claim to have had anywhere near as much of an impact on their subject matter.
The Shawshank Redemption didn't result in wide-reaching prison reform and it has been largely forgotten that Star Wars was intended as an allegory for the Vietnam war.
But would Toyota have reprised the Supra were it not for the original Fast and Furious film propelling it into the limelight? And would the original Dodge Charger be commanding such outrageous premiums today were it not for antihero Dominic Toretto's boast of his having 'so much torque, the chassis twisted off the line'?
I'm quite unsure any of it would have happened were it not for these films' celebration of a certain car culture. The cars that feature in them – the first five films, at the very least – are protagonists in the same sense as the human characters, with distinct personalities and sub-stories.
If any scene encapsulates the franchise's reverence for its four-wheeled cast members, it first film's duel between the freshly rebuilt Toyota Supra and a stunning Ferrari F355 Spider.
It begins with friendly banter at a traffic light: hero Brian O'Connor, driving the Toyota, asks how much the Ferrari costs.
Its driver outs himself as an arse, replying 'more than you can afford, pal', in that condescending tone reserved only for the worst kind of new-money moron.
Toretto gives the order: 'Smoke him.' A dodgem ride of a duel ensues, the nuclear-orange Supra scything through traffic while angsty rock music blares in the background. It will raise a hair on even the most car-agnostic viewer, and the layman with no car knowledge can still revel in the underdog's decisive victory.
It all served to legitimise an arm of car culture that was mocked and belittled for years. More broadly, it validated the notion that you can derive fun from the act of driving.