The Fast and Furious franchise features cars that are just as popular as the characters, with favourites including the Toyota Supra from the first Fast and Furious flick, and the Nissan Skyline that features in 2 Fast 2 Furious.
But amongst the muscle cars, pimped out drives, and souped up engines, two automobiles stand head and shoulders above the rest – Dominic Toretto’s 1970 Dodge Charger and Brian O’Conner’s 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse.
The Dodge was built by Toretto and his father back in the day, but banished to the family garage after Dom’s father was killed driving it in a stock race.
You can’t keep a good Dodge down however, and Toretto junior ends up using the car to save his best bud Brian in The Fast and the Furious. It’s pretty much destroyed at the end of that film, but Letty rebuilds it for 2009’s Fast & Furious, and versions of the car appear in Fast Five, Fast and Furious 6 and Furious 7.
Along the way the Dodge races through the streets of Rio, becomes embroiled in a game of chicken, is hit by both an armoured car and a prison bus, gets blown up multiple times, and is launched off the top of a car park and out the back of a plane.
As for the Eclipse, Brian’s lean, mean, speed machine is driven around the parking lot at Dodger Stadium early in the first film, though spins out of control.
It’s then used in a street race that pits O’Conner against Toretto, but overuse of the ‘Nitrous Oxide System means that the car very nearly falls apart. And due to that nitrous oxide, the car eventually explodes after villain Johnny Tran shoots it up. But not before the Eclipse is used to evade the police and rescue Dominic.
Thanks to its lime-green exterior, the Mitsubishi may be the most memorable of all the Fast and Furious cars. But if we’re picking favourites, the Dodge is the best, being the toughest, coolest and most dependable of all the Fast and Furious rides, and the one car that has gone the distance.
And if you want to get your hands on either car, there’s a ‘69 Charger available in Forza Motorsport 7, out now on Xbox One, as well as a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX and a whole set of cars pulled direct from the Fate of the Furious movie, including the crazy doorless 1951 Chevy Fleetline Special.