The action in the Fast & Furious franchise has led to over a thousand cards being destroyed. While the series has become more spy-oriented with stories revolving around secret agencies and infamous hackers around the world, the foundation is still in cars. Sure, it's no longer about street racing, but new (and classic) cars are still at the forefront of every installment.
Early Fast & Furious movies focused mainly on sports cars, cars that had been tuned for street racing, and classic American muscle. But films after the 2009 soft reboot, which have since become more and more successful, have seen the inclusion of supercars, classics, and more. While Universal Pictures may be hesitant to destroy those cars, that doesn't mean other vehicles haven't been crushed, blown up, or broken apart.
Insurance companies often use films like Fast & Furious series as training for their actuaries to determine loss. They watch every film, keep careful tally of the vehicles damaged and destroyed, and then assign a value. Based on the research of British insurance firm Insure the Gap, the total cars destroyed in each Fast & Furious movie breaks out as follows:
- Fast & Furious: 78 cars
- 2 Fast 2 Furious: 130 cars
- The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift: 249 cars
- Fast & Furious: 190 Cars
- Fast Five: 260 cars
- Fast & Furious 6: 350 cars.
- Furious 7: 230 cars
The total so far is 1,487 cars destroyed. That total doesn't include cars destroyed off-screen, and only goes through seven chapters, since The Fate of the Furious wasn't included. Plus, F9 has yet to be released. But the numbers for the eighth movie can be extrapolated based on other information. According to CNBC, over 300 cars were used in the filming of The Fate of the Furious. Most of those were "zombie cars" raining down from a nearby parking structure in the second act. So the tally so far is close to 1,800 cars.
The most expensive car destroyed was a W Motors Lykan Hypersport, valued at $3.5 million, which was trashed as the main characters drove the car out the window of one building in Abu Dhabi, and crashed it into a nearby building. Multiple copies of Vin Diesel's iconic Dodge Charger have also been destroyed. Then with Hobbs & Shaw, which crashed a Corvette into a Volvo V06 as part of their tally, the total continues to climb.
It's a sure fire bet, though, that the on-screen total will easily climb above 2,000 cars destroyed with F9. With this next chapter in the Fast & Furious saga, director Justin Lin will pull out all the stops and bring total value of destruction to close to a billion dollars. But fans will have to wait until 2021 for it, since the coronavirus outbreak has delayed the film's release to next spring.