CASE HISTORY
Background
Fast & Furious Live was a technically advanced touring arena show created on behalf of Universal Studios to undertake a planned world tour incorporating Europe, Australia, China and USA.
Brief
SHP were approached to design engineer and build 8 vehicles for the show.
The vehicles needed to be able to undertake intense choreographed precision driving routines so handling and power requirements were vitally important, they should look identical to the cars from the films and be produced in such a way to keep the number of spare parts required to a minimum.
In addition there would be an intensive rehearsal period building up to the first show, so all cars would need to be reliable enough to complete this rehearsal process.
Three of the cars would be Honda Civics to recreate a lorry heist scene from the film and four cars would be covered with led pixels to create a unique driving routine.
Solution
LED Cars: Take a Mazda RX7, a Honda S2000, Skyline R34 and a Toyota Supra and build all cars up from bare shells to all run on identical suspension set up, braking system, engine and gearbox. The cars were then covered with LED to offer a creative solution never seen before.
Honda Civic: Take 3 Honda Civics and convert them to be replica cars from the film but adapt them to reliably work within the confines of the show arena but fitted with identical braking, suspension, engine and gearbox as the LED cars which were ford engines with gearboxes from Quaife.
One of the cars was to have a fire system on board to enable it to appear to crash out and go into flames and a second car was to be fitted with a special effects system to allow it to crash out and for the body to collapse each show using a hydraulic system with rubber moulded panels.
Results
All cars ran faultlessly throughout rehearsal and the shows with just general maintenance during the rehearsal and show period.
