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Find out all the anoraky car-guy behind-the-scene details of the Need for Speed movie to bore your mates with

By Shahzad Sheikh

If not for the cars then watch it for Imogen Poots!

If you haven’t seen Scott Waugh directed Need for Speed movie yet, as a self-respecting car enthusiast and reader of this website, go and rectify that at once! This is based on the hugely successful Need for Speed gaming series and stars Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as street racer and garage owner Tobey Marshall (yes there’s an ‘e’ in Tobey for some reason). Full-on car porn movies don’t come along too often, so never miss an opportunity to catch one at the cinema!

But as the resident motoring expert in amongst your friends, you’ll want to be able to keep interrupting the screening to loudly impress your friends with all the background knowledge you have about the movie: ‘that’s a replica’; ‘he really did that’; and ‘they used a Ferrari in this movie too, but you’ll never see it, here’s why…’.

1. The Hero Car – a 2013 Ford Shelby GT500 Mustang

In the movie the hero car, a Shelby Mustang, is claimed to be the last car that the legendary Carroll Shelby (don’t know who that is?! Click here now!) was working on with Ford before his death at the age of 89 in 2012 capable of producing over 900bhp.

In fact Shelby was indeed working on a 50th anniversary edition of the Mustang when he died, but the car in the movie is completely fictional. However it does employ signature Shelby design cues such as the blue stripes.

Ford designer, Melvin Betancourt, is responsible for the design and the car was built by Techno Sports in Detroit who gave it a wider body, 20-inch alloys, heavy duty suspension, Bilstein shocks and thicker sway bars. The side mirrors were replace with cameras which throw up full-colour images in a heads-up display projected onto the windscreen which can be seen in the movie – and seems a very good idea actually (car makers take note). The entertainment system was replaced with an iPad.

Of course they didn’t just build one for the movie. Eight were made in total employed for everything to close-up hero shots, driving stunts, and even a model reinforced so it could be hung long-ways from a helicopter. Six were destroyed.

2. How many times has the Ford Mustang appeared in a movie?

According to Ford, this movie marks around the 3000th appearance of a Mustang in a feature movie – might have to go count them on The Internet Movie Car Database  to be sure…

3. Can the hero Mustang really do over 230mph (370kph) ?

Nah, the movie car topped out at 190mph (306kph), but is still extremely fast, but slightly down on the actually production 2013 Shelby GT500 which Ford claims gets just over 200mph (322kph).

4. Don’t worry, no real supercars were hurt during the making of NfS

All the supercars used in the movie for action sequences and which are crashed are fake. You only see the real cars in close-up sequences for the Koenigsegg, Saleen, GTA Spano and Bugatti Veyron.

According to one interview with the director even a real extremely rare and valuable Lamborghini Sesto was used in the movie. Just 20 Elementos were made by Lamborghini and they are worth up to $3 million each!

Only the McLaren P1 did not appear for real as it was not available at the time this movie was made.

5. Fake cars? But how?

15 replica supercar were produced in less than six months for this movie. A lot of attention to detail when into the making the external look of these cars as accurate as possible with bodies alone costing around $300,000 each! They were all fitted with a GM LS3 engines producing about 430-500bhp.

6. High speed camera cars used – including a Ferrai 458 Italia!

In order to film the high speed action, they needed high speed camera cars in addition to the Mercedes ML crane-arm car and an Audi A6, they built a Ford Mustang 5.0 GT camera car fitting it with a Saleen supercharger to produce 625bhp beefing up the transmission and giving it Saleen brakes.

And when even that was not enough, they had a Ferrari 458 Italia camera car to hang on to the fast-paced car chases.

7. The actors went to driving school

Probably the coolest part for the actors in these movies is being sent to stunt driving school to get driver training, so they can look real behind the wheel and pull off some of the stunt sequences themselves.

For example (spoiler alert) when one of the key character’s Koenigsegg Agera crashes, Aaron Paul’s character races to the scene of the crash in his similar Agera and slides sideways to a halt with his horrified face clearly visible to the camera.

I figured this had been done on a sliding trolley being pulled into position as if often done in these type of sequences. Not so, according the Waugh. Aaron kept missing the mark because he was afraid of hitting the camera held by the director himself.

Waugh told him to go ahead and aim for him because someone would be ready to pull him back out of danger. They didn’t need to. On the next take Aaron drifted the car and stopped within two inches of the director!

8. They got the Veyron wrong – extreme Anorak Alert

The Bugatti Veyron in the race at the end is supposed to be a Super Sport, but it’s actually a ‘regular’ Veyron painted in the Super Sport’s distinctive black and orange. The telltale is that it has protruding roof air scoops, whereas the Super Sport has the scoops built into the roof.

9. Why don’t drive-ins like that exist anymore?

They do! The really cool drive-in shown at the beginning of the movie is a real place. It’s the Swan drive-in, located in Blue Ridge, Georgia and has been going since 1955. It’s one of four in the area. And it will now become a popular movie tourist attraction we suspect!

10. Who did the real driving?

Real life professional drivers employed for the driving sequences include: Tanner Foust (of Top Gear USA and pro drift, rally and stunt driver), Rhys Millen (drift racer), Rich Rutherford (ex-Formula Drift and now movie stunt driver) and Paul Dallenbach (racing driver and Pikes Peak racer).

11. What were those classic racers at the beginning?

The classic cars used in the opening race in the movie included a 1966 Pontiac GTO, a 1969 Ford Gran Torino, a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS, as well as a Porsche 944 and, unusually, a beautiful BMW E9 2800CS. All especially prepared and built for the movie, and again all actually fitted with GM LS3 engines.

12. Why the Koenigsegg Agera as the secondary hero car?

It’s pretty obvious that the movie was heavily supported by Ford. So why does our hero end up in a Koenigsegg for the climatic finale race? Well the engine in the back of a Koenigsegg, although built by the small Swedish manufacturer, it is derived from a Ford V8 block!

The Saleen S7 is obviously also powered by a Ford engine. And the Bugatti Veyron, McLaren P1 and sensational Lamborghini Sesto Elemento are obviously dramatic and spectacular choices. We’re not sure about the choice of the oddball GTA Spano from Spain – which we saw at the last Dubai Motor Show but which left us unimpressed. It doesn’t even have a Ford motor, it’s fitted with a lethal V10 from the Viper.

13. How’d they get the 2015 Ford Mustang into the movie?

(Spoiler Alert – the main character prevails and drives off into the sunset with the girl, surely you saw that coming?!) They filmed the all-new 2015 Ford Mustang for the movies final scene over six months before the 2015 Pony car was revealed to the world.

Ford nicked a GT prototype from the development team, but the car wasn’t finished. A lot of detailed bits and trim had to sourced directly from suppliers, and some had to be hand-fabricated especially to be fitted to the car.

And then they employed secret service levels of precaution to smuggle the car to the secret filming location, transporting it in a sealed van, alerting police and authorities along the route that if stopped for inspection, it must not be opened, closing off and securing the filming location for nearly 10km in all directions.

Bonus fact 14.

We’re pretty sure that Aaron Paul has the largest forehead in the Hollywood – no wonder the villain had to place such a massive bounty on his head – geddit?!

What did you think of the movie?

Kill it or sequel it? Let us have your review below!

Behind the scenes videos