Dominic Toretto’s original 1970 Dodge Charger is arguably the most iconic movie car featured in Fast and Furious flicks, but it’s a ride from the third installment that just drift, drift, drifted into multiple sales records. This custom 1992 Mazda RX-7 FD featuring bodywork by Veilside just sold for $1.2 million at a Bonhams event, setting a record for both the most expensive roadgoing Mazda ever auctioned and the highest price paid for one of the franchise’s movie cars.
As Car and Driver notes, Veilside is a Japanese tuner known for its aerodynamic kits and participation in the high-octane Hollywood property. This RX-7, driven by Sung Kang’s Han Lue in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, wears Veilside’s Fortune widebody body kit, which adds a hulking seven inches of extra width. The most memorable custom feature is of course the black-and-orange paint coat, paired with ridiculously shiny five-spoke rims, which helped earn it a spot on Tokyo Drift promotional posters.
The Mazda RX-7 FD, the third and final generation of the RX-7, is revered for a few reasons. It’s famously one of few production automobiles to feature a rotary engine, a powerplant configuration that uses a rotor instead of pistons to rotate the crankshaft, enabling high red lines and a distinctive high-pitched buzz. That engine was mounted behind the front axle, helping the vehicle achieve almost a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. The RX-7 was also the first mass-produced car to feature a sequential twin-turbocharger system, featuring a small turbo to provide boost at low RPMs for quick response and a larger turbo that would “kick in” at around 4,500 RPM, providing a huge surge of power for the top end of the rev range.
Built to current specification in 2005-2006, this Tokyo Drift RX-7 was employed primarily for stunt and static scenes rather than drifting sequences, and it’s one of only two examples that survived filming. It was purchased by the current seller and shipped to the U.K. in 2008, just two years after Tokyo Drift’s release—it’s since been driven rarely and had its engine inspected thoroughly by a local rotary specialist. The record $1.2 mile sales amount nearly doubles the price paid for a Fast and Furious movie car—a 1994 Toyota Supra from the first two films that sold for $550,000 four years ago. The final hammer price also blows past that of a first-generation 1967 Cosmo 110S, which previously set the Mazda road car auction record at $264,000 in 2014.
See one of the Veilside Mazda RX-7 FD’s most memorable Tokyo Drift moments—also one of the corniest examples of male peacocking ever put to film—below:
