Fast and Furious-Style 1971 Plymouth GTX Is This Spring's Dominic Toretto-Flavored Ride

A short trip down memory lane would bring back images of the original 2001 The Fast and the Furious, a tale inspired by a 1998 VIBE magazine article about what goes on behind the scenes of the legal and less so New York street racing life. It might also bring back images of the 2 Fast 2 Furious installment, and perhaps even some from Tokyo Drift.

Those are pretty much all the worthwhile movies in the series, the ones where we got lots of real-life cars doing some impressive things, and where we didn’t have to wrap our heads around tanks battling cars on highways, submarines, and a rocket-strapped Pontiac Fiero crashing into a satellite, in space.

Sure, the movies that came after the first three had their share of iconic vehicles, but when faced with an onslaught of outlandish ideas and visual effects, they kind of tend to fade into the background.

The eighth Fast and Furious movie to come out was The Fate of the Furious, in 2017. We won’t go into just how badly this movie disappoints in some respects, because that’s not what we’re here for. What we’re here for is a certain 1971 Plymouth GTX starring in it.

That would be by all accounts one of the fastest cars shown in the series (rocket-powered Fiero not included). Pumping out between 2,000 and 3,000 horsepower, depending on who you listen to, the GTX could hit 269 mph (433 kph). And it was driven by Dominic Toretto himself, making it a go-to car for real custom shops that need to capitalize on the movie’s success in the real world.

Over the years, we've seen several re-creations of FF cars in the real world, but if I remember correctly, this is the first time we get such a thing for the 1971 Plymouth GTX. The car we have here is the real deal, a matching numbers muscle car modified to look like Toretto’s ride.

The GTX is a Plymouth car that came to be in 1966. It was kept on the market until 1971, during which time just a little over 44,000 of them were made, in what can be seen as three distinct generations.

We stumbled upon the one we have here, part of the line’s very last production year, as we were combing through the list of cars going under the hammer in March in Glendale, Arizona, at the hands of auction house Mecum. The car is one of the stars of the event, apparently going with a reserve, but an undisclosed one.

This is a relatively fresh build, having been completed as a nut and bolt restoration in 2022, so there’s a good chance it’s up for grabs for the first time during such a high-profile event. Wrapped in Jet Black and riding on Rushforth custom wheels, the car is animated by the powertrain it originally had on when it left the factory, now beefed up through a series of modifications.

We’re talking about the 440ci (7.2-liter) V8 that back in the 1970s was the largest of two engines available (the other being the 426 Hemi). The unit was rebuilt, bored and honed, and it is now tied to an automatic transmission and a dual-fan cooling system. The current output of the engine, known as the Super Commando, is not specified, but back in its day, it was rated at 375 hp. It breathes through a custom exhaust system with Borla mufflers at one end.

The car is kept in check and firmly connected to the ground thanks to a Magnum Force 4-link suspension system and Wilwood braking hardware. The front wheels turn under the power of a Flaming River steering column, complete with a matching wheel.

Inside, the 1971 Plymouth GTX does not show the usual abundance of black leather, but even so, it’s not something that can be easily overlooked. Especially because of the dashboard that holds Dakota Digital gauges.

As said, the GTX is selling in March, and we don’t know for how much (we’ll come back and update this story as soon as we do). That’s about two months before the tenth Fast and Furious is set to hit theaters across the globe (that would be May 19 in the United States), so it’s unlikely the launch of the movie will influence the selling price.

What will influence it probably is the degree of the winner’s infatuation with the flick and its characters, or quite the opposite, their ability to see past the Fast and Furious references.