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Mongoose Corvette Train Heist Scene Cost A Fifth of Fast Five's Budget

It has been almost a decade since Vin Diesel (as Dominic Toretto) and the late Paul Walker (as Brian O'Conner) seemed to jump off a cliff and into a wet abyss while (trying to) drive away in a C2 Chevy Corvette of the famous Mongoose variety. It's the culmination of the iconic train heist scene – probably the most complex and expensive single scene of the popular fifth installment.
C2 Chevrolet Corvette Mongoose train heist scene Fast Five 24 photos
Photo: Craig Lieberman/YouTube
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Just how expensive it was to pull off is explained in a neat behind-the-scenes style video (embedded below) from Craig Lieberman. He’s a well-known gearhead and served as the technical advisor for the first two installments in the beloved franchise.

We even saw some of his cars appear in the early installments, so we trust him to know some insights from the production of the “Fast & Furious” series. For example, he apparently knows exactly how much the producers had to spend to pull off the train scene stunt – a fifth (yes, it bodes well with the name of the movie) of the $125 million budget.

That’s $25 million, and the chunk of money was used not just for cars but also for buying up an entire train and some tracks to go along with it. That was just an example of the complexity of the shoot, which blended practical stunts and effects with a lot of computer-generated imagery. It’s not like you believed Vin and Paul jumped out of the crashing Mongoose Corvette?

As far as the cars are concerned, the production team ordered no fewer than 12 replicas of the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Mongoose to an Ohio-based company called Mongoose Motorsports, which is still alive and well to this very day.

Some of the cars were just empty shells – barren of powertrains and interiors – some were just fitted with run-of-the-mill Chevy 350-cu in (5.7-liter) engines and transmissions, but there was also one “hero car.” That one received all the goodies, from a 502-cu in (8.22-liter) GM crate engine (460 hp and 568 lb-ft/770 Nm) to 17-inch replica alloys of the famous Halibrand wheels.

By the way, we have also embedded a second video depicting the actual presentation of the scene as it appeared in Fast Five. Enjoy!

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About the author: Aurel Niculescu
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Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution.
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