<em>Fast & Furious 6</em> Cars: 2011 Wide-Body Dodge Challenger

It starts up like any other 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392: with a noticeable popping thump as the big 6.4-liter V8 spins to life. Then the engine settles into a rumbling idle. Dennis McCarthy's crew hasn't really done anything mechanical to this Challenger and that's OK. Because this wide-body thing does burnouts that produce clouds of smoke so big that they interrupt air traffic in surrounding states.

And it's not just the quality of the smoke that makes these burnouts worthy of hymns and passion plays, but how easily this Mopar produces them. All it takes is turning off the traction control, firmly planting your right foot on the brake and letting your left big toe ease into the accelerator pedal and then... then... the rear tires ignite as if they'd been thrown into a steel mill's furnace.

If you're looking for a test of the 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392, check out Edmunds.com's exhaustive array of instrumented testing in this comparison test. Or take a look at this exciting Burnout Supertest. And then revel in this straightforward full test. Then come back here and read about the movie car.

Return Engagement
At the end of 2011's Fast Five, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) have made it out of Brazil with $100 million and are relaxing in some unidentified tropical paradise. Somewhere in there O'Conner has acquired an R35 Nissan GT-R and Toretto has assumed ownership of this Challenger SRT8 392. And of course they decide to race them against one another just as the credits roll.

Apparently Fast & Furious 6 picks up at exactly that moment where Fast Five ended. So this is one of the few cars to appear in not one, but two Fast & Furious films. Surely if the Challenger had had parents, they'd be terribly proud of this distinction.

After that race is concluded, however, the Challenger virtually disappears from the film. Oh well, that's how fickle stardom is.

Not So Modified
Picture car coordinator Dennis McCarthy needed four of these Challengers for filming and Dodge was happy to supply them for promotional value. And since they were new cars, there wasn't any reason to rebuild or reengineer them. One was crashed, one was cut up for green screen filming and two were returned to Chrysler and crushed.

However, it wouldn't do to have Dominic Toretto running around in a stock Dodge. So each Challenger was fitted with a wide-body kit from Classic Design Concepts. That includes new, wider composite plastic replacement front fenders and composite rear fender extensions. Altogether, the extensions add a massive 6 inches of width to the Challenger and allow the fitment of tires with up to 315 millimeters of tread width.

Taking advantage of the additional width is a set of USW forged modular wheels inside 275/40R20 front and 315/40R20 rear Continental tires. And those rear tires make great smoke.

For more features, photos, and videos of all the cars in the Fast and Furious movie franchise, click here.