There's no arguing with the fact that "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is a one of the cult gearhead films of the 21st century, and partially responsible for the rise of interest in Japanese tuning culture. While Supras and Skylines are often hailed as the icons of the series, there's a particular 1967 Ford Mustang, much like the Eleanor
, that also sticks in people's minds, and it's all down to a rather peculiar engine choice.Peeking under the hood, you would typically expect to find a thunderous
V8, but here instead is a 2.6-liter RB26 inline-six. That's right, an R34 GT-R gave up its six-cylinder to power this Mustang. This was a bold move from the production team, and quite a controversial one for car enthusiasts to witness. However, this swap wasn't just a random creative decision. For Sean Boswell, the movie's protagonist and an all-American gearhead, the swapping of an RB26 into a classic Mustang symbolically marked his full immersion into Japan's tuning culture.
Another fact which many fans don't realize is that the Mustang we saw tearing through Tokyo wasn't just a one-off. Like most cars in the "Fast & Furious" universe, it was one of several -- six or seven, according to Craig Lieberman, a technical advisor on the franchise. Only one of those actually had the RB26 under the hood. The rest sported good old-fashioned V8s, and those are the cars that did the actual drifting, while the hero car stayed largely out of harm's way.
Read more: Every Ford Mustang Generation Ranked Worst To Best
There's More Than Meets They Eye With This RB26 Mustang
While the engine did indeed originally come from an R34 Skyline GT-R, which would've sported a twin-turbocharged setup from the factory, the story we see in the film is a little different. The movie claims the engine was pulled from a wrecked Nissan Silvia S15, but Japanese car enthusiasts will know that the Silvia came with an SR20 inline-four from the factory, not the RB26. In the "Fast & Furious" universe, this was simply a case of a twice-swapped engine, rather than a huge oversight from the production team.
There were issues with cramming the twin-turbo RB26 engine into the Mustang's engine bay, notably the shock towers getting in the way. Enter Sean Morris, a GT-R expert and one of the builders behind the project. Not wanting to ruin a perfectly good GT-R, Morris returned the original engine to the R34 and sourced a different RB26 block for the Mustang, this time fitted with just a single turbo system that could actually fit between the Mustang's shock towers. The engine was then mated to an FS530RA five-speed manual transmission and the ever-popular Ford 9-inch rear end.
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