The Fast and the Furious came out in June 2001, directed by Rob Cohen and drawn from Ken Li's magazine article "Racer X". Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto is a street racer who leads a crew of hijackers, and in his garage sits a black 1970 Dodge Charger R/T. He tells Brian he and his father built it — 900 horsepower — and that he has never driven it, because it frightens him.
His father is also why Dom no longer races on a track. In 1989 Dom watched his father, Jack, run off the track in a stock car race by another driver, Kenny Linder; the car hit the wall at 120 mph and burned. A week later Dom beat Linder with a wrench, which cost him a prison term and a ban from racing.
The Charger only comes out at the end. After Jesse is killed, Dom takes it after Johnny Tran, then lines it up against Brian's Supra for a quarter mile across a railway crossing, with a train coming. The race is a draw; the Charger is hit by a passing lorry and destroyed. Brian gives Dom the keys to the Supra, reminding him he was owed a "ten-second car". The near miss with the train was assembled from separate shots of the cars and the train.
Real 1970 R/Ts were too rare to use, so the picture cars were 1968 and 1969 Chargers made up to look like 1970s; the hero car was a converted 1969. It was driven on a 440 V8 with an automatic gearbox. The blown racing engine seen in the garage was for show, and so were the blowers on the moving cars. The Charger has come back in most of the films since: Letty rebuilds it for Fast & Furious (2009), and it returns in Fast Five, Furious 7, F9 and Fast X.
DeAGOSTINI launched its 1:8 partwork in Japan on 25 February 2020 as a weekly run of 110 issues, completed on 19 April 2022, and this is the Japanese edition. The body is all metal, with injection-moulded plastic for the finer detail, and the finished car is about 658 mm long and 8.3 kg. The headlights light, it plays the engine sound and horn, the steering turns the front wheels on their Continental tyres, and opening panels reveal a supercharged V8 and an interior dressed with props from the films; the first issue builds the bonnet and its supercharger. The partwork does not name the film it models, but its pitch — the car "even Dominic Toretto" was afraid to drive — is the first film's story. FanHome brought the same kit to the UK in 2021, the film's twentieth anniversary, and the manufacturer link goes to its current US edition.