How do you build a ‘Fast & Furious’ car chase? With Hot Wheels and lots of special effects

What goes on behind the scenes of one of the Fast & Furious series’ elaborate, physics-stretching car chases? Car and Driver took a look at a seven-minute, $20 million sequence from Fast & Furious 6, from the first written draft to the finished product. The dozens of cars involved are choreographed with Hot Wheels models, and the shooting is done only after the locations have been surveyed and measured with lidar — so that they can be spliced together convincingly and digitally extended to seem larger. At the center of it all, stunt drivers must master dangerous, difficult-to-control vehicles like the “flip cars” used in Fast & Furious 6, though more effects make the cars look faster and sound beefier. There’s probably no better example of how much work goes into a summer popcorn movie.