What Honda Civic Was In The Fast And The Furious?

When it was released in 2001, "The Fast and The Furious" had a big impact on the car scene. It highlighted street-racing culture in an earnest way, featured some iconic cars, and launched several Hollywood careers. The movie was campy (to be clear, I'm using that as a term of endearment), and while many of the scenes were criticized as wildly unrealistic, the car community took ownership of it, or at the very least, enthusiasts like my friends and I enjoyed it, even if it wasn't the peak of intellectual cinema.

Cars like Toyota Supras, Mazda RX-7s, Mitsubishi Eclipses, Acura Integras, and Nissan Skylines all got some of the spotlight in "The Fast and The Furious," and rightfully so -– they were all vehicles that were popular in the enthusiast car scene at the time. However, there were three very specific Honda Civics that had big roles in the movie, too – a trio of 1993 Honda Civic coupes used to hijack trucks. There were lots of different Honda Civics sprinkled throughout the movie, including a white coupe that was part of a four-wide street race, but the Hondas driven by three of the movie's main characters were blacked-out 1993 Civic coupes with lots of modifications.

The fifth generation of Honda Civic debuted in 1992, but the two-door coupe was added to the lineup in 1993 – that's the vehicle the Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel) and his crew chose to use in "The Fast and The Furious" (or at least the car the movie makers thought was right). The crew of car-obsessed criminals used the Civics as heist vehicles, speeding around tractor-trailers in a coordinated fashion to commit highway robbery (literally). The Civic drivers performed daring maneuvers, dashing underneath the trucks, darting in front of them, and eventually removing the truck's windshields, tranquilizing the drivers, and stealing the contents of the trailers.

All three Civics had matching modifications like body kits, aftermarket wheels, big rear wings, and a green underglow, but they were relatively tame compared to the graphics-heavy, brightly-colored cars that most of the main characters owned and drove. These Civics weren't the flashiest cars in the movie, but they weren't meant to be. These three cars were meant to be relatively stealthy vehicles that were hard to identify. A plot point that backs this up is undercover officer Brian O'Conner's (played by Paul Walker) search for the Civics. He sneaks around various race shops chasing down Civics with modified engines and specific tires, trying to find the heist Civic's owners. Eventually, O'Conner finds the real owners of the heist Civics and much drama ensues, but I won't spoil it for you.