The Story Behind The 'Furious 7' Lykan HyperSport That Went Skyscraper Jumping
If the "Fast & Furious" film franchise is known for exactly two things, it's Vin Diesel talking about families and awesome cars. As you'd probably expect from a series of films with "fast" in the name, every car used in these productions is an absolute beast of a machine, tearing up the roads with unparalleled speed. That kind of muscle is borderline required for the high-octane chases and stunts that have made this franchise a mainstay in Universal's stable.
Perhaps one of the most impressive cars in the "Fast & Furious" franchise was the main vehicle of the seventh entry, "Furious 7." This car, the Lykan HyperSport from W Motors, was equal parts powerful and expensive, which makes it something of a testament to this series' ability to burn money. Ten Lykans were manufactured for the express purpose of stuntwork in "Furious 7." Of those ten, exactly one of them managed to survive to the end of the production, with every other car being trashed, blown up, or otherwise rendered inoperable.
Mighty muscle for a courageous car
The production version of the Lykan features a 3.7-liter twin-turbocharged flat-six engine capable of 780 horsepower output with 708 lb-ft of torque. If you were ever going to launch a car out of a building onto another building in Abu Dhabi (or at least a set-safe facsimile of Abu Dhabi), you definitely need that kind of muscle.
To clarify, however, the ten Lykan models used in the production of "Furious 7" weren't actually production models. In a 2015 interview with The Verge, the film's car coordinator, Dennis McCarthy, explained that W Motors created a set of movie-grade Lykans explicitly for use in the film. They still had the engine output, of course, but to save some cash, the screen-grade models were constructed from fiberglass rather than their usual carbon fiber bodies. Some extraneous elements were removed, such as the infotainment system, the gauge cluster, and, somewhat worryingly, the airbag. These cars were still extremely expensive to create and trash, just not the Lykan's usual price tag of $3.4 million.
The last surviving "Furious 7" Lykan was returned to W Motors after filming wrapped, where it became something of a mascot for the company. In 2021, the vehicle, stunt damage and all, was auctioned with bids in the millions. The identity of the vehicle's ultimate owner has never been publicly divulged, but whoever was lucky enough secured themselves quite the piece of automotive film history.