Fast & Furious Buick Grand National

       

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Made By:
Jada Toys
Scale:
1/24
MSRP:
US$14.99
Overview:
Packaging (Design):9/10
Packaging (Durability):8/10
Casting (Body):8/10
Casting (Interior):9/10
Casting (Chassis):8/10
Casting (Engine):7/10
Paint (Exterior):8/10
Paint (Interior):N/A
Paint (Trim/Graphics):9/10
Overall Panel Fit:9/10
Total Score:8.3/10

 
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Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National
Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National packaging Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National side detail Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National interior Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National engine Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National trunk detail Jada Toys Fast and Furious Grand National rear

 
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Background

After the events of The Fast and the Furious, Dominic Toretto and his crew (now consisting of Letty, Tego, Rico, Cara, and Han) escaped the United States and are living in the Dominican Republic. they're still hijacking trucks, but instead of the targets being full f elecronics they're full of fuel. They also have a different metthod now, with Dom running block and the rest of the crew taking the trailers. His car of choice for this role was a Buick Grand National, a turbocharged performance machine that is often heralded as one of the greatest performance cars of the era.

 

Packaging

This is the same box introduced for F8 of the Furious, with "Dom's Buick Grand National" printed under the main window and a new array of co-sells on the back: Ripsaw, Letty's Rally Fighter, Dom's Ice Charger, Suki's Honda S2000, Dom's Charger R/T, Lykan Hypersport, Dom's Plymouth GTX, Letty's Chevy Corvette, Brian's Nissan GT-R (R35) Ben Sopra, Dom's Chevy Impala, Brian's Skyline GT-R (R34), Mr. Little Nobody's Subaru WRX SRTI, Dom's Mazda RX-7, Dom's Chevy Fleetline, and Brian's Toyota Supra. The Buick is held in place with two screws and a plastic tray around the rear, with two plastic bands to hold the hood and doors closed.

 

Casting/Paint

This tooling has been in Jada's stable since their "Box & Bubble" days and bears many of the hallmarks of that era, most notably the heavy metal body with minimal plastic details. Only the bumper skins, grille, mirrors, and headlight buckets - the parts that might be chrome plated to create a Regal rather than a Grand National - are plastic. The mirrors have chrome "glass" inserts, and the headlights and taillights are separate painted parts rather than transparent plastic. The casting has held up very well, with the panels remaining smooth and the gaps being nice and even all the way around. The paint finish is not bad overall, though ther eis some fine rash in a few spots - it's hard to tell if this is caused by the paint or the metal, but it doesn't look terrible either way.

The interior is cast in black plastic with a chrome steering wheel. The work here is excellent: pleated door panels, seats with fine stitching detail, a complete center console with separate T shifter, even the dash top defroster vents and rear speaker grilles are picked out. The only color comes from the stickers applied to the gauge cluster and commfort cotnrol/radio panel, but even they have an appropriate dark and desaturated look. The engine is mostly good, with a decent replica of the famous turbocharged V6. Although shallow, there's enough there to pick out the intake, valve covers, alternator, radiator, and many of the engine accessories. The cold air intake and turbo is a separate chrome plated part. About the only thing that's missing is the pipe that should connect the intercooler to the throttle body. Without that, the turbocharger is going to be blowing the newly boosted air back into the atmosphere for the engine to collect at its leisure. Whoops.

The chassis is much better than usual. It's still a single pan with chrome exhhaust tips, but Jada went to the trouble to properly capture the oil and transmission pans, exhaust pipe, front and rear suspensions, drive train, lower radiator support, spare tire well, and gas tank. The trunk is a simple black box with chrome equipment that appears to be left over from its Dub City release.

 

Features/Accessories

The doors, hood, and trunk open and close on good tight hinges that hold any position easily.

 

Accuracy

This isn't quite as stylized as some other examples of Jada's early work, but it does have a little bit of that extra flair. The most obvious is the ride height, being radically slammed as opposed to the more or less stock ride height of the movie car. It's also a bit slab sided, an effect exaggerated by the low stance. I can't tell if the headlights look odd because they're too short vertically or if it's just the way they're painted. It's not terrible, but it does give the car a bit of a squinty-eyed appearance. This also has the stock Grand National front fenders, while Dom's car had the GNX vents added (though it lacked the GNX badging and wheel flares, which are correctly reflected here on the diecast). Scaling is very close at about 1/23.5.

 

Overall

Overall this is a pretty decent replica let down only by being let down. A little bit of custom work can fix the ride height, which improves the look and feel of it tremendously. If the slammed look doesn't bother you, or you're willing to drill a couple of holes to fix it, this is definitely worth picking up.

 

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