Great villains are one of the biggest reasons why the Fast and Furious movies always keep fans on their toes.
Iconic among gearheads, The Fast and The Furious series is one of the most famous film franchises in the world. It may have started as a car-themed, Point Break-inspired action movie, but over the course of 20 years, it has transformed into a full-on mega-spectacle action movie that almost crosses the superhero genre. Thankfully, they have all featured cars consistently throughout. Another theme the movies seem to place very high is that of family. No matter what happens, the good guys always stick together and face their problems together.
But we have all seen, heard about, read about, and ranked all the Fast and Furious protagonists' best cars so far. Yes, we all know that Dominic Toretto is the leader of the group and the most skilled driver of them all. Brian O'Conner has had the deepest character evolution arc while crossing the line between a law enforcer and a lawbreaker multiple times. Roman Pearce is the comic relief, while Tej Parker is the tech guy, and so on… But this time around, let's flip the script and take a look at the bad guys, shall we?
The Fast movies have had some interesting antagonists where everyone had some personal attachment to the protagonists and none of them are truly expendable in the movie. Be it blood relation, possession of a valuable item, street reputation, or a love interest, there has always been something personal at stake between them. As a result, the final confrontations have involved a car or other vehicle (that or to justify its inclusion in the Fast & Furious franchise). So let's rank the bad guys in the movies by their driving skills or at least their way of transportation in some cases.
Hernan Reyes is perhaps the most generic bad guy in all the films, relatively speaking. He is a target for Dom and Brian because he recruited them to do a heist and put them in danger along the way. But he does take part in a chase scene.
In the movie, he is the head of Brazil's biggest crime organization, and most of the police officers work for him. So it is natural that he personally doesn't take the effort to drive, he's got people to do that. Regardless, in this time of need, his car of choice is a matte black 2004 Volkswagen Touareg.
In the second movie, the bad guy smuggles items to and from Florida, and Brian and Roman are enlisted to help take him down. They are needed because Verone relies on a pair of skilled drivers to make the delivery, and they held an audition race to find two of the best for the job.
Now, this suggests that Verone prefers transportation via cars over anything else, but we do not see him drive personally. What we have seen is his boat, and at least one Ferrari – a red 360 Spider, which retailed at about $160,000. So we have to imagine, before going to prison, he rolled in style.
Cipher, played by Charlize Theron, is the only female antagonist in the series so far, but she made sure she was the fiercest of them all. She is a notorious cyberterrorist with countless connections to the criminal underworld. She even managed to get a hold of Dom in such a way that it threatened to compromise his ties with his group.
Once, again, we don't see her drive or ride anything personally, but she has the most resources at her disposal. To avoid getting caught, she stays in her plane invisible to the radars, and in the most recent movie, we saw her piloting a UAV Stealth Jet, nonetheless.
The chemistry between Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) was so good in the eighth film that it warranted a spin-off movie of its own. In the movie, the two unlikely teammates have to work together to bring down a super soldier and former MI6 colleague of Deckard. See, we weren't kidding about the almost crossing the superhero genre part.
Super soldier Brixton Lore (played by Idris Elba) has an equally sick custom motorbike built by the same company that gave him superhuman abilities. So you bet the motorcycle has an edge over normal ones as well. It's a shape-shifting motorbike that could keep up with Shaw's McLaren 720S on the streets of London.
The main villain from the 4th film is a cartel boss named Braga. Much like previous entries in this list, Braga has a group of men to do the driving for him, and they all use various vehicles from a classic flatbed to a monster truck. But one of them is a special car – the F-Bomb Camaro. By the end of the movie, Dom's Charger was about to crash, so he jumped into the Camaro driving next to him.
For those who don't know, this was a replica of a legendary car built by David Freiburger of Hot Rod Magazine fame. The original car has a 1,500 horsepower, twin-turbo Chevrolet small-block V8. But the film crew made six replicas with GM 300-hp Crate engines to use in the movie.
The first movie was a bit grounded and down to earth compared to the outer space adventures in the crew's most recent venture. As a result, the main antagonist, Johnny Tran, had a close relationship (or rivalry) with Dom, and the final face-off between them took place because of a drag race to start with.
One of Dom's crew members, Jesse decided to take on Johnny and his souped-up S2000. That's when we hear the famous dialogue, and before we know it, Jesse and his 1995 VW Jetta lost against Johnny and his mighty Honda. We only saw him ride his motorcycle other than the race, but that was enough to know that he was a formidable foe on a drag strip.
Owen Shaw and his crew were the first time we thought that Dom's family, aka the best crew in the world, met their match. Shaw and his crew were precise, effective, and most importantly, fast. They even had Dom's partner Letty on their side, although she had lost her memory by then. When the two groups collided for the first time in London, Shaw's people started leaving Dom's guys in the dust one by one, and that's when it was made clear that he is not a guy to mess with.
The Fast family triumphed at the end, but Shaw was at least one step ahead of them throughout the movie, whether it be stealing a tank mid-convoy or having a huge plane on standby after getting caught.
You put a badass in the hospital, and his even-more-badass big brother is bound to come in and take revenge. Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham, successfully gets rid of Luke Hobbs, then goes to Tokyo, hits Han in the middle of a chase, and bombs Dom's house at the same time.
All the while, you see him holding his own while either chasing or escaping Dom in his F-Type R Coupe, DB9, Ghibli, or even an off-road Fast Attack Vehicle. Apart from being a highly trained soldier, he is also a highly skilled driver and extremely proficient at driving a variety of vehicles.
The third movie of the series took a different approach than the first two, and people either loved it or hated it. Either way, no one can deny that incorporating the concept of drifting into it was a brilliant move. This movie was all about drifting and racing with style. Even when the stakes got higher, the opposite parties decided on a race to solve it for good.
This is a classic underdog story, and the bad guy was a master of the craft. The guy is Takeshi (played by Brian Tee), and the craft is drifting. We knew how skilled he was in the very first race where he decimated Sean with his beautiful Nissan 350Z, even stopping in the middle of the race just to taunt him.
The most recent movie happened because of one major plot point. That was Dom's brother Jakob's drive to become stronger, smarter, and faster than Dom. Whether you call it sibling rivalry or not, the fact that Jakob, played by fellow automobile enthusiast and collector John Cena, spent years mastering his skills to outmatch his brother showed that he meant business.
And he proved that by outrunning Dom in his 2015 Ford Mustang GT350, although he had help from Cipher. Regardless, the fact that Jakob has managed to stay on par with Dom's skills both in physical combat and in driving means that he about is as good as it gets, and the fastest and deadliest of all the bad guys so far.
Ramya is a Computer Engineering graduate with a lifelong love of automobiles. Digs all types of cars but has a special place in his heart for Japanese and Italian two-seater sports cars.
