Nelson Racing Engines’ Tom Nelson sat down with 1320video at SEMA to explain the Maximus Charger — a 2,000-horsepower 1968 Dodge Charger built to recreate a scene from the original Fast and the Furious inside Furious 7. Over 2,000 hours of bodywork went into a car commenters initially assumed was fake. Watch the full breakdown of the build above.
Movie cars are supposed to be props — built to survive one specific shot, then quietly retired or scrapped. The Maximus Charger from Furious 7 was never that kind of car. Tom Nelson and his team at Nelson Racing Engines built it to actually run, actually make two thousand horsepower, and actually recreate a stunt from a film made fourteen years earlier — and when 1320video caught up with Nelson at SEMA, he explained exactly what it took to get a car that extreme to survive contact with pavement at all.
Two Thousand Hours Before the First Mile
According to Nelson, the bodywork alone on the Maximus Charger took more than 2,000 hours — a figure that one commenter, a retired sheet metal worker, singled out specifically, calling the craftsmanship on par with fine art rather than typical shop fabrication. That kind of hour count doesn’t happen on a car built purely for a single film scene; it’s the mark of a build meant to be shown, driven, and scrutinized up close for years afterward.
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Recreating a Scene From the Original Film
The Maximus Charger’s role in Furious 7 wasn’t a new stunt — it was a deliberate callback to 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, recreating a scene from the franchise’s origin film with a car built specifically to echo it. That connection is part of why the build carries weight with longtime fans: it’s not just a wide-body Charger built for spectacle, it’s a piece of franchise continuity that took real engineering to pull off.
2,000 Horsepower on an 18-Inch Tire
The headline number — 2,000 horsepower — only tells half the story. Nelson’s team ran that power through an 18-inch wide tire, a setup that demands the kind of chassis, suspension, and driveline engineering that goes far beyond a typical engine swap. One commenter put it simply: they’d assumed the video was fake until they saw the details, because the number sounds more like a marketing claim than something meant to actually put power down on the street.
The Detail Work That Convinced Skeptics
What moved commenters from skepticism to admiration wasn’t the horsepower figure — it was the small stuff. One detailed comment calls out the flawless metal work, the symmetrical engine bay, dozens of one-off billet parts, and even the fuel tank and fuel pump setup as “a work of art” on their own. That same commenter pushes back directly on critics in the comment section, arguing that even people who don’t like the car’s styling should recognize the craftsmanship behind it.
The Sound That Sets Off Car Alarms
More than one commenter zeroes in on the Charger’s exhaust note specifically, with one joking that eleven nearby car alarms went off when the engine fired. Whether that’s literal or exaggerated for effect, it captures something real about a build running this much power: at 2,000 horsepower, the acoustic signature becomes as much a part of the car’s identity as its widebody fenders and paint.
Nelson Racing Engines’ Reputation in the Build World
Tom Nelson and NRE built a reputation well before Furious 7 for extreme forced-induction builds, and the Maximus Charger fits squarely into that history — a shop known for chasing four-digit horsepower figures on cars that still need to function as more than static show pieces. That reputation is exactly why 1320video sought Nelson out at SEMA specifically to get the behind-the-scenes account rather than just filming the car on the show floor.
The 1968 Charger’s Muscle Car Pedigree
Underneath the widebody kit and the film-franchise backstory sits a 1968 Dodge Charger — a body style already regarded as one of the most iconic silhouettes of the muscle car era, thanks in large part to its starring role a year later in Bullitt-era chase cinema and its own screen career across decades of film and television. Building a 2,000-horsepower show car on that specific chassis isn’t incidental; the Charger’s cultural weight is part of why this build resonates beyond typical build-thread audiences.
Why This Build Still Gets Attention Years Later
Even years after the film’s release, the Maximus Charger keeps surfacing in car content, and the comment section shows why: it’s rare for a movie car to hold up to this level of scrutiny once the cameras stop rolling. Commenters who assumed it was a prop, once shown the engineering behind it, tend to come away with more respect for the build than the film scene that made it famous in the first place.
Nelson Racing Engines’ Other Builds
The Maximus Charger isn’t a one-off departure for Nelson Racing Engines — the shop has built a reputation over decades for extreme forced-induction packages on a range of platforms, from twin-turbo Corvettes to similarly over-built muscle car restorations, all sharing the same philosophy of pairing show-quality fabrication with genuinely functional, driveable power. That track record is why a production as large as the Fast and Furious franchise turned to NRE specifically when it needed a hero car that could plausibly put down four-digit horsepower on camera rather than just look the part. For NRE, the film exposure was almost incidental to a business built on customer builds; for the franchise, it meant borrowing real engineering credibility instead of relying entirely on visual effects to sell the number on screen.
What Happened to the Car After the Film
Cars built for film franchises at this level of investment rarely disappear after the cameras stop rolling, and the Maximus Charger’s post-production life — appearing at SEMA, sitting for interviews with outlets like 1320video — reflects that. A build representing 2,000-plus hours of labor and genuine engineering effort has ongoing value as a promotional asset for both NRE and the franchise, which is exactly why Nelson was willing to walk through the build in this level of detail rather than treating the car as a disposable prop once its scene had wrapped. Even years later, the build remains one of NRE’s most requested reference projects among customers pricing out their own wide-body Mopar restorations.
Check out the full video above and let us know what you think in the comments.
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Needs those REAR grippers when they put the hammer down
Could swear its a 1968 with those round tail lights.
Its a 68 or a 69 with 68 tail lights!
1968
That’s a ’68 charger not a ’69
suscribe to NRE on Youtube, you would have known about this build years ago…
That’s a 1969, but still good lookin
Katie Byrne Cavazos
For your husband
Looks like a 68 to me
68
Looks like a 68 to me .
What Ed Boland said…
1968 Charger had round tail lights
It’s a 68 not a 69
Dont look like factory style tail lights
That’s a 68
Awesome
68… round tail lights
68 is the year
“ARE YOU SURE THAT’S A 1969?” “THOSE RAIL LIGHT ARE FROM A 1968!”
Rail lights, not rail lights. Opps!
Tail!
My finger too fat!
68-69 both had round taillights
That’s not a 69 I had a 69 that looks like a 68 with the tail lights rounded like that
It’s a 68, …not 69
This is a 68 people.
1967 had the round side marking lights 1968 had the same marker lights as the 1969. But who cares still a beautiful piece of machinery
67 didn’t have marker lights
Can’t even get the year right “68” REALLY!!!!
It’s a 68 Charger
This is a 1968 Dodge Charger RT
Its a 68
Oh yea
got the wrong tailights then!!!!!!!
David Slim Roberts
1968 Dodge Charger in the photo .
1967 had solid / continuing rear tail – light across rear end .
1968 had two tail lights on each side of the rear , designed to simulate red hot exhaust pipes .
1969 had two large horizontal tail lights .
1968 , first year for federally mandated side marker lights , amber front side , red rear side .
1967 had none , 1969 had larger rectangular side markers .
That’s a 68 not a 69
Martin Perez
Yep 68 not 68
Martin Perez not 69
1968 round twin rear lights
I had two 1968 Dodge Chargers 1 RT 440
that’s a old build seen this year’s ago
Hey!! lt’s a ’68 – NOT ’69! Side markers tell that, plus the builder said ’68. AWESOME ride! Would be cool with the Hurst pistol grip!
Nice car nice wat tires exhaust
No listen it’s a fack 68, an imatation, not real, etc.
Tom Nelson car
66-67 chargers were what I call fast back style…68 had round tail lights 69-70 had tail lights like general Lee with 70 model being little wider in middle
MoPar or no car
Sweet cherry pie
That is awsome for sure
Really?
69 has a nicer ass lol
Oh!
Jawdropping
bingo