Maximus 2000 hp 68 Charger Like Furious 7

That wide, menacing Charger in the final scene of Furious 7 has a name, a builder, and a number that beggars belief. 1320video ran into Tom Nelson of Nelson Racing Engines at SEMA and got the story behind “Maximus,” a 1968 Dodge Charger making 2,000 horsepower on an 18-inch-wide tire, with over 2,000 hours poured into the bodywork alone. Hear how the movie’s wildest car came together.

If you sat through the end of Furious 7 and found your eyes drifting away from the actors and toward the wide, menacing Charger in the final scene, you were not alone, and this video exists for exactly that reason. The team at 1320video had the same itch and got extraordinarily lucky, running straight into the man responsible for the car at SEMA. What they came away with is the backstory to one of the most talked-about movie muscle cars of the modern era, a machine built to bookend the franchise by echoing the original 2001 film. The headline number alone is enough to make you lean in, but the story of how it was built is the part that lingers.

The Car You Actually Watched at the End

The car is “Maximus,” a 1968 Dodge Charger, and it is the work of Tom Nelson of Nelson Racing Engines. The figure attached to it is a genuinely absurd 2,000 horsepower, and in a detail that makes it even more improbable, Nelson told the crew it lays that power down on an 18-inch-wide tire. That combination of a vintage B-body silhouette and a four-figure dyno sheet is the entire reason the car earned its place in the closing moments of Furious 7.

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2,000 Horsepower and an 18-Inch Tire

What surprised even the 1320video guys was where all the obsession went. Nelson described more than 2,000 hours poured into the bodywork alone, before any conversation about the engine that made the car famous. That is the tell of a true builder: the powerplant is spectacular, but the shape had to be perfect first, every line reworked until the Charger looked as unhinged standing still as it does at full boost.

Where All the Obsession Really Went

The reason Maximus resonates so far beyond the movie is that it sits at the intersection of two fantasies at once. It is a first-run muscle car icon, the 1968 Charger that generations grew up idolizing, and it is a modern hp monster that could embarrass cars costing many times more. Fast and Furious has always traded on that exact blend of nostalgia and excess, and Maximus may be its purest four-wheeled expression. Hearing Nelson explain it in his own words turns a movie prop back into an engineering feat.

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