Recently, a customer of ours; Amy Slade, was lucky enough to have her Nissan 350Z chosen selected to represent the UK’s modified car scene at the Leicester Square Premiere of the new Fast and Furious film – Fast and Furious 6. Amy is extremely passionate about modified cars and is very well known in the UK’s show car scene and her previous car (Mitsubishi FTO) won many awards whilst in Amy’s ownership. Not only was Amy’s car picked for the premiere, it also won a competition hosed by Universal Pictures for movie fans to vote for their favourite premiere car with an amazing 23% of the unique votes!

Over to Amy for the full story!

I had sent photos of my 2003 Nissan 350Z Roadster to Garage D to submit the best cars to be in scenes in the actual Fast and Furious 6 movie but unfortunately my Zed was not chosen to be an ‘extra’ in the film in London. I was quite disappointed because for the fourth film in the Fast And The Furious series my previous show car (my green Mitsubishi FTO) was at that premiere- the only car on the red carpet at London’s Leicester square. The F&F films are my favourite films so that was the best day of my life and made all the blood, sweat and tears to build my last car the FTO worth it! It was a very successful car with many magazine features and prizes at all the top modified cars competitions.

Amy’s FTO

A while after that and a week before the film premiere I decided to go to a car show in Brighton on Maderia Drive on the seafront and support Ace Cafe London- (my favourite place for a car meet) it was the Ace Café’s incarnation yearly show there and it’s excellent as long as the weather is kind! I had no idea that there would be an agency attending scouting some nice cars to be at Fast And Furious 6 film premiere!
I had left my car parked up and gone for lunch in Brighton. I came back and a close friend of mine told me that people had gone round picking cars for the premiere and that mine was one of them! I actually thought my friend was joking at first, as I know my 350Z isn’t yet to the standard that my FTO was at- however it is a step forward as it’s a lot faster and classier.

Two days later and with not much time for the Premiere I received an email from the agency confirming they would like my car at Leicester square again and to be on display all day for the Fast and Furious 6 world film premiere!! They revealed that it would be one of 23 cars chosen to be on display and amazingly amongst he other cars included to attend was my previous show car FTO! Wow, two cars I have built there!
The other premiere cars included a modified Mazda RX8, a Chevrolet Camaro (done to look exactly like bumblebee from transformers!) a lovely Vauxhall Tigra, (also owned by a lady), a noble M12, a Toyota supra, a Subaru Impreza WRX, a Porsche 997 Turbo and the Alfa Romeo Giuiletta from the actual film! Amongst these cars I felt very privileged to be a part of Universal’s day in Leicester square that Tuesday 7th May.
To promote the film, Universal were running a competition with our cars- for the public to have a good look around the cars and vote for their favourite, the competition would be seen by 2million Fast and Furious Facebook and social media fans also as the competition was put out on the sites live!
I worked my very hardest leading up to the and on the day to get as many votes as possible and I think I had worked the hardest as I got the most votes on the day! I had contacted big radio stations Capital FM and Heart FM and asked for them to support me. My part time job is in radio so that helped me and I asked them very nicely and I got their support; my other job is with Butlins and Haven and head office friends supported me, I had Safely Insured support me, Demon Tweeks, Pro Bolt, Clarion and all my friends on Facebook who knew how much it meant to me to get votes! I also has a huge amount of help from my owners club www.350z-uk.com. I even had the Facebook page for the 350z in America support me and get me votes from there! I just want to thank every one who voted!
On the day also my brother Rob who’s always supported me with my show cars and his girlfriend came along all day to help with three good friends of mine, they helped get me many more votes too. Thank you so much to every one of you who helped me. The prize was a driving experience day and Fast and Furious 6 film goodies which is on it’s way to me now, I cannot wait!

The day went a bit like this- we arrived at 9am, instead of battling the London traffic at that silly time I found a hotel called the Z hotel (I’m a little ‘Z’ obsessed haha) and checked myself .
I arrived at Leicester Square, they gave me the Fast and Furious 6 T-shirt to wear all day and vip passes around the Leiester Square gardens. The public were not allowed in until 2pm, so from 9am until 2pm I was preparing the car and cleaning it whilst chatting to some good friends and getting my social media sites and owners clubs on the case for votes!

At 2pm the public were allowed into the gardens to look around the cars, I cant describe exactly what happened apart from it was quite scary and unexpected the amount of attention the cars got and how many fans had turned up! A huge rush through the garden gates ! I was parked next to bumblebee and basically most of the public were crowding round my car queuing to get to see that one! Which was fair enough, but they were literally climbing over my car to get to it which was scary! All the car owners assumed that their would be car security but we soon realised we would have to do that ourselves. The Public were trying to get in all the cars for photos too so I had to guard the car all day and ensure no one got in my car! This sounds bad but it was still one of the best days of my life, my car did get scratched which is sad as it went there in perfect condition but it was so fun to be a part of Universal’s big day for the premiere of the film, my favourite film!

The public were in the gardens until 7pm when the cast/ celebrities had all arrived for the premiere. From 2pm-7pm it was extremely busy and a big success, everyone was buzzing and the stage they had spent half the day setting up was epic, there were cool lights everywhere, and cars from the film dotted round the square too. The carpet was blue carpet this time and not red.
I didn’t see the cast/ meet the cast as at the time they arrived I was still ensuring my car was safe and no one in the public was sitting on it or jumping in it! I would have loved to have seen the cast though and got autographs, I will at the next one.

During the voting competition my old show car the FTO that didn’t for some reason show up was ranked number 1 first thing in the morning when it went live! I think a few of my friends had voted for that by mistake haha thinking that it was still my car! I then soon became first on the leader board once I had posted the voting link on 350z UK owners club and my facebook wall! With people at work form my two jobs all voting too. I stayed first , second, third throughout the whole day, every time I slipped down I was committed to work my way back to first ! My friends were going round the gardens and asking public to vote for me all day, when I kept hitting the first spot again I was really smiling!

We all drove out the gardens at 7pm and I was ranked number one and was so, so happy the hard work paid off. I know compared to some of the other cars there I shouldn’t have been first but it was just about who got the most votes, I seriously tried hard the whole week before and on the day to get them. I felt so proud to go back home and to work and announce I came first. Universal Pictures kept the competition running for longer (few weeks) but for me it was about that big competition on the day.

Unlike the fourth Fast and Furious film premiere I attended where I got to see the film too- this didn’t happen, so I got some free tickets and saw it the night it came out a week later. It is my favourite film and I saw it twice at the cinema. The storyline is so strong in this film I totally loved it. I actually feel a connection with the characters after many years of loving the films, and the first film was the reason I got into modifying my cars! I have had 13 cars now and many of them I have modified!
I am keeping the 350z and have many more big plans, it isn’t even half done. I hope to return with the Zed to another Fast and Furious film premiere one day, but if not, two film premieres isn’t bad going.

So there you go , Amy is a F&F happy camper! We’d like to thank Amy for her write up and Amy would like to thank her new sponsor Clarion for all of their recent support.