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A Burgundy Peterbilt Style Truck Cab Sits Beside the Hollywood Drift Track, One of the First Big Themed Set Pieces in the Coaster Layout
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A Burgundy Peterbilt Style Truck Cab Sits Beside the Hollywood Drift Track, One of the First Big Themed Set Pieces in the Coaster Layout

Michael Travels
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Published

The last few months of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift photos have been mostly steel: track spines, support columns, an inversion closing up. The newest aerial pass over Universal Studios Florida turned up something with paint on it.

An oversized semi truck cab is now in place as a ride element for the opening scene of the 2027 coaster. The latest aerial frames from bioreconstruct catch a burgundy Peterbilt-style cab parked on a grated steel platform, right alongside one of the first stretches of track riders will meet. WDW News Today describes the truck as "one of the first large themed set pieces spotted within the attraction layout."

Where it sits

A wide aerial view of the Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift construction site at Universal Studios Florida, with blue coaster track running diagonally next to a silver steel catwalk, the burgundy truck cab on a grated platform alongside, and tan soundstage walls to the right
The wider view: blue coaster track on its steel supports, the truck cab on the grating beside it, and the park soundstages just beyond. Image: bioreconstruct

The cab is parked alongside the steel skeleton of the ride's first scene, a structure still going up just outside the coaster's station. Crews have started skinning parts of it in corrugated steel, though much of the surrounding frame is still exposed.

How the trains will pass it

Here is how WDWNT reads the layout. Trains will pull out of the station pointed straight at a corrugated steel wall that went up recently, then swing right, halt, and run backward into the ride's opening launch, right past the truck cab. WDWNT is careful about the purpose. It says only that the cab's placement suggests a near miss as the drifting cars accelerate backward past it.

An aerial view of the exposed silver steel framework of the Hollywood Drift first scene, with blue coaster track on supports crossing the upper portion of the frame, the burgundy truck cab on grating below and a green construction screen at right
The first scene framework, still largely open steel, with the cab down on the grating below the elevated track. Image: bioreconstruct

The build has moved past track

This is the part worth noting. WDWNT reported that crews set Hollywood Drift's last track sections before sunrise on August 3, closing the layout, and Orlando ParkStop noted the coaster "just this month saw its final piece of track installed." A themed vehicle standing in place beside the first scene reads as the project crossing over from steel erection into show set installation.

Peterbilt is an American truck builder whose conventional tractors are easy to spot: the hood stretched well out ahead of the cab, a chrome grille, and exhaust stacks standing up behind the doors. The marque is not new to this franchise either. A Peterbilt is at the center of the truck hijacking that the 2001 original builds to.

What it replaces

Universal has Hollywood Drift down for a 2027 debut at Universal Studios Florida, replacing Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit. That coaster shut down in August 2025. The announcement promised a 170 foot vertical "spike" that lifts riders "nearly 17 stories in the air," and said riders "will experience the exhilarating sensation of 360-degree drifting."

Fast & Furious: Supercharged, the resort's other attraction from the franchise, ran its final day of operation on August 16 and is now permanently closed. Universal has not announced a permanent replacement. Orlando ParkStop reports that a good chunk of the ride's old queue and facade area is being used for a Halloween Horror Nights haunted house, so demolition is not imminent.

Sources

Image credits

Aerial photos by bioreconstruct, via WDW News Today.

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Universal Studios Florida Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift Fast & Furious: Supercharged

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