Three new Toyota AE86 Sprinter Truenos, a car out of production since 1987, were especially built by Toyota for the film.
A number of Toyota Trueno AE86 cars were used during production, at least one of which was personally wrecked by Jay Chou.
Tsui Hark was originally set to direct Initial D, but there were "creative differences." After he left, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak signed on instead.
For a long period of time, Edison Chen was slated to play Takumi Fujiwara, and Andy Lau was even rumored to be up for the role of Bunta.
According to Anthony Wong (Bunta Fujiwara), in the original script there was a race between Bunta and another racer. Due to time constraints, this was cancelled.