Remember The '$100k' S2000 Engine In Fast And Furious? It Was Worth $8k
“I bet you he’s got more than a $100,000 under the hood of that car,” a concerned Brian tells Jesse, just before one of the most famous races in the whole Fast and Furious franchise.
It turns out, though, that Brian’s estimate was a little off. In this new video from Craig Lieberman, producer of the first instalment in the now $5 billion series, the practicalities of shooting the ‘Race Wars’ segment are detailed. One particular part stands out - that Johnny Tran’s Honda S2000 had more like $8000 under the hood, not $100k.
Lieberman says that the number was “utter bullshit,” adding that Paul Walker’s memorable line was “least of the gaffes to be made in that scene - the most egregious of these gaffes was, of course, the no brake caliper on the Jetta”. Lieberman has covered this in a previous video (above), but we are given a recap - there were real brakes under the fake discs, the latter added (minus caliper) to cover the VW Jetta’s piddly 10-inch standard rotors.
The ‘Race Wars’ name was made up to avoid licensing issues, but interestingly, it’s since been adopted by numerous events around the world. The fictitious drag race bash was filmed in September 2000 at San Bernadino Airport using 1000 extras. 35 cars and drivers were sourced for the shoot - they were instructed to keep racing all day whether the cameras were focused on them or not.
The drivers were paid just $15 a day, and while near-unlimited free drag strip runs sounds appealing even with the potential for wear and tear, this did apparently become quite boring. Many of the cars were sourced from a club called ArtNMotion.
Anything else of note? Well, the RX-7 Letty raced came over all predictable and blew an engine. The story behind the, erm, unusual race start procedure - starring Lieberman himself - is pretty interesting too.
Makes you want to rewatch this classic, doesn’t it?
Source: YouTube via Road and Track)
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
My favourite of Craig’s videos are the stories of the cars, mad how he owned both the Supra & Skyline and hated what they did to both
Letty drove a Nissan S14. The guy biting her dust had a white RX-7
My bad, had a moment of confusion - clearly, I DO need to rewatch it!
So, is this about Suki’s S200?
Actually yes. They re-used a few of the Johnny Trans cars and modified them again for Suki’s S2000 when they went to film the second movie.
And even they bought the hero 1 car from DeVera’s ownership (the real S2k owner and actor of the White Civic driver in the first film) to become Hero 1 car for 2F2F.
Remember when Hector got overnight parts from Japan? Turns out that was a lie as well, turns out this whole thing was just a movie with scripts and actors and shit.
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Hector is gonna be running 3 Honda Civic’s with spoon engines. On top of that he just came into Harry’s and ordered 3 t66 turbo’s with NOS’s and a Motec System Exhaust.
The ‘’riced’’ (called like that by many Idiots) Black Civic was a hella beast
Can you actually spend 100k only on engine parts?
It seems a bit expensive.
I mean, if you make everything billet, top shelf compontents. I’m sure you can get close to 100k. Adjust to inflation aswell, but fck if I know. I seen people spending 80k on 800bhp builds.
The best is Bilkins telling Brian that the Eclipse was an $80k vehicle lolz
This Craig dude is an absoultue dumbass, it’s a movie for God’s sake, relax buddy.
Absolute*
I’m pretty sure he understands that. Relax buddy.
I like how Brian finds a supra that was clearly in a vehicle fire and decides to make that his starting point lol. His harness would be melted, all sensors would be melted, all gaskets would be ruined. Literally anything would have been a better than that car.
Could tell it wasn’t even 10K$, it still needed nitrous to beat the Jetta 😂😂😂