Every petrolhead instantly recognizes this bright orange Toyota Supra as the one Paul Walker drove in the first installment of The Fast and the Furious saga.
There are four things that gave the Mk4 Supra its outstanding street-cred, making it one of the most desirable modern Japanese sports cars of all time: Its association with the Mid Night Club gang and Wangan street racing, its 2JZ engine, the Need for Speed Underground video game series and the Fast and the Furious movies.
Unfortunately, this Supra is not quite the real thing. Yes, this particular example appeared in the original movie but it was one of the several stunt cars, which means it wasn’t actually driven by the late Paul Walker.
You see, in order to keep a movie like The Fast and the Furious on a “decent” budget, you must have a “hero car” in order to shoot close-ups and details and then buy several examples of that same model – only in stock form – and modify them to look like the hero car. After that, you can just destroy them one by one in various movies scenes, where it looks like the same vehicle is used.
Usually a stunt car is missing something and, as you can see, this Supra hasn’t got – what you and me call – an interior. Sure, it has been modified by the same garage that made the hero-car, but the mods where directed on strengthening the suspension, fuel tank and chassis, since it was used on the final scene of the movie, where it jumps right in front of a train.
Under the hood, where you might expect a twin-turbo 3.0-litre 2JZ-GTE to be, you’ll actually find a naturally aspirated 3.0-litre 2JZ-GE, boasting 220 BHP. That means the engine didn’t suffer any modifications at all. But those Nitrous bottles in the trunk will help things seed up a little, right? Uhm… those are just for show, they’re not actually connected to anything.
Anyway, this hampered example, which was actually used throughout the movie and in the final scene, was auctioned by Mecum last week for $185,000. You may consider that a little steep for a weirdly modified Supra, but don’t forget that it reached an iconic status by contributing to the movie.
Besides, you can never go wrong with a Supra – except when you pay a ridiculous amount of money for it.
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