The “$100,000 Engine” in Johnny Tran’s S2000 Was Worth Only $8000

To say things get exaggerated in the The Fast and the Furious movies is a bit of an understatement. But I guess being over the top is one of the reasons why we love the films so much.

The Fast and the Furious is one of the most iconic car movies ever made. One of the most memorable scenes was the desert racing event known as Race Wars, where Jesse raced his VW Jetta against Johnny Tran’s Honda S2000 and Brian tells Jesse, “Don’t do it. I bet he’s got more than 100 grand under the hood of that car.”




So did Johnny really had over $100K under his hood? Not even close. According to Craig Lieberman, a producer of The Fast and the Furious, the S2000 had a CompTech supercharger kit, and Lieberman estimated about $8000 was really poured into the build, which when you think about it, is a lot of money to spend just to beat a Jetta!

For the record, not a single car in The Fast and the Furious was a “10 second car.”

Race Wars was shot at the San Bernardino airport, and needed over 1000 extras to pull off. Mr. Lieberman was tasked with finding 35 people with sports cars willing to drag race each other all day for five straight days to provide the background action. Drivers were paid only $15 per day, which probably isn’t even enough to cover gas, but I’m sure they had fun racing.