The Fast and Furious saga is well-known for a lot of things: the distinctive cast including the late Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, the over-the-top action set-pieces, the exotic locations -- but most of all, it's known for the cars. First releasing in 2001, this series likely played a tremendous role in kick-starting the tuner craze of the mid-2000s. Of course, that's due to a litany of amazing recurring vehicles; we're not discussing those, nor are we talking about the worst cars ever featured in the Fast and Furious franchise.
Rather, we're addressing a distinctive car owned by a prominent support character in the first movie: Jesse's white Jetta.
More specifically, Jesse's white 1995 Volkswagen Jetta Mk3 -- this machine didn't particularly stand out from a mechanical perspective, but that Wings West body kit and white with blue decals granted it an iconic image nonetheless. In the movie, Jesse himself was more of a nerdy technician than an outright racer, servicing deuteragonist Dom Toretto's crew's rides for street racing and heists.
As a quick refresher, the Jetta was only raced once: a pink-slip race (winner takes the loser's car), which Jesse lost against antagonist Tran. The car is only glimpsed in one additional scene later in the movie: when Jesse is killed during a drive-by shooting by Tran and his cousin, never to be seen again in any sequel. But what happened to the real thing, and was it actually any fast, or just a movie gimmick? Let's pop the hood.
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Jesse's Car In The Movie
Sadly we never get much in-universe information on this vehicle, unlike Dom's charger with its iconic blower sticking out of the hood. Originally it was never meant to even be a Jetta; in fact, Jesse was supposed to drive either an E36 BMW M3 or an Audi A4 or S4, but it ultimately wound up being a 1995 Jetta through a twist of fate; more on that later.
Much like other movie cars, Jesse ends up with one of three identical vehicles in the movie: the "Hero" car and two action cars. But that's only the Jetta -- Jesse also likely drove at least one Honda Civic; it may be presumed that he's riding with, if not driving, one of the Civics at the start of the movie -- the black ones with green neon underglow, though the crew were wearing masks at the time. More prominently, however, was the "Jetta" he drove in the pivotal pink-slip race which was actually just a Civic made up to superficially resemble his car. If you look closely at the interior, you'll see the distinct silhouette of a mid-90s Civic that's been converted to a shell for filming.
The other notorious hiccup in the movie that we noticed was the lack of front brake calipers on the Jetta during the race scene; this was actually a trick used to fill dead space inside of the 19-inch wheel. Back in 1999, almost no cars had such large rims, owing to tires not being available in that size, according to the Jetta's actual owner. So, the team filled the space with a dummy brake rotor, whereas behind it sat a custom $9,000 Brembo 4-piston disc brake setup.
The Real-Life Car
The Jetta was originally owned by Scott Centra, proprietor of Wings West -- the company responsible for many of the iconic body kits featured on some of the series' flashiest cars. The real-life Jetta boasts a 2.0 inline-four with the 4-speed automatic, albeit packing a cool six figures' worth of goodies inside. In fact, the car itself was valued at around $200,000 all-in for the insurance quote, should it have gotten written-off during the movie's production. Naturally that includes far more than just the price of an automatic four-banger Jetta; Scott Centra poured a mountain of time and effort into heavily-customizing this vehicle with all sorts of technology and bespoke details, from the Plexiglas window showing off the nitrous to the PS2 in the glove compartment. As for the graphics, those were all done by Universal Studios. The original car was white with red and black stripes.
After the filming of the original Fast and the Furious concluded, Scott Centra, a movie industry veteran himself, spoke with actor Frankie Muniz who expressed an interest in the Jetta. Going off the success of Malcolm in the Middle, Muniz purchased the car from Centra after it failed to sell on its own at auction, and it became Muniz's first vehicle. He owned the Jetta all the way beyond January 2016, when the car was put up for auction at Barrett-Jackson and it again failed to sell. Some time after, he was finally able to sell the car to the company Luxury Auto Collection, and it's privately changed hands ever since.
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Read the original article on SlashGear.
