Both The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious prominently featured one of the best sports cars ever made, the Honda S2000. It was black in the first movie and pink with pink underglow in the second. But in reality, the two were apparently the same car???
These are revelations gleaned from the latest Craig Lieberman video, who served as technical director on the first two Fast and Furious movies. The black S2000 in the first movie, driven by Johnny Tran, was said to have “over 100 grand [in modifications] under the hood.” In real life, it was naturally aspirated during filming. No supercharger (which was only installed after the first movie) and no nitrous.
As Lieberman tells it, they needed a car for Tran and wound up renting it from its owner. That owner happened to be RJ de Vera, who played Danny Yamato. You’ll remember de Vera’s character as the video game-playing racer at the very beginning of The Fast and the Furious. For that first movie, the S2000 had a set of Andrew Racing Mesh wheels, but in the second movie, it was wearing a set of RO_JA “GTM” wheels that belonged to de Vera.
Because, yes, the same S2000 was used as Suki’s car in 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was almost a Toyota MR2 Spyder, but then that fell through at the last second, so the production team bought the one that was used in the first movie and painted it pink. The inside was also upholstered in pink bathroom carpet, because why not.
I’m glad they went with the S2000 for Suki. The S2000 always had the reputation of being an all-out sports car. It had already built up a good amount of street cred on its own, so it being Suki’s car made her more real as a racer in the movie. The car also had VeilSide body kits both times because de Vera apparently had a personal relationship with someone at VeilSide.
The S2000s were some of the coolest cars used in the Fast and Furious franchise and I’m all the more thrilled that the two hero ones were actually the same car. They used a different one for the insane bridge jump, though.
Currently, the pink S2000 lives at the Petersen Automotive Museum. You can go and pay your respect there. But in the meantime, here’s Craig.