We all held our breath for the entire five-minute car chase scene in which Tom Cruise drove the tiny ol’ Fiat 500 in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which premiered in July 2023. But the producers of the blockbuster failed to tell us something important about that car.
In the seventh film of the Mission Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise crashed the 1960s Fiat, an Abarth, actually, the moment he pressed the accelerator and started coming up with excuses to show he was not used to such tiny cars. Minutes before, he had just done a similar car chase in a BMW 5 Series.
So he wasn't exactly expecting a tiny yellow car, which was over half-a-half-a-century-old, to help him get away from the villains and the police both, trying to avoid pedestrians and baby strollers in the process.
Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) drove it along the cobblestone streets of Rome like no tomorrow, drove it down the Spanish Steps, rolled over in it, stopping right beside the Fontana del Moro in Piazza Navona, and eventually ended up in the passenger's seat trying to drive it again. And that was because Grace, the woman he was handcuffed to, had no idea how to drive.
"We've done car chases in Mission: Impossible movies before. But nothing like this one," Tom Cruise posted on former Twitter/current X in June 2023.
And you know Tom Cruise. He does all those stunts himself, breaking bones in the process, healing with the speed of light, and doing them again. But what we did not know was that the Fiat 500 was not your usual Fiat 500.
Photo: Boxoffice Movie Scenes | YouTube
We all noticed that what the car from the 1960s did was way above its normal capabilities. But there was something that those who made the movie kept a secret for a while. Neil Courbould, the special effects supervisor, disclosed the secret of the super Fiat.
The scene was originally supposed to be simple. But Tom Cruise simply fell in love with the Fiat and, together with the screenwriters, he decided to set up a more interesting scene. And everything was possible because the Fiat had gone through a “heart” transplant. Its two-cylinder engine with a 479 cc capacity was removed and replaced by a 500-horsepower electric motor from a Tesla. No other information on the car that donated the engine or on the battery pack that stored the energy to get that tiny car going was revealed.
Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning received two Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. The 96th Academy Awards ceremony is set to take place on March 11.
We've done car chases in Mission: Impossible movies before. But nothing like this one. pic.twitter.com/4NH8ngFs41
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