Ah, nostalgia. There's no better feeling than tantalizing your senses and triggering a long lost memory. We imagine that's exactly how Chad Lindberg, the actor who played Jesse in the original The Fast and The Furious movie, felt when he came face to face with a replica of his MK3 Jetta from the movie.
Lindberg enters the garage flashing his character-correct black nail polish. He glances at the car and greets the team responsible for creating the car, and proclaims the car is gorgeous many, many times before giving the car a hug. The team pummels him with movie references in a joking manner, such as "too soon junior," and warns him not to race Johnny Tran (the fictional character who caused his demise in the movie).
He signs the car and jokes about bringing the car through customs (speaking of which—can we get the Jetta Ute across lines without problems?), as the car was built by GAB Eurosport in Quebec, Canada. The YouTuber, shop, and Lindberg all reminisce about the movie while enjoying the very 2000's tuner-look of the car. Everything from the gaudy headlights to the accurate decals on the car makes you feel like this is a behind the scenes look at a shop on the set of the movie. When another replica pulls in—that of Brian Walker's Eclipse—it makes the scene a whole lot more believable.
There were two discrepancies we came across when looking at the car. The first is that this particular replica has Volkswagen's narrow-angle 2.8-liter VR6 under the hood instead of the original, over-polished 2.0-liter inline-four (not that we're complaining about a little more power). The second is that this car actually features front brake calipers. Jokes aside—this is a great replica of an iconic movie car.
If you were rich and also named Frankie Muniz, you would have paid $100,000 for the real-deal car in 2001 and then sold it at Barrett Jackson 15 years later for $46,200. This car might not have the same history as the original VW, but in spirit, it was enough to make Jesse himself feel like he was at home again.