{"id":646557,"date":"2026-05-16T11:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646557\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T11:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T11:03:11","slug":"tom-cruise-paid-13000-to-ship-a-saleen-mustang-s281-from-california-to-new-york-overnight-for-the-mission-impossible-iii-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/646557\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise paid $13,000 to ship a Saleen Mustang S281 from California to New York overnight for the Mission Impossible III premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

Tom Cruise once pulled off an incredible stunt when he managed to ship a Saleen Mustang overnight from California to NYC for a Mission: Impossible premiere.<\/p>\n

Mind you, when we say he did, what we mean is his team did.<\/p>\n

Speaking to VinWiki, a man from a company that helped pull this stunt explained how it went.<\/p>\n

And, believe it or not, this wasn\u2019t the most complicated \u2013 or expensive \u2013 car<\/a> stunt involving Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

The Saleen Mustang was one of at least five vehicles used for the exact same reason<\/p>\n

In 2006, Tom Cruise decided he wanted a cool car to use to promote Mission: Impossible<\/a> III.<\/p>\n

Initially, Cruise reportedly wanted a Bugatti Veyron \u2013 a brand-new vehicle at the time \u2013 but, with a last-minute decision, he decided what he really wanted was a Saleen Mustang.<\/p>\n

Switching from a Bugatti to a Mustang may make it sound easier, but it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

As part of the Car Stories series, YouTube channel VinWiki<\/a> talked to John Ficarra, the man who made this happen, and it was even more complicated than we thought.<\/p>\n

Ficarra was working for a company called Creative Film Cars at the time, and apparently the news that Cruise wanted a Saleen Mustang came just two days prior to the premiere.<\/p>\n

Pictured below: A Saleen S281 Mustang nearly identical to the one used by Cruise<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>IFCAR\/Wikipedia Commons<\/p>\n

Ficarra rang up a bunch of delivery companies and moving companies, eventually settling on UPS, which agreed to help after Ficarra casually mentioned this was for Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

Ficarra got UPS to overnight a Saleen Mustang<\/a> from California to NYC for the \u2018reasonable\u2019 price of $13,000.<\/p>\n

The car apparently showed up with a small dent but, fortunately, things went smoothly.<\/p>\n

This was only part of the story, though.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Cruise had three Mission: Impossible III premieres in NYC in a day.<\/p>\n

He used a helicopter and a motorcycle for the first premiere, the Saleen and a Maybach for the second premiere, and then a fire truck for the third and final one.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Ficarra, his job was to get the Mustang to NYC from California, and he could leave all the other headaches to someone else.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>TopFelya<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the most expensive car stunt involving Tom Cruise<\/p>\n

Tom Cruise is mostly known for running and jumping on screen<\/a>, but he\u2019s also had his car moments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, the most expensive car stunt involving Tom Cruise had actually very little to do with the car.<\/p>\n

It had more to do with the setting.<\/p>\n

In 2001, for the movie Vanilla Sky, the production team concluded that using a real Ferrari 250 GTO would\u2019ve been too expensive.<\/p>\n

Back then, the 250 GTO wasn\u2019t an eight-figure car, but it was still worth a fortune, which is why the production used a kit car based on a 1976 Datsun 280Z.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>Paramount Pictures\/Cruise\/Wagner Productions<\/p>\n

The bodywork was built from scratch using fiberglass, and the engine was a Chevy-sourced 5.7-liter V8.<\/p>\n

So far so cheap, but the thing is, the scene, filmed entirely in Times Square, involved no CGI and no green screen.<\/p>\n

Everything you saw in the movie was real because the production paid a fortune to close down Times Square.<\/p>\n

They reportedly paid $1 million to shut down 20 blocks of Times Square for roughly three hours to get about 30 seconds of usable footage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise once pulled off an incredible stunt when he managed to ship a Saleen Mustang overnight from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-646557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}