Tom Cruise paid $13,000 to ship a Saleen Mustang S281 from California to New York overnight for the Mission Impossible III premiere
Published on May 16, 2026 at 10:09 AM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on May 16, 2026 at 10:09 AM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Mason Jones
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.
Mind you, when we say he did, what we mean is his team did.
Speaking to VinWiki, a man from a company that helped pull this stunt explained how it went.
And, believe it or not, this wasn’t the most complicated – or expensive – car stunt involving Tom Cruise.
The Saleen Mustang was one of at least five vehicles used for the exact same reason
In 2006, Tom Cruise decided he wanted a cool car to use to promote Mission: Impossible III.
Initially, Cruise reportedly wanted a Bugatti Veyron – a brand-new vehicle at the time – but, with a last-minute decision, he decided what he really wanted was a Saleen Mustang.
Switching from a Bugatti to a Mustang may make it sound easier, but it wasn’t.
As part of the Car Stories series, YouTube channel VinWiki talked to John Ficarra, the man who made this happen, and it was even more complicated than we thought.
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.
Pictured below: A Saleen S281 Mustang nearly identical to the one used by Cruise
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.
Ficarra got UPS to overnight a Saleen Mustang from California to NYC for the ‘reasonable’ price of $13,000.
The car apparently showed up with a small dent but, fortunately, things went smoothly.
This was only part of the story, though.
Apparently, Cruise had three Mission: Impossible III premieres in NYC in a day.
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.
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.
This isn’t the most expensive car stunt involving Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise is mostly known for running and jumping on screen, but he’s also had his car moments.
However, the most expensive car stunt involving Tom Cruise had actually very little to do with the car.
It had more to do with the setting.
In 2001, for the movie Vanilla Sky, the production team concluded that using a real Ferrari 250 GTO would’ve been too expensive.
Back then, the 250 GTO wasn’t 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.
The bodywork was built from scratch using fiberglass, and the engine was a Chevy-sourced 5.7-liter V8.
So far so cheap, but the thing is, the scene, filmed entirely in Times Square, involved no CGI and no green screen.
Everything you saw in the movie was real because the production paid a fortune to close down Times Square.
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.
After beginning his automotive writing career at DriveTribe, Alessandro has been with Supercar Blondie since the launch of the website in 2022. In fact, he penned the very first article published on supercarblondie.com. He’s covered subjects from cars to aircraft, watches, and luxury yachts - and even crypto. He can largely be found heading up the site’s new-supercar and SBX coverage and being the first to bring our readers the news that they’re hungry for.
