This Is Why Jackie Chan Drove Mitsubishis in His Movies
Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?
As a devout gearhead and movie buff, watching an old Jackie Chan movie is a bit of a treat because I'm always transfixed on the cars that characters are driving or the cars that are just parked in the background. Especially if a particular film is decades old, it could feel like a real snapshot to the past where certain cars were new; a real nostalgia moment whether you owned them or not.
But if you grew up watching a lot of old Hong Kong action movies, either through the depths of the movie channels deep in our cable package, or old DVDs and VHS tapes at the back of your local video store, there's a good chance you noticed something peculiar about Chan's work. In some of his most well known action films, Jackie seems to interact with just one brand of car: Mitsubishi.
Though it may seem like a coincidence, it's actually the result of a silent, but influential partnership between the Hong Kong action star and a Japanese automaker who wanted to break into new markets. For decades, Jackie Chan would help Mitsubishi market its cars through carefully crafted product placement. Long before the rise of JDM car culture in the West and The Fast and the Furious franchise of films, Jackie was helping make Mitsubishi a star outside the racetrack.
A Young Star and a Young Brand
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mitsubishi Motors was still a relatively young automaker trying to make a name for itself outside of Japan. Mitsubishi Motors began its U.S. operations in 1981, but before then, the brand was largely tied to Chrysler, as it sold compact Mitsubishis with Dodge and Plymouth badges. At the same time, Jackie Chan was making his own name in Hong Kong. Fresh off breakout roles in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, he was quickly becoming the most physically compelling action star in Asian cinema and the industry was starting to pay very close attention.
Seeing the promising opportunity of his young stardom, Mitsubishi approached Chan and offered something more than a conventional endorsement. Beyond just serving as a spokesman, the automaker would help finance his films and supply vehicles for his productions - just as long as he's the one driving them.
In an era long before the modern influencer brand deal, this was an equally promising proposition for both Chan and Mitsubishi. Not only would Mitsubishi vehicles be in the hands of Hong Kong's top leading man, but Chan would get much needed help financing his theatrical vision. His films, which are packed with action packed fight scenes and daredevil stunts, are choreographed and performed by Jackie himself and his stunt team.
Notoriously, some of his most elaborate action scenes could require hundreds of takes to get right. Furthermore, his commitment to perfection and authenticity has actually gotten him hurt on the production of several of his most critically acclaimed films, making him an expensive liability for studios. At a Q&A at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, Chan told an audience that he thought "old movies" were better than Hollywood's current big-budget films, which cannot be made with his methods.
"Right now, a lot of big studios, they're not filmmakers, they're business guys," he said. "They invest 40 million and think, ‘How can I get it back?' And you can't go over. It's very difficult to make a good movie now."
A Starring Role
Mitsubishi's involvement with Chan essentially gave its cars supporting cast member status in some of his most iconic films, as nearly every car that Jackie interacted or drove on-screen during his heyday was a Mitsubishi. The Police Story films had him in spiffy Colt Turbo hatchbacks. Chan and Yuen Biao served street food on the streets of Barcelona from a tricked-out L300 van in Wheels On Meals, and the penultimate fight in Twin Dragons saw not one, but two Jackies fight bad guys in a Mitsubishi R&D facility.
One of the greatest car chase scenes in world cinema came at the hands of Chan in the 1998 film Who Am I?, where he pilots a Lancer Evolution IV through the narrow streets of the Netherlands to escape pursuing police and bad guys. Here, the Evo's turbocharged 4G63 and all-wheel-drive system worked overtime to act as an extension of Chan's physical body, as the chase culminated in a smooth handbrake turn into a parking spot like a swift leg kick.
Even though today's product placement arrangements would prominently place stars in the latest and greatest from a particular brand, Chan's arrangement gave him special access to one-of-a-kind sets of wheels, including a special one-off targa version of the Colt in Armour of God, a prototype version of the GTO/3000GT in City Hunter, and even the Pajero FieldGuard Concept in Gorgeous. The Mitsubishi partnership even followed him as he made his way into Hollywood. He drove Carter around Hong Kong in a Lancer in Rush Hour 2, but decades before that, he starred as a Mitsubishi engineer controlling a high-tech Starion in Cannonball Run II.
The Movie That Was Basically a Mitsubishi Commercial
But while Mitsubishi inserted its cars in other films as subtle product placements, one of Jackie Chan's most notable films was pretty much a one hour, fifty minute Mitsubishi commercial. Released in 1995, the film Thunderbolt stars Chan as a performance car mechanic back from a master course at the Mitsubishi factory, who gets caught up with a street racer gang after its leader messes with his family and his business.
Though the film features high octane action and fighting choreographed by Chan and Sammo Hung, the real stars of Thunderbolt were some of Mitsubishi's most powerful vehicles at the time. In the film, Jackie gets behind the wheel of cars that would be part of a 90s JDM enthusiast's dream garage. Early on in the film, he chases a bad guy in an FTO. He also modifies a Lancer Evolution III to go racing, and in a sequence filmed on Hong Kong's expressway, he lets the fire-breathing turbocharged AWD rally weapon stretch its legs. In the film's penultimate racing sequence, Chan's character wins in a then-new, twin-turbocharged GTO (3000GT) VR-4.
A Gateway to Racing
Though the film Thunderbolt gave Chan a chance to express his love for motorsport, his partnership with Mitsubishi gave him much-needed support for his on-track ventures away from the silver screen. From 1984 to 2004, the Jackie Chan Charity Cup ran as a supporting race for the Macau Grand Prix, as well as separate charity events in Zhuhai and Shanghai, featuring actors and aspiring racing drivers from across Asia.
In addition, Jackie became involved in Mitsubishi's entries in the Paris-Dakar Rally, as well as the Hong Kong-Beijing Rally. In November 2003, he was named the Honorary Team Director of Ralliart China, which fielded a Chinese team for the 2004 Dakar Rally. In September 2005, Mitsubishi and Chan celebrated the partnership with a limited edition car. The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX Jackie Chan Special Edition was developed in partnership with Japanese tuning house FireSports. With just 50 produced, Chan was personally involved in the design of the car's body kit, which featured a custom front diffuser and a revised air intake.
Ironically, Jackie Chan's biggest racing involvement would come from outside his partnership with Mitsubishi. In 2015 Chan teamed up with David Cheng to form the first LMP2 team from mainland China, Jackie Chan DC Racing, which competed in the FIA World Endurance Championship, European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series. In 2017, the team won the LMP2 class, as well as second and third overall during the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans; a win he compared to being as equally great as winning an Academy Award.
The Original Influencer
What Jackie Chan and Mitsubishi built together over the years was a template that many havied copied, but failed to duplicate. The partnership worked not because a famous person was photographed next to or sitting in a car, but because the famous person and the car had something to give each other. In exchange for a supporting role in his movies, Jackie Chan created the action-packed movie magic that packed theaters and video rental stores for years to come.
It's also worth putting a timestamp on all of this. Chan's Thunderbolt came out in 1995 and Who Am I? came out in 1998. The first Fast and the Furious; the film that most Western audiences credit with turning import tuner cars into a mainstream cultural phenomenon, didn't arrive until 2001. Jackie Chan was putting JDM dream cars at the center of cinematic car culture years before Vin Diesel and Paul Walker made it cool in America.
In that case, it's not product placement, but storytelling.
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This story was originally published May 31, 2026 at 2:30 PM.