The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution that Paul Walker drove in 2 Fast 2 Furious has been saved from a garage in New York and returned to movie-star condition after seemingly dropping off the face of the planet for around two decades.

Car collector Gabriel Tremblay runs the Furious Garage, which boasts that it has saved 15 vehicles from the wildly popular franchise. While the 2003 movie used several Evo VIIs during filming, Tremblay maintains this one is the ‘original Hero 1 Evo’, meaning it was the principal example used for close-ups and the like instead of a stunt car.

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Tremblay took to Instagram recently to post a photo of the Evo sitting in a garage, accompanied by the caption: “The day we found Paul’s missing Hero 1 Evo. This iconic car was hiding in a barn garage in upstate New York for most of its life after filming!”

Walker drove the heavily modified Mitsubishi for large parts of 2 Fast 2 Furious, the second film in the series, which transferred the action from Los Angeles to Miami as his character, ex-cop Brian Conner, brings down a drug lord with some help from his friends and a lot of nitrous oxide. 

Tremblay and the team at Furious Garage finished restoring the car around the middle of this year, giving it a coat of Lime Gold Candy paint to match its appearance on screen, and painstakingly applying the decals it sported in the movie.

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He also gave fans of the franchise a little history lesson about the car, writing: “The Evo was the longest-featured car in the entire franchise in terms of screen time! Paul was seen in it for nearly 45 minutes of the film. This was due to the storyline and the product placement agreement between Universal and Mitsubishi!”

The Furious Garage has also restored or built other cars from the series like a Nissan 240SX, Volkswagen Jetta, Toyota Supra and Dodge Ram. The franchise played a big role in popularising tuner car culture in America and overseas, and also featured iconic models like Nissan’s R34 GT-R, the 1970 Dodge Charger R/T and Ford’s 1967 Mustang Fastback.