Keanu Reeves Raced This Supercharged Scion tC, And Now You Can, Too

The long-defunct Toyota Pro/Celebrity Races used to be my favorite part of the Long Beach race weekend. The annual ten-lap race was held from 1977 to 2016, raising money for area children’s hospitals, and it pitted some of the best racing drivers of all time against some of Hollywood’s best (and worst). While each racer in the event was given the same equipment, the grid of pros was started 30 seconds behind the celebs to give them a fighting chance. Some of the celebrities who participated in the event later went on to become more deeply interested in racing, like Frankie Muniz and Keanu Reeves. 

Reeves won the 2009 running of the Pro/Celebrity race, during the era in which Toyota didn’t build a single fun sports car. Instead of running something cheap and slow like a Yaris, Toyota decided to hand off the reigns of the Pro/Celebrity race to its excitement brand Scion between 2006 and 2012. Even the company’s 2AZ-powered tC coupe was deemed too slow for the race, and each was fitted with a TRD supercharger for a 60 horsepower bump to around 220 ponies at the crank. Each tC was also equipped with a racing clutch, a DC Sports exhaust, coilovers, a StopTech big brake kit, 17-inch BBS wheels, a Kaminari rear wing, and the basic minimum safety equipment like a roll cage and window net. Okay, so it’s not exactly a speed demon capable of a national championship, but this car would make an exquisite track day car or maybe a fun autocrosser with a cool story. 

It isn’t often that you get an opportunity to purchase a factory-built race car, and even more rare that one with a celebrity racer connection is offered for so little money. As of this writing the high bidder on this car over on Bring A Trailer, a no reserve listing at that, is going home with the car for just $3,500. Heck, you can barely get a used TRD supercharger for that much money these days. 

There’s something you should know about race cars, and especially cheap race cars with superchargers: they constantly get their asses kicked for ten laps at a time. There isn’t much documentation available about which Scions raced in which years, but apparently the company re-used a few of these cars for multiple events before selling them off. This Reeves-driven car was handed off to the FastLane Racing School, which operated at Willow Springs. So now it’s been a few years, it has retired from Hollywood (er, Long Beach), and there are racing students caning the crap out of the car in the middle of the hot-as-Hades desert. Yeah, that’s a good opportunity to absolutely cook a car in short order. 

The Scion’s odometer indicates it has only been driven 12,000 miles, but you can bet your bottom dollar that those have been some of the hardest miles any car has ever driven. Looking around at the images of the car in the auction listing, there have definitely been some off-track excursions and fifteen years of hard driving. It’s all still there, but the front bumper and side skirts have seen better days. The harnesses and window net are way out of date, and the decals are all cracked and sun faded, but some care and elbow grease could get it looking nice again. It’s the mechanicals I’m not so sure about. 

Look, I’m not saying this car is suddenly unreliable. It’s still running the venerable 2AZ 2.4-liter inline four which powered a million Camrys and RAV4s for a couple of decades now. They reportedly start to burn oil after a while, so a track-only engine with forced induction is probably going to need a rebuild at some point, but these engines are basically free and you can find parts in whatever direction you choose to look. 

While Mr. Reeves doesn’t have much connection to this car today, aside from the fact that it’s his name emblazoned on windshield and rear quarter, it holds a place in his motorsports history. Keanu still occasionally races, having stepped in for a few rounds of the Toyota GR Cup series in 2024. 

In 1999’s “The Matrix,” Keanu’s character could plug in to the internet itself and download a program. Maybe that’s how he learned to be a good racing driver and won the Pro/Celebrity event. I wish I could download that file, because while I’m definitely an above average driver, I’m nowhere near fast enough to buy myself a dedicated track car. Then again, this one is cheap enough, perhaps I should just take the risk and learn how. 

If you’ve already jacked into the Matrix and downloaded the good driver file, maybe you’ll want to pick up this wild factory-built racer for a song. Despite the rough condition and non-title legality of this track-only car, I would be genuinely surprised to see this sell for less than $10,000. One of those GR Cup racers that I mentioned sells for a massive $130,000 or so, making this even more of a bargain. Wake up, Mr. Anderson. Follow the Scion tC.