Staying Fit
Bloomberg / Getty Images
Bloomberg / Getty Images
High-profile folks are drawn to interesting, sometimes odd, cars. That's logical, says entertainer and car buff Jay Leno: “That’s what show people do. They show off.” Leno, former host of NBC’s The Tonight Show, and more recently his own cable show, Jay Leno‘s Garage, told us he never meant to be a car collector. “I just bought cars I liked and never sold them.” His first was a 1934 Packard that he bought from Phil Hill, the race driver, 30-some years ago. Now an airport hangar is his garage.
Here’s a look at some cars that Leno and other celebrities drive. Like all stars, some shine brightest in their own galaxies while others’ light seems universal. But all are car folks and people of great accomplishment.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
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Trucks. What else for a granite-like former wrestler who's now a movie and TV star? The Rock (his pro wrestling nickname that has stuck) is known for The Fast and the Furious movies, among others, and the HBO hit Ballers. He’s a Ford F-150 man and owns many, according to the company, including the high-performance Raptor model. In fact, he presented his cousin Tanoai Reed, who also is his stunt double, a customized crew-cab Ford pickup earlier this year. A video shows them hugging and captures a few tears of joy.
Mary Barra
Steve Lagreca / Alamy Stock Photo
The CEO of General Motors — the first woman to boss a major car company — says she fell in love with cars when she was just 10. She wanted a Pontiac Trans Am as her first ride, but after her mom weighed in, young Barra got a Chevrolet Chevette. Now, her list of personal cars “varies, but we keep a ’69 Camaro SS Convertible and a ’70 Trans Am that my husband and son are currently restoring,” she tells us. As CEO, she can drive anything she wants from the company fleet. But there's no way she will name a favorite. “That’s like asking me to choose a favorite child!”
David Crosby
Manfred Schmid / Getty Images
Still a prolific and energetic touring musician at age 77, the cofounder of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash tells us that if he only could have one car, it’d be his Tesla Model S. “I’ve owned most of the really good kinds of cars — 6.9 Mercedes sedan, 750 BMW, Ferrari, a ’67 Mustang with a pretty radical motor.” About once a week, he wheels around in a 1940 Ford pickup with “a really, really cherry-red paint job” and V-8 engine he helped build. Long relationship: He displayed it at “The Cars and Guitars of Rock ‘n’ Roll” exhibit at L.A.’s Petersen Automotive Museum in 2001.
Aseel Al-Hamad
Ambient Excellence / Alamy Stock Photo
She’s a race driver, the first female board member of the Saudi Arabian Motor Federation and the Saudi representative for the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Women in Motorsport Commission. Yet she never drove on a Saudi racetrack until this year, when her home country lifted its ban on female drivers. Her celebration lap at the Reem International Circuit in Riyadh was in a Jaguar F-Type — Jag having been a backer of female drivers in the country and she being a lover of fast machines. She said afterward: “A Jaguar F-Type ... the ultimate car to roar around the track.”
Jay Leno
Ian Forsyth / Getty Images
What to drive? He houses “130 cars, 93 motorcycles and a menagerie of engines, spare parts and memorabilia,” the Los Angeles Times tallied in 2014. But, he tells us, “I have a [1925] Model T that I use to get around L.A., which is perfect because nobody can steal it. They can’t figure out how to drive it. It only goes 40 miles per hour, which is perfect for L.A. And if you scrape it up, a new fender is $175.” Three-foot pedals, a lever on the driver’s left and a throttle lever on the steering column make the Tin Lizzie a challenge to operate.
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