Beaters, bombers and a bug
From Guy Fieri’s 280Z to Brendan Shanahan’s Volare, your first set of wheels is always special
Everyone remembers their first car, often with a mixture of fond and frustrating moments in their young lives. From beaters to bombers, here are 10 of our favourite first-car tales from celebrities we’ve covered in Wheels over the past few years.
Guy Fieri
As a restaurateur and host of Diners, Drive-ins and
Dives, Guy Fieri is known for his love of mom-andpop eateries and some stylish rides.
He’s driven a Corvette Pace car at the Indy 500 and pulls up to start each episode in a classic Chevy Camaro RS SS 396 convertible.
But his first car has a special place in his heart — a root-beer metallic brown 1978 Datsun 280Z.
“This was really the car: a beautiful 280Z, about 75,000 miles, just immaculate,” he recalls.
Unfortunately, he only had the car for about four months before it was written off in an accident.
Although his first car was an import, Fieri says there was a stark choice when he was growing up: you were either a Chevy guy or a Ford guy.
By and large over the years, he’s landed on the Chevy side.
Brendan Shanahan
Want to get under the skin of new Maple Leaf president Brendan Shanahan? Try singing a line or two from “Volare,” the song that accompanied ads for Plymouth’s Volare.
While playing junior hockey with the London Knights in the 1980s, Shanahan endured a fair share of teasing over his first car: a used 1980 Volare.
But the future Hall of Famer took it all in stride.
“You didn’t care what kind of car you had, as long as you had a car,” recalls the three-time Stanley Cup winner. “I just wanted a little bit of freedom to move around; to get from school to practice on time. I also wanted to have the ability, if we had the day off, to drive home and see my family (in Toronto).”
Kenny Rogers Country star Kenny Rogers’s first car was half of a 1956 Ford Fairlane — his father owned the other half — purchased as an up-and-coming musician in Houston, Texas.
“My dad couldn’t afford to buy it by himself,” the singer recalls. “I had a parttime job, so I said, ‘Let’s you and I buy it together,’ thinking what a wise idea that was.” Rogers laughs at his naiveté. “The idea was we were going to share the time on it, but my dad made out the schedule and my time to drive it was conveniently when I was in school — so I basically never got to drive it,” Rogers says. “But it was fun.”
Peter Fonda
The car Peter Fonda was really hoping to get as a teen was his dad’s 1956 Thunderbird with the continental kit.
But the car he ended up couldn’t have been more unlike the American behemoth.
His grey 1957 Volkswagen Beetle was cheap and Spartan — no radio, no gas gauge.
The thinking was that the humble ride would help him fit in on campus. But things didn’t go according to plan.
“Guess what had never been seen in Omaha, Neb.? On campus, they’d never seen a Volkswagen and I stuck out like a sore thumb! All I ever got was, ‘Where do you put the luggage?’ ”
Fonda says he felt like Richard Dreyfus in American Graffiti — the egghead, as he puts it, with the lousy, uncool car.
Danica Patrick
NASCAR racer Danica Patrick is one of the sport’s better-known drivers in her #10 GoDaddy Chevy.
But the first car she ever owned also had a motorsport connection: she bought the 2005 BMW 645 black convertible with red leather interior from her former team owner, Bobby Rahal, for about $75,000. “My mom had BMWs when we were growing up, so I really like how they handled and how they felt,” Patrick says. “I liked the speed, handling and luxury — but I got the convertible for fun.”
Simona De Silvestro
The former IndyCar driver now auditioning in Formula One with the Sauber team could potentially become only the third female to race in a grand prix.
Dr. Oz Television host and cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz is known for
Tony Hawk Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk bought his dad’s1977 Honda Civic for $1,500 in 1984.
The California teen needed the car to continue developing his skills on the skateboard.
“(I needed it) to get to the skate park — that was it,” he recalls. “The only way I would get to the park after school — my dad was working — was to figure out which bus from school went closest to the park. And, to be honest, it didn’t go that close, so I didn’t get there much.”
Ron Fellows Canadian motorsports legend Ron Fellows struggled as a young man to get in the sport with limited finances.
The answer was a street-legal racer — a Players/GM series 1986 Camaro IROC-Z, which came with a sealed engine to prevent tampering.
“It was the Camaro and the Firebird, so you had your choice. And it came with a roll cage,” he recalls. “You could essentially drive them to the track and race them.
“It was a real ground-breaking series. There was real prize money and national TV, and it was really the series that relaunched my career.”
But off the track, the young Swiss racer is happy to just putt-putt-putt along in her 1956 Autobianchi Bianchina, which her father helped her buy.
“My dad really liked the Pink Panther movies, and that’s how it started,” she says. “I had never seen them, so my dad made my mom and I watch — I think it was four movies. There was this car chase and I just fell in love with that car.”
“It is just a cool little car and it is so small . . . it has like 30 horsepower, so it doesn’t go fast at all.”
Daniel Boulud Renowned chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud started his culinary career at the age of 14 near Lyon, France. He bought his first car a couple of years later: a simple, reliable and iconic French Renault 4.
“(The) Renault 4 was like a Ford Fiesta,” says Boulud, who owns Café Boulud at the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville. “It was an economy car, but I was driving it like a race car.”
The car didn’t last long and he moved on a “super-sporty, yet econosporty,” Renault 5.
But the car the Formula One fan pined for was the locally badged Gordini.
“They were taking Renaults and turning those into pumped-up cars. Gordini was always blue with a white stripe . . . they were like street cars that were also doing rally racing.” his frankness and ability to tackle tough topics. His first car is one of them.
“The week I got my licence, I got in the car (his father’s 1970 Porsche 911) and I wanted to move it to the back of the driveway,” he explains. “The driveway had a hill, a cliff at the back, so I decided that instead of doing it by getting the keys, I would just push the car and I’d quickly jump inside of it. So I pushed the car, I jumped inside, but of course, in those cars, the steering wheel locked and the brakes didn’t work: I went off the cliff with the car without even turning it on.” Luckily the Porsche became wedged on a tree and Oz escaped unscathed.