Stars and Their Cars
Robert Avrech is an Emmy Award winning screenwriter who blogs at a site called Seraphic Secret. He has a post up about the automobile and freedom and since Robert is an avowed political conservative you can probably guess how he feels about things like taxpayer funded high speed rail and government regulations. If advocacy of limited government gives you the vapors, you might want to skip over his text, but Avrech is a part of the entertainment industry, lives in Los Angeles and knows the fashions and trends in his own industry.
Today, Hollywood celebrities make sure to be seen driving a Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, or any of the dopey but politically correct green cars. It is something of an open secret here among my Hollywood colleagues that the garage is fully stocked with BMW, Mercedes, Bentley, and for sure, a few Jags—for real driving.
But once upon a time Hollywood produced great stars who proudly posed with their autos, symbols of glamour, affluence, and freedom.
To prove his point, Avrech posted a number of publicity shots of movie stars and their cars. I’ve reproduced them below as well as a few others that I found. How many of the stars and their cars can you identify?
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
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Fantastic post Ronnie! It amazes me how banal some of them were. Buicks and Plymouths. An Olds. I'd assumed it would be way more Duesys and RR's. Nobody had a Bentley which I thought strange, especially for the gearheads like Gable and Power. I like Garner's Cooper S. Probably a works car since that would about the time he was doing Grand Prix and had access to all the major race heads at the time. I'm sure he just loved the image of him getting in and out of the Mini! Of course Curtis was driving an E-Type.
Leno. Letterman. Hip-hop stars. Lots of action movie actors... There are plenty of entertainment industry figures that like cars and trucks now. Many don't engage in rants against passenger railways, lead-free fuel, safety/consumer regulations, or other similar hatreds of some auto enthusiasts. And of course some stars just don't care about cars, in the same way I don't care about wristwatches. But there is no repression here... Also, when big-time wealth is measured in at least high double-digit millions, a car isn't much. Obviously, a guy with one Veyron is a rich guy, but there are so many things more expensive than that. The standard seems to be the illicit aerial photograph of the star's property, invariably valued over $10 million. What's impressive for Clark Gable or Fatty Arbuckle is a toy for Warren Beatty or J. Seinfeld. So surely it is premature to think that the world's headed for Galt, and famous people are ashamed of their wealth, because one has heard that L. DeCaprio drives a Toyota.