A conversation with Adam Carolla

Adam Carolla likes oil. At least he likes that oil keeps cars running because he truly loves cars. Not an I’m-a-celebrity-so-I-can-afford-nice-cars kind of love, but a to-the-marrow, no-hope-of-recovery true car nerd like many of us. A look at the more recent entries on his resume bears that out: The Car Show on Comedy Central and his long-running Adam Carolla Show podcast. Not to mention all the cool stuff he owns — BRE Datsun 510s, a BMW 3.0 CSL, to name a couple, as well as more than a few vintage exotics.  

These days, Carolla also likes oil because he’s teamed up with Castrol to put on a few videos, including the one below where he plays with an Audi R8 in the rain. We sat down with Carolla to talk about his love of cars and laughed a bit too.

Did you become a car guy later in life or was this a dream since you were a child?

Adam Carolla: It’s both. It’s a childhood dream that I was lucky enough to pursue later in life, because I didn’t have any money from zero to, maybe, 33 or 34.

So you didn’t grow up with a trust fund or anything like that.

AC: Sadly, no, and it wasn’t even one of these things where we didn’t have any money, but my dad owns a transmission shop and we used to wrench. My dad didn’t own jack squat. He didn’t like cars. There’s nobody who is less interested in cars than my dad or my mom. There’s no one who owns fewer tools or is less compelled to turn a wrench than my dad or my mom. I grew up with no tools and no cars and no garages and no anything and no money and no one had any interest in anything. And I was very interested. 

What got you interested?

AC: You know, I don’t think anything got me interested in it. I think it’s a misnomer because no one asks — I use this as an example because I think it’s a good metaphor. If you talk to any rock drummer and you ask them, ‘Who got you interested in drumming?’, they don’t go, ‘Buddy Guy!’ they go, ‘When I was 5, my mom said I was just banging on everything, like pots and pans, so then when I was 7, they got me a drum kit and they couldn’t get me off of it.’ You know what I mean? But no one goes, ‘Well who bestowed this? Was your dad a drummer?’ Nobody's dad’s a rock drummer, you know?

But most kids’ parents had a stack of car magazines that they looked at all the time or whatever, you know what I mean?

AC: I definitely get it. But I don’t think there’s a give it or take it. What I mean is, my kids don’t give a rat’s ass about me and my stupid cars and they’re exposed to it all the time. For them, it’s like, yeah, Dad has got a thing with some cars, some Newman, something, race car, you know. And I take my son with me to Laguna Seca — he’s 12 now, and he’s kind of getting into it a little bit because he sees the crowd gathering around the car and firing it up and getting into the car. But I haven’t gotten (my kids) into it and my dad didn’t get me into it. I was just into it. 

I like mechanical stuff. And maybe it’s just a mechanical thing. Maybe it’s like 100 or 200 years ago, I would’ve been into trains and wagons. And 200 years from now, kids will be into hovercrafts or whatever. But I was into how do we do stuff, mechanically. I like the aesthetic of it, which is weird. You show me a Jaguar engine, like a 3.8 or a 4.2 with the gold head and the twin cam and the fins on it and the triple Weber or Mikuni or whatever 50 intake on it. And I look at that thing with the sidedraft and I go, ‘Oh yeah,’ I like that better than the shape of the car, per se.

There’s beauty in the way something works and looking at that, is that it?

AC: Yeah, like when you go to the vintage car race and the guy’s got the hood up on the 3.5 Batmobile, like the Group 5 BMW CSL, with the huge flairs. And it’s got those weird plastic trumpets on it with mechanical injection hoses going to it and it’s all set up in race trim, it’s the best. I like the aesthetic of the mechanical, in a weird way. Like you just look at a Porsche 935 and it's just all business — like the dish is that big in the rear and you look at all the cooling and the whatever and it’s just like, I love the aesthetic of it. 

It’s weird that you say that, though, because you’re absolutely right that there’s just inherently something you’re into, but cars — you can be into it because you’re really into art, you can be into it because you’re really into the mechanical stuff, you can be into it because you’re really into motion and speed, you can be into it because you’re really into luxury. There are so many aspects of cars that can draw your attention, but I always wonder: What makes the focus cars? Because, just like you say, that mechanical thing could transfer to so many other different things.

AC: Well, I think it does in the sense that I love architecture, I love design, I love building. I’m really into it. It is all kind of encompassing, I’m very much into that aesthetic and the execution of that as well. I mean, I love walking into a kick-ass, state-of-the-art kitchen, just going, ‘Oh my god, is this thing well-done!’ Because there’s a mechanical side with the ovens, microwaves and all that stuff. You know, when you walk into a world-class kitchen, you do this — it’s got the euro-hinge, you know, it’s self-closing and stainless-steel everywhere, and you go, ‘I love this, this is amazing.’

To me, it makes me think you’d go bonkers for a really nice Prevost bus, like holy shit, it’s a car and it’s a kitchen.

Yeah, I want a rolling kitchen! 

I like the aesthetic. I have a couple BRE cars, two BRE 510s and two BRE roadsters. Only two of them are done. If you take a look at the color schemes and the way Pete Brock did the two-tone roofs and the way he chose his colors and his lettering, some of his lettering was filled in and others were just an outline. It’s really kind of ingenious. It’s really smart and aesthetically interesting. And you just look at that and go, man, somebody really worked this out. It’s not just a blue car with a white stripe — it’s got the chevrons, the chevrons change color. Sometimes it says BRE in black, sometimes the roof is two-tone. It’s a work of art. It really is art. I just love that aspect of it.

Are there any parallels between your professional life and your love of cars? Can you draw anything from your interests? Do they combine or is that a total coincidence?

Yeah, I think that’s a total coincidence. It’s not a bad thought. I wish there was a connection. It’s purely: I’m going to do comedy, make some money and buy a car. And then I’ll think about the car stuff. I suppose if you want to write a book or make a documentary or rebuild a car, you need kind of the same mindset. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s going to take awhile. There’s going to be a lot of parts of it that aren’t that exciting or fun. It’s definitely that. But no, that’s why most comedians really don’t care about cars, and most car guys aren’t that funny. 

So you, Jerry Seinfeld, are more of the exception than the rule.

Yeah, there’s Leno, there’s Seinfeld, there’s me.

Leno’s another level. The number of cars he has and the variety…

Yeah, he knows more about more cars than anybody…

He knows more about steam engine cars than most people.

I joke with him that when the kids write a book report about him (as we used to call them back in the day) 30 years from now, they’ll write: 'died in a steam car accident in 2050.' The teacher’s going to say, 'Billy, you got this wrong. Steam cars were phased out over 150 years before.' And the kid replies, 'No, I swear, he died in a steam car accident.' Teacher says, 'You mean he died in one of those vertical Ubers?' Kid replies, “No, no. This was a Stanley Steamer.” It’s going to be comical. He (Leno) doesn’t like that joke.

I like that joke

You like that joke, alright.

I have to ask: I liked the car show. It was straightforward, no-nonsense, just go have that chat. What was going on behind the scenes? And why didn’t that show work out?

The show did a lot of super-typical TV stuff. The producers, for example, said John Salley has to be on the show, But I said, 'John Salley doesn’t know anything about cars.' There’s a difference between liking cars and knowing something about cars. But they wanted him in. John Salley is a really nice guy, who I like, but he doesn’t know anything about cars. But they said, 'Put John Salley in there.' So I put John Salley in, and we were doing 12 episodes, and on the 11th episode, they said, 'We’re going to fire John Salley.' And I said, 'Why not just wait until the end of the season?' and they said, 'He’s just not going to be there for the last episode.' Just bad producing. If you let it be a much purer version… instead, they were always kind of cooking everything all the time.

A perfect example: I told the producer, 'I’ve got a bit: I think I can get around this obstacle course in a car legally drunk faster than an old man, a soccer mom and a teenaged driver. We go out to Willow Springs, highway patrol shows up, we literally do shots of vodka. I wait until I blow a point 0.9 or whatever, (when we shot it, I actually I got up to a 0.11) and then I go against the clock to see if I can beat them.' And the producer said, 'The soccer mom is distracted with the kids in the car,' and I said, 'No, she’s not.' And the producer said, 'The old man is reaching for the radio.' And I said, 'No no no no no no no. Just straight up. It’s a soccer mom, teenaged driver, old man — I bet I’m better, drunk, than they are.” And the producer said, 'Because the girl is texting!' And I said, 'No!' It’s just straight ahead and funny. First of all, I get drunk with the cops, it’ll be funny. They’re there standing with their badges and their guns and I’m drinking, and say, 'I’m gonna drive the car in a minute. Wanna shot?' And I’m blowing the breathalyzer.

I literally had to tell the producer, we’re arguing so much, I said: 'Would you please listen to me. No, they’re not texting and driving because you are completely ruining the bit. They are at 100 percent, I am drunk.' That was the kind of stuff that would go on. I’d have a really funny bit, would’ve been a kick-ass bit. If I ever did that on 'The Man Show,' it would’ve been a killer bit because it would’ve been just me and Jimmy and a couple other guys and we would’ve made it kick ass. They (the producers) thought they knew better. They always said, 'No, here’s how we’re going to do it.' At a certain point, you get tired of arguing about everything and you just go, 'Fine.' And we shot the bit. I don’t think we ever even aired it. Who knows.

What is your favorite car being built right now and favorite car of all time?

Favorite car of all time is probably a Lamborghini Miura SV. Just aesthetically, you can’t go drive it every day — forget driving it. Just for looking at it, Lamborghini Miura SV.

Favorite car that’s being built right now? I’ll say, I don’t want to go too crazy, highfalutin, I’ll say the new Fisker Karma. If they got that thing right, that’s nice. It looked good and they were cool and everything was good about them, but they caught on fire, I guess, so they didn’t work, but I’ll say, if they got that Karma right, that’s a pretty good piece. 

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