Seinfeld Writer Spike Feresten on His Love of Vintage Automobiles, Driving Jerry’s 917, and His New Auto Show

Spike Feresten has carried out nearly all there is to do in American comedy. He wrote for David Letterman’s Late Evening and Late Show in the 1990s, penned an episode of The Simpsons, and while he was writing for Seinfeld, place with each other the classic episode featuring the Soup Nazi. He also had his personal late-evening talk show, cleverly titled Talkshow with Spike Feresten, for 3 seasons on Fox. But it is the Massachusetts native’s enjoy for cars that will be on display in his most current project.

Feresten’s new series Vehicle Matchmaker runs on Esquire Ne2rk, the new cable ne2rk for men put collectively by NBCUniversal and C/D’s brother title Esquire. The show is a cross in between comedy, road tests, and automotive adventure series mixed in Feresten’s tips for the forlorn, if not really hapless, auto purchaser. The show runs on Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET—so make plans. Our sophisticated, multiplatform, synergistic corporate advertising and marketing is counting on you. Here’s a fast appear at the show:

But just before we dive back into that, let’s discover that point where American auto culture and comedy collide and find out the truth about how Jerry Seinfeld came to personal Steve McQueen’s Porsche 917. Then how McQueen is responsible for the speed bumps on the street exactly where Feresten lives. And lastly how McQueen and Jerry Seinfeld inspired Feresten’s new series.

Car and Driver: What is it with comedians and automobiles? So several of them—Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman—seem to be into vehicles.

Spike Feresten: And it goes on extended before these guys. Johnny Carson was huge into Corvettes, I think. I bet if we kept going back to Groucho Marx that we’d discover that most guys are vehicle guys. Comedians or not. They just have a tendency to have a louder bullhorn than everyone else.

You do not feel there’s necessarily a connection amongst the mentality of a automobile guy and the mentality of a comedian?

That is a actually excellent query. Obtaining worked with a couple of these guys—Dave and Jerry—you know, you’re busy all the time. And automobiles are the ideal hobby to fill quick pieces of time. Like obtaining the newest Vehicle and Driver or Autoweek. I don’;t forget that Dave would often be flipping through the classifieds. It appears like it does not take a lot of your time. For me, when I’m operating, I adore the distraction of looking at vehicles. That’s exactly where this whole show is born from that vehicles are a excellent distraction from function, but not so distracting that you can’t get your function done.

This [occurred] back just before he had his IndyCar team: I was working for Dave—I was a writer on the show—and I came across this charity event, I don’t don’;t forget what the trigger was, but it was a go-kart race. I recommended that we enter a go-kart on behalf of The Late Show. He jumped at the notion. He believed that would be wonderful.

So the Wednesday just before the race there’s a knock at my office door and it is Dave. That just does not occur. Dave, although he socializes with the writers, does not quit by in the middle of a show day just to shoot the shit. And he says, “What you doin’ here?” “Working on Leading Tens,” I replied. He came back with, “Don’t you believe you ought to be down operating on that go-kart engine? Let me be clear, I don’t want to come in fifth location in that race on Saturday. So you want to make sure you do everything to guarantee that we have an edge.” So for the next 3 days I’m out in the planet tweaking the Briggs & Stratton lawn-mower engine and acquiring racing gas to try and get us an edge to win the race. And on Saturday—his day off—Dave is calling [producer] Rob Burnett who is also co-driving with me every half-hour for updates on how we’re undertaking. He was seriously involved in each aspect of how we had been carrying out in the race. It created total sense soon after that moment that he bought a racing group.

I’m proud that I was his initial race driver—the initial Worldwide Pants race driver. We launched his career in racing.

How’d you guys do?

We won—until they checked the engine. They saw it was a diverse type of spark plug, that the speed governor had been taken off, and the gas was bright purple. We weren’t disqualified since they realized we’d be speaking about it on the air. We have been bumped down to fifth place. Cheating is a gray area. We thought of it as carrying out everything to win.

What was your 1st vehicle?

I grew up in a blue-collar, middle-class Massachusetts household and, like a lot of men and women, I didn’t really have a choice what my 1st automobile would be. So my dad showed up 1 day with a Ford Torino 500 that he had bought for about $ 480 and he stated, “Here’s your vehicle.” It was blue with a black interior, and I was satisfied to have a vehicle with wheels that rolled. It didn’t matter what the automobile looked like.

From there my obsession was American muscle vehicles. You know Mustangs and the like. Then my mind was blown by the first Honda Accord that came to town. A car with a 5-speed manual transmission was a revelation to a teenager.

But it wasn’t until I brushed up against Letterman and his collection and drove his cars that I even began to recognize what Porsches are and why they’re fantastic. Until that point, it was nevertheless American vehicles like Corvettes in my mind.

So what do you drive now?

Here’s what I have correct now. A 1971 Land Rover Series IIA that I got as an impulse get on eBay for $ 6900. Hands down, it is 1 of my preferred automobiles I’ve ever owned. I have a ’58 Porsche 356A Speedster and a 1968 911L lightweight Trans-Am factory race car that was after raced by Dickie Smothers, so it has a comedy provenance. My main driver is a 2007 911 GT3 RS that I drive quite much every day unless I need to have to choose up more than one particular kid.

I just picked up a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4. I utilized to have a Dino and [even though] Daytona costs have gone by means of the roof, men and women have largely ignored these cars. I drove 1 and fell in love with it. And that’s my obsession correct now—I was working on the amp gauge this morning. It is such a stunning, enjoyable, smelly, gassy, Italian beast. Like a massive plate of spaghetti and a sloshing goblet of Chablis. And it is the very first V-12 Ferrari I’ve owned.

Has Jerry Seinfeld ever let you drive his 917?

I’ve driven it, so . . . yes. I’ve driven his 917 and his 908/3 and it actually is an amazing issue to have Jerry Seinfeld as a friend and that collection of automobiles. It’s proper down the street from me at Santa Monica Airport. You wake up and you’re at Laguna Seca driving a 908/3 and you are like, “How did this happen?”

And the 917, I helped him discover it.

That’s the 917 that Solar Productions—Steve McQueen’s company—owned and employed although filming Le Mans.

Yes. And it was on La Cienega in Hollywood and I referred to as him up and stated, “You’re not going to think what’s on La Cienega in a showroom window. Steve McQueen’s 917 from Solar Productions.”

A couple of weeks later he was in town and the 2 of us went to look at it. And we just stared at this auto for hours. 2 hours just walking around it and hunting at it. It was such a factor of beauty and we were so taken by it. And this predated the Steve McQueen hysteria. Except that in my little group of close friends, we had been currently hysterical about Steve McQueen.

So Jerry looked at the automobile and it was a lot of money back then and he didn’t want to get it. And I told him he had to. There was no other guy in the globe who could personal this automobile and really feel okay about it. “You’re that type of collector,” I stated. And he’s been thanking me ever since.

And that’s why this show started. It was stuff like that. Quite frequently men and women don’t want to take your guidance, but I’ve had a tiny luck at convincing folks what to acquire.

So that is the basis of your show on the Esquire Ne2rk—it’s you choosing out 3 vehicles for a buddy and helping them pick the proper a single.

Just before we pitched this show I had sold 20 or 30 vehicles to friends, households, and famous close friends, and my wife was like, “You genuinely ought to be acquiring paid for this, because it is consuming a lot of your time.”

If you can take an individual out of their comfort zone and show them, “Here’s the auto you want and right here are 2 more you should consider,” you can see them opening their eyes and comprehend what’s going on. This show usually speaks to people who don’t know anything about vehicles.

Are these all new automobiles or a mix of new and older vehicles?

Most of the time we’re dealing with budgets that are about $ 40,000 or less, and it’s new vehicles that individuals are following. But I’d say on more than half the episodes I mix in a vintage automobile. We had a Buick Grand National in just since I was a huge fan of that car and what it stood for. Plus I wanted to drive it and I had never driven one particular.

Did you have any individual come in who had an unlimited budget?

No. We’re searching for that guy.

And you’ll have some showbiz-type buddies on?

Yeah, I had Will Forte on and Seth Meyers and Jerry Seinfeld all in one particular episode. My brother Wally was in that episode. And he is the cue card guy for Saturday Night Reside and Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. And I believed it would be enjoyable to have them in that episode due to the fact they knew Wally. The show is not just cars, it is comedy and vehicles. I’m becoming funny the whole time.

Are there any vehicles you’ve owned that have disappointed you?

I bought a vehicle I had been chasing out in Malibu, a 1973 911S. It was a silver-over-black automobile, formerly owned by Otis Chandler. I purchased it and couldn’t stand the way it drove. It was a lot heavier than the 911T that I had owned. It was a lot slower than the RS I owned at the time. There was something going on with it so that it just didn’t fairly really feel as good as a 911T or RS.

Are there any automobiles that impressed you although generating the show?

The F-variety. This season the 2 cars that just blew my thoughts were the F-kind and the new Porsche 911 Turbo S. Those 2 have been just such large wins and functioned so beautifully.

The F-sort because of the sound—it’s just like an angry electric trumpet. It sounds like gunfire when you let off. I’ve in no way had such an experience exactly where I’ve loved a “sound car” more than a “speed auto.” This is a auto you can have enjoyable in making sounds up to 40 mph and never ever breaking any speed limits.

And the Turbo S is an pricey automobile but it’s worth every penny. You can blast it via canyons on a Sunday and then I took my little ones to school in it on a Monday morning. That Sunday/Monday transition was just seamless.

Do you have any distinct auto films that you love?

Properly, Le Mans is the large 1. But far more than that, it was all these Tv shows from the 6ties. Like CHiPs and Emergency! Something, you know, that showcased that PCH and Malibu driving lifestyle. It genuinely spoke to me when I was living in this modest Massachusetts town exactly where it was cold and cloudy most of the time.

And here’s a strange coincidence I reside 2 doors down from where James Garner and Steve McQueen lived.

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We interviewed Garner and he stated that McQueen and he used to race their Minis up and down that street.

Well there are speed bumps there and I asked somebody the other day, “Where did these speed bumps come from?” And they mentioned, “These are the Steve McQueen speed bumps.” Garner and McQueen would race up and down the street and the families began receiving upset about it. So they dropped them in.

Is there anything else we ought to know about your show?

I like to do things the dealerships will not do. You go into a dealership and you really feel scared that you are getting taken benefit of. You come on my show or you watch my show and you’re going to have entertaining and you are going to discover about these cars and you’re going to encounter them—without any pressure whatsoever.

Watch Spike Feresten’s new show, Auto Matchmaker, on Tuesday nights on the Esquire Ne2rk at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT. Head here to uncover the Esquire Ne2rk on your provider.

Seinfeld Writer Spike Feresten on His Love of Vintage Automobiles, Driving Jerry’s 917, and His New Auto Show

America’s 17 Most-American Vehicles Created In America By Americans For Americans Who Love America

Yeah, yeah, yeah… America is diverse items to diverse people. But there are nevertheless core beliefs and values that virtually all of us share. These are issues like forthrightness, and appreciation of abundance, and confidence in the future. In sum, we like issues bold, big, and bodacious.

So here C/D presents, as American stares down its 238th birthday, the 17 most ’Murican of American automobiles and trucks. Not just production vehicles, but the machines that express the essence of American character and ambition.

You know, what ever, here’s a list.

1. Bigfoot

Bigfoot

Sometimes the aesthetic of items gets out ahead of any function. Back in 1975, Bob Chandler was running his Midwest 4 Wheel Drive and Efficiency Center in Missouri and employing his 1974 Ford F-250 4×4 pickup to run errands for the business and as his loved ones hauler. If that blue F-250 looked great with big tires below it, then it was going to look even far better with larger tires. Then why not even bigger tires? And pretty soon the tires were so large that the truck had morphed from becoming a pickup into a monster.

By 1979 Chandler was being paid to exhibit his monster truck, now christened Bigfoot 4x4x4, at events around the Midwest. By 1981 it showed up in a film called Take This Job and Shove It. And someplace in there it was decided that a monster truck could drive appropriate more than the tops of regular automobiles.

America has loved monster trucks ever given that.

2. 1992 Hummer H1

Hummer H1

The M998 “Humvee” military truck is sort of an oversize Jeep replacement created in the early 1980s. It was in no way intended to run on civilian roads or be a regular commuter car. Then, in the early 1990s, an Austrian bodybuilder turned film star named Arnold Schwarzenegger decided he wanted to drive a single every day through the streets of Santa Monica, California, and the beast went on to earn some battle credentials in Desert Storm.

Ridiculously wide and clumsy in every day use, the Hummer H1 nonetheless became one thing of an icon of that bygone era when it seemed like the actual-estate bubble would in no way burst, Lehman Brothers was a stable employer, and it was sensible for Californians to elect Schwarzenegger governor.

Hummer stopped production of the H1 in 2006, and Hummer itself died in 2010. But for that moment, there was nothing more American.

3. 2013 Ford Shelby GT500

2014 Ford Shelby GT500 model shown

Take a easy American auto – the only one particular left in production with a solid rear axle – and shove 662 horsepower into it from a 5.8-liter, DOHC 32-valve V-8 force-fed by a Roots blower. The result is a Mustang that would rocket via the quarter-mile in 11.8 seconds and top out at far more than 200 mph. Insane? Certainly. Glorious? Like landing on the moon.

Only America could construct such a vehicle. And only America has been to the moon.

4. 1967 Chevrolet Corvette 427 L88

1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 427 convertible

It is the ideal-hunting mid-year Corvette in its final year, powered by a huge lump of an iron-block V-8 topped by aluminum heads and massive carburetors, below-rated at 435 horsepower. “The L88 is rated at 435 hp, like the L89, but we were virtually afraid to try it,” we wrote in the Might 1967 situation. “Just listening to it idle, we knew it must have more than 500 real horsepower, and apart from, it was Friday the 13th.”

There have been faster production Corvettes than the race-prepared L88, but this is the Corvette each and every other Corvette desires to be. Only 20 were built. And in September 2013, one particular sold for $ 3.2 million at a Mecum auction in Dallas.

5. 1959 Cadillac Eldorado

1959 Cadillac Eldorado

It’s the ultimate in over-the-prime flamboyant styling: a 225-inch-long parade float with a toothy grille up front and the tallest tail fins ever place on a Cadillac in back. Plenty of other countries could have created it. But only America could have conceived it.

6. 1971 Cadillac Eldorado

1971 Cadillac Eldorado

Excessively overstyled with every 1970s cliché, the front-drive second-generation Eldorado was as tasteless as its ’59 Eldorado grandfather. It was styling as entertainment. The 500-cubic-inch (72-liter) V-8 powering the ’71 was rated at 365 horsepower. But by 1975 the output had been strangled down to 190 horsepower.

7. 1932 Ford V-8 Roadster

1932 Ford V-8 Roadster

As the 1st, popularly priced V-8–powered American vehicle, it is a classic on that basis alone. But it was as a used car that it became the standard platform for hot rods in the years following Globe War II. There’s nothing at all a lot more American than a hot rod, and this is the car that spawned much more of them.

8. 1931 Duesenberg Model J Murphy Whitell Coupe

1931 Duesenberg Model J Murphy Whitell Coupe

In between 1921 and 1937, Duesenberg was the ultimate American auto. Not just bold, but arrogant. Not just large, but huge. No just well-constructed, but built with unrivaled good quality. And the dooziest of Duesenbergs was this Murphy-bodied Model J coupe. In 2011 it sold at the Gooding & Company auction for $ 10.34 million that remains a record for an American auto.

9. 1923 Miller 122

1923 Miller 122

Harry Miller was the single greatest American racing innovator of the early twentieth century. And his greatest achievement was combining his brilliant 2.-liter racing 4-cylinder with his model 122 single-seat racer. It was a mixture that won the 1923 Indianapolis 500 with driver Tommy Milton.

Between 1922 and 1938, Miller-powered automobiles would win the 500 a complete 12 instances. Then the Miller engine, beneath the guidance of his onetime employee Fred Offenhauser, would evolve into the “Offy” 4 that would win Indy another 27 times. In the 1976 classic, Johnny Rutherford was the last winner at Indy in an Offy-powered auto.

8. 1948 Tucker 48

1948 Tucker 48

Preston Tucker—through sheer will and some shaky financing—came agonizingly close to revolutionizing the automotive globe with this rear-engined machine wearing 3 headlights.

Only 51 Tucker 48s have been completed. But the Preston Tucker story remains 1 of the greatest in American automotive history.

11. 1990 Vector W8

1992 Vector W8 model shown

Gerald Wiegert’s lunatic take on the supercar is this mid-engined monster constructed utilizing aircraft-grade parts and a 650-horsepower, twin-turbocharged, 5.7-liter version of the Chevrolet small-block V-7 Employing a 3-speed automatic transmission, the top speed was a theoretical 220 mph. But it went a lot more rapidly than that in every American adolescent’s dreams.

12. Don Garlits’s 1956 Swamp Rat I

Don Garlits’s 1956 Swamp Rat I

Huge Daddy’s first Swamp Rat dragster wasn’t much more than a pair of frame rails and an huge Chrysler Hemi V-8 engine. But it was quick, and in 1958 it went 180 mph in the quarter-mile. It’s the car upon which Garlits’s career was built—and all of contemporary drag-racing is built upon Garlits’s career.

Swamp Rat I would be followed by 33 far more Swamp Rats through the years. But go to Garlits’s Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida, and it is this auto that has the most honored place.

13. 2015 Cadillac Escalade

2015 Cadillac Escalade

Back in 1999 the very first Escalade wasn’t significantly more than a GMC Yukon Denali with a fresh grille. And the Yukon Denali wasn’t significantly far more than a Chevy Tahoe carrying every single bolt-on component GM had in its inventory. And the Chevy Tahoe wasn’t significantly far more than a Chevy pickup with a truly bitchin’ shell.

These days, the 4th generation of this sort of ridiculous, but really sort of amazing, truck is now locating its way into Cadillac dealerships. Its styling is brilliantly excessive, and it is far more truly luxurious than ever prior to, but underneath there’s nonetheless a lot of Chevy pickup aboard. There is not yet another country on Earth that would dare make anything like it.

14. 1967 Plymouth GTX “Silver Bullet” Street Racer

1967 Plymouth GTX “Silver Bullet” Street Racer

The greatest auto in the history of street racing, it was nominally a Plymouth GTX owned by a mechanic who worked at a Sunoco station on Woodward Avenue in Birmingham, Michigan. But in reality it was a test bed for each and every go-fast concept that a group of efficiency-crazed Chrysler engineers could dream up and scheme to create.

Under the hood is a version of the classic race Hemi V-8 swollen to 487 cubic inches—that’s 7 liters if you speak not-American. Energy output? Make a great guess. But maintain in thoughts that, in complete street trim with mufflers and a 3-speed TorqueFlite automatic, it was capable of running 10.5 in the quarter-mile at 132 mph.

And it only seldom created it onto a racetrack.

15. 1955 Chevrolet

1955 Chevrolet Bel Air

It is the initial auto to carry Chevrolet’s legendary tiny-block V-8. But although that 265-cubic-incher was rated by the factory at only 162 horsepower, the factory “Power Pack” led to the tiny-block becoming the most common racing and higher-functionality street engine in American history.

These days 180 horsepower seems modest. But back then it was adequate to propel Fonty Flock to a win at the 25-mile Grand National race on Columbia Speedway’s half-mile dirt oval in March 1955. That was Chevrolet’s first NASCAR win.

16. 2013 Tesla Model S

2013 Tesla Model S P85

Preston Tucker nearly did it. Gerald Wiegert took a very good stab at it. But it is Elon Musk who has effectively established a really revolutionary, wholly new car brand in America with Tesla.

There’s space to criticize Tesla as becoming unfairly subsidized by the government. But be that as it may, the bottom line is that it’s generating an incredible car against agonizing odds. And every all-electric Model S is built in an assembly plant in Fremont, California, which is, at least correct now, in the United States.

Tesla is the great American automotive-good results story of the twenty-1st century. And there are plenty of motives to celebrate that.

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• Pictures and Info: 2013 Ram 1500

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17. 2009 Cadillac Presidential Limousine

2009 Cadillac Presidential Limousine

A large, ungainly, but oddly rugged and brutally handsome factor, the Presidential Limousine that has served Barack Obama has turn into an instantly iconic element of his presidency.

Most of its specifications and tech information are classified, but this presidential transportation device is fairly clearly based on GMC’s TopKick commercial truck chassis with components and pieces from various Cadillacs—those are Escalade headlights—giving it some passing resemblance to civilian-owned luxury vehicles.

Nicknamed “The Beast” by the Secret Service, it embodies all the contradictions that make America and Americans unique and wonderful. It is a truck disguised as a limousine a royal ride for the leader of a democratic republic and it is a heavily armed and armored security chamber symbolizing a nation that prides itself on becoming open and free. So it is perfect.

America, f*** yeah!

America’s 17 Most-American Vehicles Created In America By Americans For Americans Who Love America