Dwayne Johnson and his Luke Hobbs character from Hobbs & Shaw might have more in common than meets the eye. The world-famous wrestler turned actor portrays the law man who tends to bend the rules in several efforts to save the world, often somehow relating to the use of cars in the Fast & Furious vein, but Johnson also has a bit of an interesting history with cars. As it turns out, he once bought a car as a teenager, and it turned out to not be his best decision.
In a tweet in 2017, Johnson briefly touched on a bad experience buying a stolen car in Nashville. Heading all the way to Hawaii from Nashville to talk with Johnson, I wanted to hear the whole story…
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“I was 15 years old and I am a big fan of traditional country music, and I would go down to, not [Broadway], Lower [Broadway],” Johnson explained. “And if you’re familiar, and a few of you people are out there, and know that there’s [Broadway] and of course with the Ryman Auditorium, Tootsie’s and then there’s Lower Broad where it’s a little different. But still there’s some good country music and some good drinking.”
At the time, Johnson was 15-years-old. “I had no business being in these bars, but I was still in these bars drinking a little bit with a buddy of mine,” Johnson recalled. “His name was Downtown Bruno, and with a name like that and me at 15 years old, you know it’s going to be trouble.
“We were in a bar and and a guy came in who looked like he was high, probably a junkie or a crack head and said, ‘Hey, I want to sell a car. Anybody want to buy a car?’ I looked and I said, ‘Yeah.’ I mean this is a dive bar we’re in. And I said,’”How much?’ He goes, ’70 bucks.’ And I said, ‘Well, I got 30…’ or 40, I can’t remember what it is.
How’s that for a bargain, right? So, Johnson and the car salesman struck a deal where he would pay what he had on him before coming back to payoff the debt. “He gives me the keys, we hop in the car, we drive down, we’re driving down the I-65 now, me and my buddy Bruno. And were like, ‘We got a car, man!’ I’m 15, so stupid,” Johnson remembered.
Then, Johnson and his pal Bruno started to realize this situation was certainly less than idea, and things would spiral quickly. “We started hearing noise in the back and I’m driving and I was like, ‘What the hell?’,” Johnson said. Surprise! “And I look and there’s another crack head that’s passed out on the… so it’s a big body, and 77 Thunderbird’s had a big body back there, big space on the ground. We pull over, kick his ass out. And then the next day they, I didn’t get the gas key so I couldn’t put gas in the car.”
It’s a good thing he couldn’t put gas in it. “Car was wound up being stolen,” Johnson remembered. “I left it at a Burger King parking lot. The moral of the story is don’t buy from a crack head. Just go to a regular place.”
Hobbs and Johnson both seem to have good intentions, and both might ultimately learn lessons the hard way. Either way, they’re in theaters with Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, doing all sorts of crazier stuff with cars, right now.
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