When Dax Shepard Became a Dad He Knew He’d Never Drive a Minivan
It’s hard to predict what your first thought will be when you find out you’re going to be a father. Will you immediately start planning to remodel your house? Will you start planning how to save some extra cash each month? For actor Dax Shepard, the first immediate thought was “I’m not driving a minivan… I have to get a station wagon.”
Shepard was a guest on Jay Leno’s Garage, where he and fellow comedian and gearhead Jay Leno discussed their shared love of hefty station wagons, while Shepard showed off his 1994 Buick Roadmaster. While it doesn’t sound like much, Shepard’s has plenty of extra excitement under the hood.
Dax Shepard has always been in love with cars
Shepard has always been open and excited to talk about his love of cars. Having grown up near Detroit, one of the car capitals of the world, Shepard told Leno that his family worked for General Motors. As a teen, Shepard would spend his time running cars back and forth between dealerships.
But his interest in cars came from an even earlier age. He told Motor Trend, “I can’t actually remember a moment in life when I wasn’t into cars. I don’t think there was a specific thing. I just immediately loved them.”
Shepard stated that his mother once let him drive the family car around an empty parking lot when he was only eight or nine years old. Since then, it’s been love at first sight with every car he’s owned.
Buying a Buick Roadmaster instead of a minivan
Dax Shepard visited the set of Jay Leno’s Garage to show off his 1994 Buick Roadmaster. Leno has a Roadmaster of his own, a 1955 model that he has owned since before he was married, and the two can’t get enough of discussing how much they love their wagons.
Shepard told Leno that he bought his Roadmaster as soon as he found out that he was going to be a father. He said, “If I’m going to be a dad, I don’t want to be in a minivan. I want to be in something I can drift.”
He recalled back to his days moving cars for GM as an 18-year-old in Michigan. “We would all fight over these cars,” he said, because of how much power they had and how funny it seemed to have that much power in a station wagon. He knew that the Roadmaster was the right car to get when he started his family.
Jay Leno and Dax Shepard love their Buick Roadmasters
Leno and Shepard took a drive in Shepard’s Roadmaster and the two discussed how much fun they are to drive. Leno asked Shepard if he’d ever used it for “its intended purpose” of hauling the family around and Shepard confirmed.
He said that the most he and his wife, actress Kristen Bell, had packed into the Roadmaster was when they took a road trip to Oregon when his oldest daughter was only one year old. They had the baby, two dogs, and a giant cargo container on the luggage rack on the roof.
Since then, Shepard has shared countless pictures of his Roadmaster on his Instagram, often simply admiring it as one of his favorite cars. And although he may have souped it up to get 700-horsepower, it may not be the fastest Roadmaster out there.
He and Leno actually raced their Roadmasters against each other, and Leno’s came out on top. Fans in the YouTube comment section, however, called foul and claimed that Shepard let him win since it was his own show. We may never know which Roadmaster is truly the greatest, but it’s certain they are both well-loved.
