Let’s be real: nobody’s first car was a dream car. It was probably held together by faith, duct tape, and whatever was left in your parents’ budget after they realized you actually passed the driving test. Doesn’t matter if it had a check engine light that never turned off, windows that only rolled down halfway, or a passenger door you had to open from the inside; you loved that car. You were 16, 17, maybe 18, and for the first time in your life you didn’t need a ride. You were the ride.
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Cheap? Absolutely. Raggedy? No question. And turns out that’s true even if you end up famous. For this Run It Back, we pulled up an old clip of Big Tigger, Ludacris, Gabrielle Union, and Sheree Whitfield getting real about their very first cars, and nobody was pulling up in anything luxury.
Big Tigger kept it all the way honest: his grandmama made him buy his own first car, a champagne-colored ’86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra.
“My family don’t play that,” he said. “You’re gonna earn everything you get around these parts.”
Ludacris said his first car was a Plymouth Reliant, complete with a messed-up wax job, back around 1994. He made sure to note he was “dead serious” about that wax job.
Gabrielle Union got a Nissan Sentra bought for her and was not thrilled about it.
“I hated it because I asked for a Fiero,” she said, before catching herself: “I don’t even know if you know what a Fiero is. I’m old.”
And Sheree Whitfield’s first car was a Toyota Celica, which she promptly totaled.
“Everybody totaled their first car,” she added, which, honestly, checks out.
Cheap, secondhand, occasionally destroyed, didn’t matter. It was theirs, just like yours was.
