Quick Stats: Michael Strahan NFL Champ, Hall of Famer, host, producer
Daily Driver: 2016 Cadillac Escalade ESV (Michael’s rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Other cars: see below
Favorite road trip: Germany to Spain
Car he learned to drive in: 1984 VW Golf GTI
First car bought: 1993 GMC Typhoon
Michael Strahan’s enviable and classy car collection is a result of the regret he has from selling his 1994 Toyota Supra. It was the second car he bought back when he was first with the New York Giants, and his emotional connection to that Supra and the subsequent feeling he had after selling it, is universally relatable to many car lovers.
“I went through a point where I had cars and I said, ‘You know what? I got these cars and I don’t drive them as much as I used to, so I’m just going to get rid of them,’” Strahan says. “And then the second I got rid of the car, I wanted to kick myself because I wish I had the car. And I’ll never sell again.”
Strahan says there have been three to four cars he felt that way about. “Now I buy what I want for me,” he says. “I have a warehouse where I keep them. I make sure I really want it. I’ll research a car, I’ll make sure it’s the right one, and if it’s something that really fits, that I would use. And once I buy it, it’s in my possession forever in my mind, so I’m not getting rid of cars anymore. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Strahan meticulously chose each ride for the joy it brings him, and he appreciates each for what makes it unique. With several cars to choose from these days, there isn’t one that Strahan drives every day. “I’m a real car guy, so I have a multitude of cars depending on the mood,” he says.
But the one that most fits the definition of a daily driver would be his 2016 Escalade ESV, which he rates at a perfect 10. “It’s a 10 for what I need it for,” he says. “I got it because it’s great to be around the city, I can drive it, or I can have my driver drive to different events. It’s comfortable when I go to the airport to fly to California every weekend during football season to do football at Fox—plenty of room for the luggage, and it’s versatile, so I got it for versatility.”
Strahan would prefer if the Escalade followed the “less is more philosophy,” a bit more. “Some of these push button things, I prefer a knob here and there,” he says. “I’ve kind of got that old school, like I have older cars and I like a little bit less technology sometimes.”
When it comes to the number of cars he has in his collection, he says: “It’s growing. It’s my thing. As Jay Leno said, ‘A lot of people have a lot of women and one car. I have a lot of cars and one woman.’”
2005 Porsche Carrera GT
Rating: 10
“That’s a 10. If I got it, it’s a 10, believe me,” Strahan says. “It’s a V-10 stick, it’s the last real supercar that Porsche made that isn’t aided with electric motors and all that, and I love the 918. But this is like a true driver’s super car, and that’s why I got it, and I love the top comes off. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful car.”
For Strahan, the only thing that could make this Porsche even better is more room: “Maybe an extra inch or two inside the interior would be nice. A little inch or two and more legroom, and that would have been just perfect.”
2007 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster
Rating: 10
This is another absolute 10 in Strahan’s collection. “One of the most comfortable, well balanced, front-engine drive cars,” he says. “Powerful, sounds incredible, power top that goes back, looks sexy, has the scissor doors. So it’s a beautifully visual car, and it runs like a champ.”
Strahan always makes sure to drive every car. “I drive everything. I don’t have cars that just sit there just for looks,” he says. “I lived in Germany, so I’ve always been around cars in my entire life, and over there, especially with the Autobahn and everything. I buy cars because I love cars and it’s something that I get from that vehicle, and that’s why I buy it. I don’t buy it to say, ‘That looks good’ or ‘I feel great!’ or for people looking at me. I do it because I really, really wanted the car and it’s something for me more than anybody else.”
2012 Rolls-Royce Drophead
Rating: 10
“It’s the most comfortable, top down, or top up cruiser, and you feel like you’re floating on a cloud in that car. It’s amazing,” he says. “You got a little bit of the old style mixed with the modern. It’s just like the perfect blend of both, and you can’t beat the umbrella that’s inside the door. It’s great because you can put four people in this big convertible.”
2015 Porsche GT3 RS
Rating: 10
“That is the best car I have as far as everyday drivability, yet you can take it straight from the street to the track, and it will outperform anything at the track,” Strahan says. “And it’s very, very comfortable on the street too.”
He had to get used to the color at first. “It’s a loud orange, but to be honest with you, I can’t imagine it being a docile color. It wouldn’t go. It needs some loudness. I love that color. Loud colors like that I’m usually not fan of, but on that car, I’m a big fan.”
Mercedes SL65 Black Series
Rating: 10
“They made 175 of those for the U.S., so I love that car,” he says. “It’s very comfortable for a car with so much power. My only complaint about that car is that it’s an SL. But the top doesn’t come down, it’s a fixed top SL. I guess because of the power of the car, and they couldn’t make it a convertible. I wish it were a true convertible.”
1966 Mercedes-Benz 600
Rating: 10
Strahan loves this classic and the fact that it’s exclusive because of its age. “Very comfortable. The only thing I don’t like about it is that because everything is hydraulic, from the windows to trunk, everything is hydraulic, the way the seats move, it’s very expensive to fix,” he says. “I got the car because I just always have loved that it’s a very stately car. It’s a car with such great presence, and I had a Maybach at one point, which I love and I kind of miss that car, but this is the precursor to that. This is like the originator when Mercedes built the car, and it was totally steel and powerful and heavy like a Super Duty. I just love how solid it is, and the fact that you don’t see them everyday. I love these classic Mercedes, and that’s one you don’t see everyday.”
1990 Lamborghini LM002
Rating: 10
Another rare ride seen on the road these days is Strahan’s Lamborghini LM002. “It’s the Lambo Lambo,” he says. “All these cars I’ve had are either well maintained or I’ve had them completely restored and redone for the most part, like the Mercedes. I’ve had all the mechanical. I haven’t touched the body. I left that original, that 600, but the Lambo I had to have everything redone on that. I didn’t get it in 1990, in 1990 I was a broke college student.”
Strahan had a red one back around 2004, and he loved it then but sold it and found this one last year. “It was one of my favorite things in the world, and I don’t know why I sold it,” he says. “I’ve been searching for a new one for years, and I finally found one. I bought that because it’s just one of my favorite things to drive. There’s nothing like a V-12 truck with this five-speed stick shift, this screaming motor, and it’s just so unusual.”
He likes that people don’t see these every day on the road. “It’s just a different experience to drive it, and I love it,” he says. “It was nice to find one in good enough condition that was worth me purchasing it. It wasn’t perfect. I purchased it because I found that was in good enough condition to intrigue me enough to spend the money.”
Car he learned to drive in
Strahan grew up in Mannheim, Germany, where he learned to drive in his brother’s car: a manual 1984 VW Golf GTI.
“He taught me, and my dad definitely taught me how to drive and gave me more instruction than I needed,” Strahan says. “It was very frustrating to drive with him. My father and mother were the real ones that taught me to drive, and over there on the Autobahn, I’d go out with my dad. But my mom was the real driver. She would say, ‘Don’t tell your dad we were going so fast when we get home!’ She was not afraid to take their car and push it over in the triple digits.”
As a budding new driver, Strahan took learning how to drive seriously in Germany. “I think the thing about learning how to drive in Germany that I loved and I guess the greatest story about that is that it’s a lot more discipline to the driving there, which is hard when you come back here because people are passing on the right,” he says. “There are people in fast lane going slow, the slow lane going fast.”
In Germany, one needs to know the art of passing one another. “I love it because you learn the lesson that no matter how fast you are, there’s always somebody faster, always,” he says. “And if you’re in the left lane, and I don’t care if it was like somebody a mile back and they flash their headlights, move over, because that means they’re coming really, really fast.”
For Strahan, it was an invaluable experience to learn to drive in Germany and at such speeds on the Autobahn. “You better be a good judge of the distance and closing speed, I’ll tell you that,” he says. “You can tell how fast somebody is coming and how much time you have to get in and out. It requires you to pay a lot more attention to driving. It was great. But I think that’s what got me into cars, was growing up over there. It really made me love cars.”
Strahan described the feeling of learning to drive stick shift that many young drivers can relate to. “Who doesn’t have the story of—you’re driving stick shift for first time and you have that incline, and just the fear,” he says. “I’ll never forget the fear of gas to clutch ratio, of clunking out or rolling backwards. That is my biggest memory of learning to drive in Germany and learning to drive a stick.”
He said when the Germans learn to drive, they have to go to driving school. “Here we just turn a certain age, and you take a test” he says. “There you have to go to school, and it’s a lot more involved and they learn to drive a stick. So just that anxiety of not being that fool that clunks out at the light driving a stick is something I’ll never forget. “And thank goodness I learned to drive a stick so I can have some of the cars that I have and enjoy them.”
First car bought
When Strahan got drafted to the New York Giants, one of the first things he did was buy a car. “Got drafted in 1993 and went to the dealership and bought myself a GMC Typhoon, the super truck,” he says. “It was like a 6-cylinder truck with a super charger on it.”
Because he was in New York, Strahan wanted a ride that was durable for snow and other inclement weather. “I needed a little more room, so I bought the truck,” he says. “Now, it wasn’t exactly the best vehicle in the snow. It was built for speed if anything else, but it was fast. I loved it. It would blow the doors off a Corvette at that time. So it was just a sleeper vehicle. You would see it, and it looks sportier than a regular GMC truck, but you just didn’t know what to expect until you hit the gas.”
Not long after that, Strahan bought a 1994 Toyota Supra Turbo, which he kept for about 10 years. “I had both of them for years,” he says. “I kept the Supra longer, and now I wish I had never sold it because I loved that car and it was so reliable. I would drive it for a while and you get in and it always cranked up, and it always ran like a champ. Now everybody wants those things and I’m like, ‘I should have kept it.’ If I kept it for another year I would have definitely seen an uptick and the desire of it.”
Although the Typhoon was an automatic, the Supra had a stick shift. “It had a hatchback with the big spoiler on it,” Strahan says. “It was a cool car at the time. I loved the look of it. It was like a Toyota supercar at the time, and it was at a price point that nobody else could compete with price and performance, so I thought it was something different that you didn’t see every day. I decided I wanted it, and I got it, and I never regretted ever spending the money on it. It was worth every penny.”
Favorite road trip
Strahan’s favorite road trip memory was one he took with his dad in a camper when they lived in Germany. “We would go from Germany to Spain to go fishing at a place called Lake Caspe. Every year that was our trip,” Strahan says. “I’m the youngest of six, and my three older brothers are right over me and my two sisters are the oldest, and it just ended up being one of those trips that for some reason, my brothers didn’t really want to go. The other ones, they were girls at that point and the last thing they wanted was to do was go hang out with their dad and their little brother in a camper in Spain. But it always ended up being me and my dad.”
These trips offered good father and son quality time. “My dad would drive the entire way,” he says. “We’d listen to a lot of oldies but goodies, and we would go to Spain for a week, fish, have fun, and then head on back home. And that’s the best road trip memory I’ve ever had.”
It was a moment in time that reflecting back is irreplaceable. “Just going from country to country and seeing the way everything was different and changed, and the father son time, listening to a lot of his old songs,” he says. “A lot of old music that now I hear something and I’ll go, ‘Oh, that reminds me of that trip with my dad.’ A lot of Motown, a lot of country music. (starts singing) ‘Out in the west Texas town of El Paso where I fell in love with a Mexican girl!’ I remember all this country music. And that is because of that road trip. Back then you had cassette tapes, and we only had a few, and so that sucker just went to a loop.”
“Tackle My Ride” on NFL Network
Strahan is executive producer of “Tackle My Ride,” which just wrapped its first season and is available on the NFL Network’s YouTube channel.
“I love the show, and I’ve wanted to do a show like this because it’s about cars and it’s about people,” he says. “It’s about people’s reactions and connections with their vehicles. And I have all of those things with mine. I wanted to showcase something for the NFL fan who has a vehicle that needs a little pepping up, needs a little pep in the step.”
The fans that are chosen are ones who do good for their community. “So it’s a good way to give back to them for what they do in the community, also to support them because they support their favorite team,” Strahan says.
He loves that all the teams and players who we were on season one were so enthusiastic about being part of it. “They are the ones who deliver the vehicles to the fans,” he says. “So it’s not, ‘Here’s your car, we’re going to trick it out and give it back to you,’ but the players on the team who are their favorites are willing to show up and say, ‘Yes, thank you for letting us have your car, and I’m bringing it back to you personally,.’And to see their reaction to their car first of all, and then secondly, their reaction to the star getting out of their car, is priceless to me.”
For Strahan, the connection between player to fan has always been strong. “I think this is just a better way to build that bond,” he says. “It’s kind of ‘Pimp My Ride’ but with an NFL twist on it and that connector between player and fan, so it’s a pretty simple concept that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.”
Strahan says this show is a way of having something that connected the player and the fan together. “Show some appreciation for these fans because a lot of them do so much in the community involving kids and trying to make their communities a better place,” he says. “And this is a way for us to show them some of that appreciation.”
So although it is a car show, it also highlights people who give back. “Some of the fans that have their rides tricked out or kitted out, or whatever we do to their ride, they’re picked because of that,” Strahan says. “It’s not just, ‘I’m a big fan.’ There are millions of big fans, but you’ve done so much and you’ve paid so much forward to other people, we want to help pay it back to you.”
Viewers can nominate someone to get a car makeover for season two of “Tackle My Ride” HERE.