Quick Stats: Rick Harrison, Pawn Stars
Daily Driver: 2018 Ford F-150 Raptor (Rick’s rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Other cars: See below
Favorite road trip: Las Vegas to Duck Creek Village, Utah
Car he learned to drive in: 1973 Volkswagen Thing
First car bought: 1968 Oldsmobile Delta 88
Pawn Stars star Rick Harrison has off-roaded his whole life. That’s partly why he got his 2018 Ford F-150 Raptor, which he calls “a real off-road truck.”
“I’ve had it 70 mph through the desert. I bottomed out at 50 mph and kept on going,” Harrison tells MotorTrend. “I love the suspension on it, it’s a really good ride. Normally an off-road car with really tall suspension, it sways a lot [but] I don’t have any problems with that. It’s a pain in the ass to park, though, because it’s 8 inches wider than a normal truck. It’s like driving around a dually all the time. That’s the only thing I dislike about it.”
Harrison said he got the Raptor because he lives off the grid about five months a year in the mountains of Oregon. When he’s there in the wintertime, he keeps a chain saw in the bed of the truck so he’s prepared in case a tree’s fallen over.
“I absolutely love it because it really does have some great ground clearance. I love the fact that you can lock the rear differential. Most people get an all-wheel-drive car and think they have four-wheel drive, [but] they don’t,” he says, laughing. “And when I’m dragging a tree, the locking differential makes all the difference in the world. I’m absolutely in love with it, I really am. It is an absolutely great truck.”
Although he loves his Raptor, Harrison has one, as he puts it, “massive complaint.” “On the driver’s side window, right in front of [the power window controls] is the button for the mirrors, so at least three times a week I go to roll down my window and the mirrors fold in,” he says with a laugh. “It’s the worst place for the button ever, because you’re driving down the freeway, you accidentally hit that button, and suddenly you don’t have side view mirrors.”
1966 Imperial Crown Convertible
Rating: 10
“When my dad passed, I got his 1966 Imperial Crown Convertible. They only made 600 of them. It cost I think $200 or $300 more than Rolls-Royce at the time,” Harrison says. “It’s a 20-foot-long convertible. It’s completely cherry. It was my dad’s pride and joy.”
Even though Harrison gives his dad’s car a perfect 10, it’s with a caveat. “But then I also tell people this all the time—they don’t make cars like they used to, and there’s a reason,” Harrison says with a laugh. “It’s a 1966 6,000-pound car, it drives like a boat. They’re almost downright dangerous, but, damn, it looks cool.”
Harrison admits he doesn’t drive it often. “I’ve driven the Governor a few times in parades,” he says. “We take it out every once in a while. It’s like all the old cars we take out every once in a while.”
1940 Chevrolet Special Deluxe
Rating: 9
“My favorite car I have at home is my 1940 Chevrolet Special Deluxe, chopped four-and-a-half inches, it’s got an LS1 in it, a strange rear end, it’s all air-bagged. It’s the car you wanted when you were a kid that was just fat and low.”
Harrison has been working on this Chevy for over 12 years. “It’s a perpetual work in progress. I love the car. It’s completely custom, but when you start taking a 1940 car and you put an LS1 in it and everything else like that, nothing ever fits right together … and a lot of time you end up on the side of the road,” he says, chuckling.
He got the Chevy because of his childhood memories. “I always wanted a Hot Wheels car, like one of those little Hot Wheels, like an old HOT ROD car. Like, remember CARtoons magazine. I love the cars from the ’30s and the ’40s when they still had fenders, and me personally, being in the antique business or the art business, cars were all about the body style and everything else was second,” he says. “It was all about the design of the car and how they could make a car beautiful back then.”
Harrison said that, starting in the 1950s, body style became less important in designing cars. “The fins on cars are cool, but that was just marketing in Detroit because rockets were the big thing. Up until World War II, it was all about the design of the car. That particular car, especially now that I got it chopped, is the quintessential design,” he says. “We made cars different than everybody else, it was steel. Something about the design of that car I absolutely love.”
He says his Chevy epitomizes American car design. “The ’50s were all right, the ’60s had some cool muscle cars, the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and up ’til now, it’s like ‘Ugh.’” Harrison says, “I wanted a 1938 to 1940 Chevy because I liked the style and I wanted to chop it. It’s one of those thing you had in the garage forever, it took 10 years to get it done.”
Car he learned to drive in—1973 Volkswagen Thing
Harrison’s dad bought a 1973 Volkswagen Thing new at a dealership, which is the car Rick would learn to drive in.
“From 1968 to 1981, Volkswagen marketed [the Thing] to militaries around the world as the equivalent to the Jeep. They only imported it in the United States for two years, 1973 and 1974,” Harrison says. “The model name they gave it was the Thing. Literally, that’s the model. The federal government came along and said the windshield was too close to the dash and everything like that, you couldn’t import them anymore.”
For Harrison, it was a great car and one he hankered for years later. “It’s a four-door convertible, all the doors come off, it was my very first car. Just like every guy in his 50s, a few years ago I got one and completely restored it.”
It wasn’t Harrison’s father who taught him how to drive, though, but his mother. It was easy to learn to drive on the streets of Las Vegas back then.
“It was way different. I feel sorry for kids nowadays. My son got his driver’s license—there’s no wide-open places to practice. We used to go down to the stadium here in Vegas during the week and there were no gates on the parking lot, you just drive in the parking lot, there’d be three or four kids out there learning how to drive,” he recalls.
Harrison had ridden motorcycles since he was a little kid so he already knew about operating a vehicle with a clutch. “It was that staying-in-the-lane thing that was a big problem,” he says, laughing. “When you’re 16 years old, like my son, when he got his learner’s permit, he’s going, ‘How am I supposed to do the speed limit, stay in the lane, and look at the mirrors at the same time?’ I said, ‘Everyone does it, son.’”
Harrison is glad his mom taught him to drive and not his dad. “My dad would have been screaming at me the whole time. She was just like, ‘No, son, hold on, hold on,’ or ‘This is the way I learned how to drive,’ because when my mom learned how to drive, automatics just came out, so she definitely didn’t have one. She goes, ‘I always do that—if you’re on a really steep hill and you’re afraid of the clutch, just put in parking brake, start going, and when you feel it’s moving forward a little bit, let go of the park brake,’ because the parking brake was a hand brake right next to me,” he says. “That was the great thing about learning from my mother, she was ultra-calm the whole time, [though] I’m sure inside she was fearing for her life.”
Unfortunately, the Thing didn’t stay in Harrison’s life very long. “I was 16 years old and I completely totaled the Thing. For years I always talked about getting another one, and I finally got one,” he says.
More than six years ago, the HISTORY channel gave Harrison a VW Thing and Count’s Kustoms did some work on it, but Harrison ended up doing all the rest of the work himself.
On one memorable trip just after he got this gift, Harrison was towing the Thing with his Ford F-450, which had a camper on it.
“I bought a 69-gallon gas tank for the Ford F-450 off Amazon. We’re driving up California, almost to the Oregon border, and all of a sudden, I go, ‘Why am I almost out of fuel?’ One of the metal straps on this aftermarket gas tank snapped and the fuel tank landed against the driveshaft,” he recounts. “We had to just creep into Medford, Oregon, and drop the truck off at the dealership.”
The dealership didn’t have a gas tank in stock, so Harrison stayed the night in town. “We were towing the Volkswagen Thing, which was now covered in diesel fuel, and had to drive the Thing 300 miles through the mountains. We planned on staying in the camper, so we’re literally checking into a hotel, pulling up in the valet with the Volkswagen, we have a laundry basket full of clothes because we were in the camper, we didn’t have any luggage, and a car covered in diesel fuel,” he says. “They’re going, ‘Are you Rick from Pawn Stars?’ ‘Yeah, that’s me.’”
“It’s a really fun car to drive around. We keep it in my ranch up in Oregon and we go down to the beach in it. We putt around in the sand dunes in it a little bit,” Harrison says of his VW Thing. “It’s a super fun car to drive around in. The Thing’s like bulletproof—it’s indestructible.”
Getting another VW Thing was about connecting back to those memories earlier in life. “One thing I always tell people about, ‘What should I collect?’ I tell people, ‘Whatever was super cool to a guy when he was 16 is going to be worth a fortune when he’s 50.’ Every guy wants to relive his past when he gets in his 50s.”
First car bought
After he totaled his first VW Thing as a teenager, Harrison scrounged up $300 to buy a 1968 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with no back seat. His first job was as a bus boy at the Stardust Hotel on the Strip; after that, he’s always worked for himself.
“I had it for a year and then I got another car. Me and my buddies—this was when Vegas was still a really small town—10 miles out of town there was this one street where the railroad tracks were bumped up really high. So we kept on jumping it off that. Like on the eighth jump we got 2 or 3 feet of air in it, it didn’t run no more,” he says, laughing.
Thanks to this stunt, the Delta 88 completely died. “We caved the whole front in. I had it for nine months, and then I went out and bought a truck. No one even wanted the Delta 88—it was just a piece of junk. We literally destroyed the thing.”
Favorite road trip
Harrison’s first road trip was a drive with his friends to Duck Creek Village in Utah in his VW Thing. It remains his favorite memory.
“Camping in my Volkswagen Thing, which had no roof at the time and no heater, being 17 at the time, it didn’t seem like a problem,” he says. “We had a little rain and were freezing for a bit, but we were 17 and kings of the world. It was one of the funniest weekends of my life.”
View this post on InstagramThe #PawnStars Poker Run to benefit the @epilepsyfdn is Sunday 10/6! Join us on our ride around the Vegas valley or just hang out at the after party for some beer & bbq from @ricksrsbbq check our facebook page for event details! #motorcycle #charityride #epilepsy #lasvegas #vegasbikefest #bikefest #vegasbikefest #vegasevent #onlyinvegas #thingstodoinvegas #vegas #pokerrun
Harrison has another second favorite road trip, which he takes once a year. “I ride from Vegas to Oregon by myself and throw up my hammock in the woods in Northern California,” he says.
Pawn Stars airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on the HISTORY channel.
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