{"id":4441,"date":"2023-08-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/?p=4441"},"modified":"2023-08-03T21:08:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T04:08:14","slug":"plot-driven-vehicles-of-famous-writers-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/general\/plot-driven-vehicles-of-famous-writers-past-and-present\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cars That Inspired Great Literature: A Look at Famous Writers’ Vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We often picture writers as brooding eccentrics, holed up in a dim, smoky room, thinking their heads off. While this was true of many great authors, writers still needed to get around like the rest of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literary heavyweights like Dante and Shakespeare died long before cars came around, but famous writers from the modern age have owned some pretty nice rides. Want the details? Keep reading to learn about the vehicles driven by some of literature’s most notable characters, past and present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Suess\u2019 Grinchmobile<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Image Editorial credit: ognennaja \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Theodore Geisel, Dr. Suess, wrote over 60 children\u2019s books and gave us iconic characters like the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch. Some Suess illustrations are controversial, but Geisel’s success allowed him to live comfortably for the better part of the 20th century\u2014and he had the Cadillac to prove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geisel wanted to personalize his Caddy with \u201cGRINCH\u201d vanity plates but was told that a superfan already took the tag with GRINCH plates on his RV. Years later, the Suess enthusiast relinquished his claim on the tag so that Geisel could have a turn. The California GRINCH vanity plate remains on Geisel\u2019s 1985 Cadillac Seville. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haruki Murakami is about that van life<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Image Editorial credit: Len.okk \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Type \u201cHaruki Murakami\u201d and \u201ccar\u201d into Google, and you\u2019ll get a long list of references to \u201cDrive My Car,\u201d his 2014 short story turned Oscar-winning film about a veteran stage actor\u2019s bond with the woman he hires to chauffeur his Saab 900 Turbo. Murakami, however, prefers a quirky vehicle of a different breed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2018 interview with Engine<\/em>, Murakami praised the Renault Kangoo van because it\u2019s \u201cfun to drive\u201d and \u201chas great handling\u201d despite being pretty bad on gas. The Japanese visionary\u2019s adoration for a vehicle with poor fuel economy isn\u2019t a popular opinion. Still, Renault\u2019s Kangoo has been around since 1997 and is the best-selling small van in Europe (there\u2019s also an EV version).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Maya Angelou: a phenomenal woman deserves a phenomenal car<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Image Editorial credit: Roman Belogorodov \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist, activist, performer, and national treasure. The author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings broke countless barriers in her lifetime\u2014she was even the first Black female cable car conductor in San Francisco in the 40s. When fame and wealth came her way, Angelou bought a car fit for the queen that she was: a 1980 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even back then, the Silver Wraith II cost over $100,000. The luxurious, cream-colored British auto could often be seen parked at Angelou\u2019s Winston-Salem, North Carolina home and stayed in her possession until she died in 2014 at 86. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Papa Hemingway kept it comfortable<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Image Editorial credit: Andreas Mellentin \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Legendary American author Ernest Hemingway was one of the most prolific writers of his \u201cLost Generation,\u201d but he probably wasn\u2019t anyone\u2019s first choice for a designated driver. After 1929\u2019s A Farwell to Arms<\/em> brought him commercial acclaim, Hemingway treated himself to a Rolls-Royce Phantom II, complete with an in-cabin minibar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, Papa was more recognizable behind the wheel of his 1955 Chrysler New Yorker convertible with Navajo Orange and Desert Sand body paint. The Chrysler was a longtime fixture at his Cuban residence but fell into obscurity following Hemingway\u2019s 1961 suicide. Eventually, the New Yorker was tracked down and targeted for restoration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Stephen King tweets about his Tesla<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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We\u2019re not sure whether horror-god Stephen King\u2019s gravitation toward a car capable of self-automation is disturbing, fitting, or both, but the author has a thing for Tesla. While the exact model he owns is unknown, King boasted about track racing his Tesla on Twitter. The fact that Elon Musk rules over both Tesla and Twitter isn\u2019t lost on the great novelist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King has served such snarky tweets as \u201cI have a Tesla and I love it. That said, he\u2019s a terrible fit for Twitter.\u201d. According to Forbes, Musk appears to be a bit starstruck by King\u2019s attention and has been designated as King\u2019s \u201creply guy.\u201d Musk\u2019s response tweets to King include, \u201cI\u2019m still a fan of you, ” and \u201cOh hi, lol.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>If Camus had his own car, would he have lived?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Image Editorial credit: Sergey Kohl \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to say. In January of 1960, Algerian-born Nobel Prize laureate Albert Camus and his friend, the publisher Michel Gallimard were killed when Gallimard\u2019s Facel Vega FV3B\u2014a sophisticated and exclusive French automobile\u2014slammed into a tree in the northern French countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the reports that Camus feared automobiles are true, then it makes sense why he wouldn\u2019t own one. Perhaps the fact that Gallimard had such a cool car convinced Camus to travel home to Paris as his passenger. The V8-equipped FV3B, though powerful, didn\u2019t handle as well as other sporty models of the day. It probably didn\u2019t help that Gallimard\u2019s Facel Vega may or may not have been tampered with by the KGB. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article originally appeared on MyCarMakesNoise.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We often picture writers as brooding eccentrics, holed up in a dim, smoky room, thinking their heads off. While this was true of many great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-4441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-msn-slideshow","wpcat-11-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4441"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8676,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4441\/revisions\/8676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycarmakesnoise.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}