Steve McQueen

In 1966, I was at the Chez Club in West Hollywood to see Buddy Rich perform. I was a teenager at the time. A good friend of Buddy’s was in our party. She turns to me and says, “You ought to meet Steve. The two of you have the same kind of Ferrari.” I asked, “Steve who?” whereupon she leads me over to where Steve McQueen is sitting on a barstool waiting for Buddy to appear. He and I spent the next twenty minutes talking about the Firestone Indy tires we both had on our Berlinetta Lussos and other car-related topics. Above is a photo of Steve and the Lusso he was driving that night, which recently sold for $2.31M. Below is a photo of me at the wheel of my Lusso before it was painted red.

A few years later, I was driving my Ferrari GTO along Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. Coming from the opposite direction, I see a very rare British green Jaguar XK-SS approaching. The driver stops dead in the middle of the intersection to stare at my car, just as I was staring at his. The driver was Steve McQueen. He smiled and waved. I waved back and off we went on our separate ways.