Car & (Pile)drivers, Part 1
By Mike McAvennie and Zack Zeigler
Written: March 24, 2007
Readers who pop open the April 2007 issue of WWE Magazine will be pleased to find whats Under Marias Hood on page 48 (check out the .PDF file). The Divas knowledge of cars is nothing short of amazing, and her popular mechanic column seems to run on all cylinders with WWE fans. In the latest issue, WWEs car goddess shifts gears with her personal list of auto accessory hots and nots. WWE.com decided to tailgate on the subject and ask several WWE road warriorsRaws Shelton Benjamin, Kenny Dykstra, Chris Masters, Trevor Murdoch and Shad of Cryme Tyme; SmackDowns Montel Vontavious Porter and Jimmy Wang Yang; and ECW's Elijah Burkehow they like to varnish their vehicles.
Burke enjoys a personal Elijah Experience whenever he heads out in his tricked-out maroon 1990 Camaro. Its very stylish, very hooked up, with nice American racing wheels and 15-inch rims on it, he boasts. Real low-profile, but an awesome-looking car. Meanwhile, a life of Cryme Tyme seems to have paid off nicely for ShadIm fixin up a 1969 Chevy Chevelle Convertible SS, fully loaded. I put a chrome engine in, with 20-inch chrome rims that dont spin, but they look ballin as hell. Its gonna be tight.
Chrome is the operative word when it comes to Benjamins white H2. A Hummers a great car once youve accessorized it, he says. Ive got the chrome 22-inch rims, chrome light bezels, chrome door handles and Im working on a chrome gear shifter. I even took out the original factory dashyou know, the casing for the radio and everythingand had carbon fiber put on it. Now its a carbon fiber dash, and its clean. It really sets off the car.
I used to have a van, recalls the 20-year-old Dykstra about his pre-WWE days on the road. I put rims on it and little shades in the windows, and I added a little disco ball in the middle. Then I took out most of the seats out and threw a bed in it. These days, he prefers keeping his cars a bit more on the plain side, including his Z28 Camaro. I have this Hawaiian lei on the rearview mirror that I got during spring break, and I never took it off. Shad once tried to convince me to get the car lowered, put rims and ground effects on itlike, hes telling me stuff I already know.
To the surprise of no one at WWE.com, the unsportsmanlike MVP wont play nice and talk about his car collectionI roll on only the finest German engineering; 22-inch chromed-out rims, low-profile tires, is all hell saybut he wont even entertain anyones ideas on how to pimp em up. I am by far and away the flyest thing ever to happen to this company, he declares, the most ballin-est player ever; theres nobody here that could tuh-teach me how to deck out a ride. Im from Miami, know what Im sayin? Will Smith even made a song about itHundred thousand-dollar cars, everybody got em? Well, everybody aint got em. Only few of us that have em, and those that do have em know what to do with em. Those who dont, wish and dream.
On the flip side, guys like Masters dont need to dream over auto-body touchups; other than adding a limo window tint and eventually some rims (crediting the latter suggestion to Randy Orton), hes quite content with keeping his 2006 Cadillac Escalade the way he found ita Masterpiece.
Its actually a Special Edition from the Grammy Awards, he explains. They only used it to drive a celebrity to the show, and I bought it with about 300 miles on it. It also has this big Grammys sticker, so people are always pulling up next to me, trying to look in through the tinted windows and see whos inside.
Think thats ludicrous? WWE Superstars like Murdoch and Wang Yang may have Masters beat with their own ornamental oddities. Any truck that drives on dirt road needs a Yosemite Sam tailgate cover, notes Raws surly Superstar (who also happens to own what he calls his pride and joy, a cream-colored 1964 Plymouth Fury). Everybody sees Yosemite Sam on a pickup driven by a redneck, they just get the hell outta the way. As for Wang Yang, one might not notice his Toyota T100s 17-inch, five-star Fatboy rims (I went through a phase, he says)especially since WWE.com cant verify if SmackDowns resident redneck is joking about the accessories hes kept in every vehicle hes ever steered: My 12-gauge shotgun and a rearview mirror.
Needless to say, you wont find firearm frills and the like Under Marias Hood in the April issue of WWE Magazine. She delves into more important, cooler and safer auto makeover ideas, so be sure to pick up a copy. Then come back to WWE.com for Part 2 of this story and discover what kinds of fan gifts hang in some Superstars cars, who likes having a dancing diva on their dash, and how vanity factors into some of their rides.
bron wwe.com