When Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee sat down with Joe Rogan on episode 2520 of the Joe Rogan Experience, the conversation took a turn into the world of exotic cars, and Lee shared a story that perfectly captures the wild reality of becoming suddenly, spectacularly wealthy at 18 years old.
Lee’s first major purchase after Motley Crue broke out around 1980 was a champagne-colored 1982 Corvette, a choice he stands by to this day. The two pulled up images of the car during the conversation, and Lee pointed out that unlike virtually every other American car from that era, the Corvette still looks genuinely cool. A side-by-side comparison with a 1982 Mustang made the point pretty clearly.
But it was his Ferrari story that grabbed the room. When Ferrari released the legendary Testarossa, Lee and his bandmate Nikki Sixx each got one at roughly the same time. Lee tracked down a black-on-black model through a car broker, paid around $250,000 for it, and waited for it to be shipped from Florida to Los Angeles.
When the car arrived and Lee began pulling the plastic off the seats, he started looking around the interior. Something was missing.
“I look in, to the right of the steering wheel, there’s like a cover. So I grab it and you open it up, and that’s where the stereo would be. I open it up and I go, where’s the stereo? The guy goes, oh, Enzo believed that the music that you should be listening to is the sound of the engine.”
Lee’s reaction was immediate.
“That’s rad and everything, Enzo, but bro, I just spent a quarter of a million dollars and I want to f**king crank s**t loud as f**k here.”
He ended up having a custom system installed, working with what was available at the time. He ran a bazooka tube behind the seats for a subwoofer, added decent door speakers, and put in an Alpine receiver. It was a workaround, but he got the car bumping.
He did acknowledge, with some generosity toward the late Ferrari founder, that the Testarossa sounded absolutely remarkable on its own.
“I totally get it.”
Rogan agreed, saying that the car sounds great.
“There’s a sound that those things make that’s just heavenly. There’s a sound it has, it’s so spectacular. It’s just engineering. It’s wine and pasta and a winding road.”
The conversation also touched on where Ferrari stands today. Rogan and Lee both expressed admiration for models like the 458 Italia and the SF90, with Rogan calling the 458 Ferrari’s masterpiece.
