A Very Good Question

What's the deal with comedians and their cars?

And it's been that way with a lot of very, very good comedy guys. Cars seem to round out their lives, to become the yin to their comedy yang. Ernie Kovacs might not have invented visual gags or surreal humor, but he got them both to kill on television in the 1950s, so he's a comedy hero. He died behind the wheel of his beloved Corvair wagon, so he's absolutely some kind of car-guy hero as well.

And, as in lots of things, style counts for a lot. Style tells. And I'm not talking design, but an overall philosophy of life. And there may be no better example of this in the twin worlds of cars and comedy crossover than Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Now, if you don't know the shared history of Letterman and Leno, what with their early friendship spiraling into a crazy rivalry, and that in turn evolving into a pitched battle to take over after Carson, and their wildly divergent legacies after that – it's all fascinating stuff, worth looking up but too much to go into here. Suffice it to say they're pretty much as different as possible, comedically and automotively.

I've always treasured that polarity between Leno and Letterman, for much of my life the Ali-Frazier of comedy, and their two opposing philosophies. One's a guy who wants to be everyone's funny uncle, and who also also wants to have stuff. The other one's a guy who doesn't care if people are laughing at or with him, as long as they're laughing because of him, and who also wants to have cool experiences. Broadly speaking, that's the two major aspects of comedy and the two major sides of car loon in two indispensable people. One's a ten-page sedan comparo, plus a guy-walks-into-a-bar. One's ten-page story about a road trip to the Indy 500, plus The Aristocrats. They're two parts of a great whole. That we have them both is incredibly cool, no matter what makes you laugh or what makes your world make sense.

I mean, if anything can. Jerry Seinfeld may have figured this out as well as anybody. He's sharing his favorite cars, he's sharing his favorite comedy people, he's sharing his life. Or at least the best parts. And that's the whole idea.

(AutoBlog.com)