Finally, we can all stop worrying about the state of Jerry Seinfeld’s finances.
This week the comedian and breakfast pastry-obsessed filmmaker is auctioning off one of his cars — but not just any car, Seinfeld is reportedly selling the 1969 Porsche 917 that was previously owned by screen legend Steve McQueen.
Don’t Miss
Pfff, call us when someone is selling a Chrysler LeBaron previously owned by Jon Voight.
Seinfeld has called the Porsche, which was actually driven by McQueen in the 1971 racing movie Le Mans, “the greatest car I’ve ever owned.” One expert estimated that it could go for as much as $25 million. Which is a lot of money, but still just around a third of what it cost to make Unfrosted.
According to Autoweek, McQueen purchased the car directly from the Porsche factory then “drove it straight to the set of the movie.” Following the production, it was raced “with some success in real races by real drivers.” While Seinfeld’s ownership may be of interest to comedy fans, wealthy car enthusiasts clearly don’t give a shit. The auction house’s promotional video never once mentions that the Le Mans “Hero Car” is being sold by the famous comedian.
So how exactly did this piece of film history end up in the hands of the “did you ever notice this” guy?
A 2020 episode of former Seinfeld writer Spike Feresten’s podcast, Spike’s Car Radio, was devoted to this very topic, with Seinfeld proclaiming that he had found the iconic vehicle in a “used car lot.”
That was a bit of an exaggeration. Seinfeld’s car guy was already aware of the Porsche, which was sold at auction in 2000 for “around $1.2 million.” But Seinfeld was urged to check it out by Feresten, who randomly spotted the car while driving past a classic car dealership on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. “I was sitting there and I looked up, and I went, ‘What the hell is that?!?!’”
When he did some investigating, Feresten found out that it was McQueen’s car, called up Seinfeld and told him: “You’re not going to believe what’s sitting here.”
So Seinfeld and his friends went to look at the car, with no intention of buying it. “I thought let’s just stop there and then we’ll go do something else, we’ll spend 20 minutes looking at it,” Seinfeld recalled. “And we walked around the car for two hours.” But he still didn’t want to buy it, telling Feresten: “I’m not worthy of this car.” And even the ridiculously wealthy Seinfeld claimed that he had “cold feet about spending that kind of money.”
Eventually he changed his mind and shelled out “about $6 million” for it. Now Seinfeld stands to make a tidy profit from the car, instead of just keeping it to make televised coffee runs with, like, Jeff Dunham.