MotorTrend

Celebrity Drive: Sci-fi Diva Tricia Helfer

Writer

Quick Stats:Tricia Helfer, Actress

Daily Driver:2005 Porsche 997 (Tricia's rating: 8 on a scale of 1 to 10)

Favorite road trip:Yosemite National Park

Car she learned to drive in:1981 Toyota Land Cruiser

First car bought:1990s Porsche Boxster

Actress Tricia Helfer made her foray into auto racing this year, participating in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Pro/Celebrity race and in Irwindale Speedway's Celebrity Stock Car Race. Her daily driver? A 2005 Porsche 997.

Helfer, best known for her role in "Battlestar Galactica" as humanoid Ceylon Number Six, gives the Porsche an 8 out of 10. "I love my car, so I would have to give it a high score, but it has some engine problems," she says. "Porsche is actually in a class action suit."

Her Porsche did have some of the issues other owners had. (The lawsuit centered on the engine's intermediate shaft and bearing.) "The engine dropping at the side of the road — after I had said there were some issues and took it in to get looked at and they said nothing was wrong with it," she says. "Two weeks later I'm on the side of the road. But other than that, I love driving my car. I love it. I live on Mulholland Drive, and I'd be hard pressed to not get another one."

She says it's a fun car to drive. She's had hers since 2005, and there isn't a reason to change out cars now. "It's got low mileage because I'm out of town so much, and I keep it in good shape," Helfer says. "All in all it's treated me very well, and it's just fun to drive."

Helfer grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada, where there were tractors and grain trucks that had manual transmissions. Although she says she probably drove a grain truck before a regular truck, the family had a manual 1981 Toyota Land Cruiser when she was learning to drive.

"We always had stick shifts growing up," Helfer says. "It was the family vehicle. Growing up on a farm, we generally tended to have SUVs because of the winters and the snow and also hauling stuff. My parents now have a Volkswagen. But little cars didn't really work very well out there."

"The first vehicle I put in a ditch was a one-ton loader tractor. I was 10 years old," she says with a laugh. "On the farm you're driving four wheelers and ATVs as a child. I worked on the farm, so I would drive tractors, and I would take the grain truck, which is obviously a stick shift, out to the field to fill it with grain and bring it back into the farm and back it up to the auger and unload into the grain bins."

The first car Helfer owned was a GMC Tracker that her parents got for her, but the first car she bought was a new mid-1990s Porsche Boxster when she was in her early 20s.

"I was living in New York City at the time," she says. "I modeled for 10 years before I started acting. My ex-boyfriend and I had a vacation apartment in Jupiter Island, Florida, so we bought a car to have when we went down there, so really it sat around most of the time."

Helfer didn't need a car when she lived in New York, but when she moved to Los Angeles in 2002, she did extensive research and heard good things about the BMW X5.

"I wanted a larger car because I was by myself and I have animals, and if I need to get out of town, I need to take my animals with me — and litter boxes — and I needed something big enough," she says. "It's an amazing car."

Helfer still has the X5, and her husband now drives it. "My husband is hard-pressed to give it up and get a new one because it still runs extremely well," she says. "The cars are running great — the biggest thing is I wouldn't mind having the better technology now in terms of the Bluetooth and GPS and things like that that have been improved so much in the last few years."

"I'm not a really big road trip person in a car," Helfer says, "but we ride motorbikes, and so I've had some great experiences on bike trips."

A recent motorcycle road trip to Yosemite National Park with a group of friends proved memorable. "I had never been to Yosemite before, and there's some beautiful riding along there, just the freedom and the openness — you can pull over whenever you want," she says. "You see the landscape a lot differently than you do in a car because you also experience it. You feel it."

Although she now owns two motorcycles, a 2011 BMW F800GS and a Harley Davidson Rocker C, back then she only had the Harley. "We started climbing up the mountain, and it quickly became a one-lane road," she says. Obviously, going up elevation it became very cold, which we didn't have the right gear for because we weren't expecting to have it that cold in the dead of summer, but (there were) incredible views."

Helfer was on the grid in this year's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Pro/Celebrity race, and she enjoyed learning from Danny McKeever and his instructors at Fastlane Racing School at Willow Springs.

"It was an incredible experience; it was so much fun," Helfer says. "I'm a NASCAR fan, and it was such a fun experience to do the training and to do the course. Doing the training helps you be a better driver because you obviously test the limits. We trained up at Willow Springs, unlike down at Long Beach, where the concrete walls are there. At Willow Springs you can test it, you do spinouts, and you feel the edge of the car and how far you can take it."

Helfer says she plans to take a defensive driving course at Fastlane, as well. "I think it would be fun as well as educational," she says.

For the Long Beach race, Helfer already knew how to operate a manual transmission. "A lot of the people that I raced in April were returning guys, and I think that's hugely helpful for them because they've done it before," Helfer says. "I was just happy I did as well as I did, and my race was more with myself." Helfer came in seventh place at the Long Beach Pro/Celebrity race.

In September, Helfer was in the Celebrity Stock Car Race at Irwindale Speedway, a charity race that benefited Wounded Warriors Project.

"It's an incredible amount of fun, a completely different type of training than we did at Willow Springs because this is a half mile oval course in stock cars," she says. "The Toyota (race), they were race retrofitted, but they were (Scion FR-S) cars, so a little bit more comfort. And there's a passenger seat, so for your first run on the track, you can have an instructor with you. Not in the Irwindale one. You're in the car by yourself. But it's such an incredible experience. I would highly recommend it to anybody who has the opportunity to do it."

Helfer and her friend Katee Sackhoff, who was also on "Battlestar Gallactica," created "Acting Outlaws," which does charity rides. Their first charity ride they've organized is the Path Home Charity Ride Nov. 2 on Angeles Crest Highway, starting in LaCanada Flintridge. Proceeds will go to PATH in its mission to end homelessness in Southern California.

"It's a day ride, but we've got a great band up at Newcomb's Ranch. It's one of Katie and my favorite rides," she says. "We're going to meet at the base. We're only do 40 or 50 miles, but it's beautiful windy roads going up to a barbeque up at Newcomb's, which is this classic restaurant up in the park."

Celebrity friends confirmed for the ride include Michael Trucco from "Fairly Legal," Thom Berry from "Cold Case," Vanessa Marcil, Gilles Marini, and Teddy Sears from "Masters of Sex," JR Borne from "Teen Wolf," and Ed Quinn from "Eureka."

To join the ride or donate, visit www.actingoutlaws.tv or www.epath.org

If you miss seeing Helfer on Syfy channel, she will be returning to Syfy in its new miniseries "Ascension," which will be a three-night event starting Dec. 15. For more information, visit www.syfy.com/ascension

More Celebrity Drives:

You May Also Like