Celebrity Drive: Tony Hawk, Legendary Skateboarder

Quick Stats:Tony Hawk legendary skateboarder

Daily Driver:2008 Grand Cherokee Jeep SRT8 (Tony's rating: 8 on a scale of 1 to 10)

Other cars:see below

Favorite road trip:2006 Gumball 3000 Rally

Car he learned to drive in:1977 Honda Civic

First car bought:1977 Honda Civic

Celebrities gathered at Willow Springs Raceway outside of Los Angeles recently for the annual training sessions meant to rev them up for this year's Pro/Celebrity Race at the 36th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, to be held April 16-18.

It was Day One of a grueling few days of practice, and friendly trash talk already was erupting between return celeb racers -- last year's champ Keanu Reeves and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody -- while one of the gods of the action sports world sat quietly in his race-prepped Scion TC, processing newfound skills taught by famed racing teacher Danny McKeever and other instructors on the Streets of Willow.

Although this is not Tony Hawk's home turf of skateboarding, which he helped catapult into the public's psyche, the pensive icon and marketing phenom has raced before, at Lowe's Motor Speedway. But Hawk is a newbie to this race and technical tracks, although it's something he's wanted to participate in for a while.

After spending time in a NASCAR car, Hawk couldn't help but get bit by the auto racing bug. "I've had two opportunities to drive NASCAR and I got such a rush out of it, I just said, 'Any opportunity to drive fast, I want to take it,'" Hawk told Motor Trend Online.

"Toyota has invited me in previous years, but I always had a conflict, either with my schedule or with my sponsors, because for a couple years I was sponsored by Jeep, so I couldn't do the Toyota event. Now I'm a free agent, so to speak. So when I got this opportunity, I jumped right on it."

It was the end of the first day of practice at Willow, where the celeb drivers hone new skills such as braking and downshifting; cornering exercises (entering into a turn, at first with the help of orange traffic cones); and vehicle dynamics to realize the limits of their Scion tCs. The skid pad was watered down and they were taught handbrake turns such as forward and then reverse 180s. These are the same sport coupes they'll be racing at Long Beach, fully race-prepped with roll cages, window nets, fire suppression systems, and five-point harnesses.

These are the same skills McKeever teaches at his FAST LANE Racing School at Willow, but beyond confidently racing each other by the end of practice, these celebs also practice race starts for upcoming race in Long Beach. They're gridded up exactly as they are at Long Beach, with the pace car leading them around the track before the green flag is waved.

Hawk says this is unlike his NASCAR oval experience. "This is way different; this is actually racing and turning different directions," he says. "NASCAR was very controlled when I did it, they have limiters on the car -- you could only go so fast in it. But like I said, I got a taste of it and I just wanted to go with it. I don't want to discount that at all, but this is a whole different experience."

Hawk's first day went well. "It was fun. It was a little intimidating and overwhelming, but when you get all the information and then just let loose, you start defining your technique. I'm pretty excited."

Hawk did some laps on his own and then an instructor rode shotgun for a few laps. After that, he was led around the track. The traffic cones entering a turn are helpful initially. "Yeah, right at the start and the apex and I don't know how much longer we'll have the cones," he laughs. While it can be a natural high coming off the track, Hawk says of his first day, "Yeah, I felt very tense the whole time, though."

He also mastered heel-toeing pretty quickly. "It's funny because by the end of the day, I wasn't even thinking about it," he says.

The fact that he just able to just absorb and apply all the techniques without having to worry about racing the other celebs was helpful. "They said, 'You've got two more days where we're going to learn all that stuff. '"

But the friendly competition brewing on the track doesn't go unnoticed by the race newbies. "There's a rivalry going on with Adrien Brody and Keanu for sure. They're very outspoken about it," Hawk says. "Adrien says the only reason he's here is to beat Keanu."

While Hawk has been dominant in his own sport, he's staying out of this rivalry. "Oh yeah, no, I don't have the confidence or the skill yet. It's very obvious when they're on the track -- they have experience. To be honest, I'm just focused on the task at hand."

Other celebrities set to join Hawk this year include Adam Carolla (a past MT Celeb Drive), Christian Slater, Jesse McCartney, and Brian Austin Green. Since Reeves is the celebrity champ from last year, he races in the Pro category this year that includes former CART champ Jimmy Vassar, Formula Drift champ and X Games Rally gold medalist Tanner Foust (another past MT Celeb Drive), BMX rider Jamie Bestwick and Olympic gold medalist pro cyclist and three-time NHRA winner Marty Nothstein.

Although it was the end of a long first day of practice, Hawk was upbeat and affable, ready to chat about his eclectic automotive tastes.

Daily driver2008 Grand Cherokee Jeep SRT8

Rating: 8

Hawk drove to Willow Springs in his daily driver, which he got upgraded by Hennessey Performance. "So it's an SRT600," Hawk points out.

Hawk had to think for a bit about what he'd rate his SRT8 on a scale of 1 to 10. "Boy, that's a good question," Hawk replies, and contemplates for just a nano-second. "I'd give it an 8 just because it's not meant to be a sports car the way that I use it. But I have kids, so I have to make a compromise with the type of car that I drive," he chuckles. He does enjoy the Jeep's full power capability when he's alone.

Hawk was once sponsored by Jeep and originally got the car because of that, but he enjoyed it so much, it's still his daily driver. "When I picked it up from the Jeep dealership, the guy that delivered it said, 'There's this guy in Texas, he modifies Dodge engines and he can put these things up to something like 500 horsepower.' I said, 'Yeah right.' I looked it up and realized it goes beyond that. I immediately emailed down there in Houston and they picked up my car and off we went." Before this one, Hawk had another SRT8.

Since it's modified, Hawk can't resist opening up the throttle, even with his kids in tow. "Yeah, I do. Sometimes if I need to pass someone I'll give it a little gun and my 8-year old-gets mad at me because he's usually playing video games in the back, handheld games, and it always makes him lose a life, so he says, 'You made me lose a life!'," Hawk's voice changes to sound like his kid yelling from the back. "I love the engine. I love that it's like I have my own personal NASCAR."

Other cars1964Chevy CorvetteSting Ray

Rating: 10

Hawk has a fine appreciation of American classics, such as this manual 1964 Sting Ray. When asked to rate this gem, he gives it a perfect score. "Oh geez, it was my dream car as a kid so I have to rate it a 10. When I was a kid and I first saw one I thought it was the Batmobile! Black with red interior. I sometimes drive it just around San Diego though. I don't venture too far out with it because I don't want to be stuck somewhere," he laughs.

Hawk has one small gripe about the Sting Ray. "The only thing I don't like is where the top closes -- where you put the top down, you close it up -- that no longer latches and it's almost like it's a thing that's unto itself. No one can figure out how to fix it. It doesn't click all the way down. It's more like an OCD thing no one would even notice."

2008 Yukon XL Denali

Rating: 7

Hawk's XL is only taken out of the garage for family trips to Mammoth. "I use it so rarely that almost every time I get in to drive it, the battery's dead. We have a place in Mammoth; it's like a six-hour drive from San Diego. Other than that, if I've got to take all the kids to an event in L.A., then we go in that car."

Hawk mentions another car in the family collection: his wife's Range Rover. "She would definitely rate that a 10. She had an X5, and she loves it."

Car he learned to drive in

Hawk turned pro at 14, and helped bring skateboarding into the mainstream with more than 80 tricks, including his famous 900. Soon after he went pro, his dad taught him an essential skill of another kind around the streets of Del Mar.

"The car that I learned to drive and eventually became mine was a '77 Honda Civic -- stick shift. That's what I learned from the get-go. I think my dad encouraged that for sure; he wanted me to at least have that skill," Hawk reflects. "I'm glad I do, even though everything's paddle shift now. It's still pretty cool to be able to drive a stick, and here we are at the Toyota Grand Prix. I know what I'm doing at least."

Hawk's dad devoted time to teaching his son in the same way many of us were taught: by finding a parking lot. "He set out to teach me and we went out to I think a Home Depot parking lot and away we went," Hawk recalls.

First car bought

Hawk learned to drive the Civic while in high school. "Things got pretty accelerated when I started making money," he says. "I learned at 16 to drive that car and then I had been saving my money and I bought it from my parents for $1500. It's pretty much all that I had saved at that point. And then I started making money almost right after that and ended up buying a new Civic, a 1984 model."

Even though he was making money skateboarding, Hawk still opted to stick with the Civic model instead of moving up to the Accord, joking, "We used to call the Accord 'the everybody car. '"

The ease of being able to sleep in the Civic for skateboarding events was a key factor.

"It was when Honda made, I don't remember what the model was, but it looked like a boxy car and you could fold all the seats down completely to flat, so you could sleep in it if you wanted to. I actually did that a couple times, when I was at a skate park and I had to stay in L.A. and I would drive up late and sleep in it sometimes," Hawk says with a laugh.

Yes, there were some nights where a young Tony Hawk had to camp out in his Honda Civic somewhere in Anaheim for the next day's event. "And I also liked that I didn't have to fill it with a quart of oil every time I filled it up. My first Civic literally, you'd have to put a quart of oil in every time you filled up the tank. It had issues."

While most his peers were still going to after-school jobs, Hawk bought the two big-ticket items most people strive for only after they reach adulthood. The year after he learned to drive, Hawk bought a house at the tender age of 17. Again, it was because of his dad's parental wisdom.

"After that, I had some money saved and my dad said, 'You know, you have a pretty substantial savings, you should probably consider buying a house, just so that you save it,' because he could see that I wasn't really worried so much about when it was going to end," Hawk says.

Favorite road trip

"My favorite road trip that I've ever taken in general was the Gumball Rally in 2006, because we got to drive through Europe, through Hungary, all the way through England, France, Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Budapest," Hawk recalls. "Then they put all the cars on Antonov planes and flew them to Thailand, so then we got to drive through Thailand, literally through the rain forest. Then they flew all the cars to Salt Lake City and we drove Salt Lake City-Vegas-L.A. in eight days."

One of the beauties of this rally was that Hawk raced in his own SRT from the U.S., while his buddy Bam Margera drove his Lamborghini. "You bring your own," Hawk says. "So I had the Jeep shipped to London. I don't really consider that like a race. I know that's what people think of it as. It's more of an adventure. It's not a race, like you don't win if you come in first, so to speak."

With the exotic round-the-world locales of the Gumball rally, the sheer adventure was the main highlight for Hawk and his friends on the trip. "When else are you going to be able to drive your car all the way through Europe and Thailand and the U.S.?," Hawk chuckles. "It was unbelievable."