Dale Earnhardt Jr. Reveals the Story Behind the Most Special Car in His Life

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has always been passionate about cars. Be it NASCAR Cup or Xfinity cars or street-legal Corvettes, he has seen and driven them all. That’s why, when asked recently to name his all-time favorite car, he had a surprise answer.

On a recent edition of Dinner Drive with Kyle Petty, Dale Jr. revealed that his favorite “car” was a pickup truck. “It’s probably my little (Chevrolet) S-10 pickup truck,” he told Petty. “It’s a 1988 single cab, two-tone black and silver S-10 pickup truck with the Tahoe package. The Tahoe package was a particular engine and (steering) wheel.”

The reason Junior still owns and drives his replica truck (we’ll uncover the story of what happened to the original a bit later) is simple. “This was my first vehicle,” he said.

“This isn’t the exact truck that I owned, but this is as close as you’re going to get. And I’m so glad that I have it today. It’s kind of like this thing that reminds you of where you were and where you’ve been.”

Even though his father gifted Junior with the truck when he just turned 16 years old and got his first driver’s license, he was unlike many of his peers who wanted a fast hot rod and whose parents usually obliged. Junior, on the other hand, listened to his father, the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., who put his son in something that was practical, sturdy, and basically a good commuting vehicle.

“I appreciated my dad’s vision and not to put me in anything that was going to go super-fast, not to put me in anything that I was going to get myself in trouble in,” Junior said. “You just get your license, you’re 16, you really don’t know how to drive. You think you do, but you’re going to run off in the ditch. You’re going to do stupid stuff.

“And this thing could take a beating. It was small, easy to park, easy to get around in, just really a good truck. I had a lot of great memories in this truck with friends and trips, things I did and places I went.”

Ironically, it wasn’t love at first sight between Junior and his truck. He said, “It showed up in the driveway and it was all I needed. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh man, this is awesome! I love this thing.’ It was just like that’ll get me where I want to go. And I ended up falling in love with it.”

Despite driving some of the fastest street cars imaginable, including the afore-mentioned Corvettes, Junior kept coming back to his little pick-em-up truck like a loyal boyfriend.

“I’d park this truck in the field and lay in the bed of it and look up at the stars,” Junior said. “I mean, the cliche things that you see people do on TV commercials with cars? Like, I did it with this truck.

“Me and this truck, we were a team, you know what I mean? It was dependable and I fixed everything that went wrong with it. When you invest yourself into something like that, it’s part of you.”

Junior had a lead foot long before he started racing

Even though his truck was kind of slow compared to his race cars, that didn’t stop Junior from stepping on the gas on the streets and highways near his home in Mooresville, North Carolina.

When Petty asked Junior if he got any tickets from police, Junior gave a surprisingly honest and transparent answer. “I got four speeding tickets between (the ages of) 16 and 18,” he admitted. “And I ain’t had one since.”

Of course, being Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a great way to talk yourself out of a ticket, or maybe you can barter with a cop and give him an autograph and let him take a picture with you. Voila, the officer typically says, ‘Slow it down, Junior. Have a good day and drive safe.” But then Junior spoiled the whole great story.

“Well, that’s not true. Actually, I’ve had a couple (speeding tickets) since, over a couple decades, but that’s pretty good,” he said. “But I got a lot in the two years that I was driving the S-10.”

Junior then concluded his S-10 story but not before he admitted to Petty that he had his first date in his truck, the first time he took a girl out — “It was probably a pretty bad date,” he confessed — and a couple of first kisses.

Although he doesn’t have the original truck, his replica S-10 had work done on it, which Junior thanked Ray Evernham for doing.

So if this is a replica, where’s the original?

Let’s just say it’s an ugly tale. In a 2014 FOX Sports article, Junior revealed, “I financed it for five years for a $100 payment. I had it for about three months, and I flipped it on Christmas morning driving to MeMaw’s for a family reunion.

“There was a little snow off the road, but not on the road. I’d gotten a Walkman CD player from my sister with a tape adaptor, and I was messing with that, and drove it off the road, hit a driveway culvert and flipped over like six or seven times.

The truck was totaled but fortunately, Junior was unhurt. As the late broadcasting icon Paul Harvey used to say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”