My First Car: Ben Baller Speaks About His '89 Honda Accord and '64 Chevy Impala

He was trying to compete in high school.

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Complex Original

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Ben Baller might have been the same dope dude back in high school that he is now, but he definitely didn't start off right away rollin' in a Black Steel Bentley Flying Spur. Like any of us, Ben had to work his way up the chain of command when it came to cars, although his ascent was a bit quicker. Fifteen years before he picked up his first Ferrari, Ben had a stereotypical grinder of a first car. The problem growing up at Beverly Hills High, however, was that these teenager's whip games (or should we say their parents?) were vicious, and grinders didn't cut it. Ben sat down and spoke to us about that struggle, accepting his first car from his mom, having a car stolen, and wanting the same car Jay-Z drove. 

As told to Tony Markovich (@T_Marko)

"The first car I ever had in my entire life was a metallic light blue 1989 Honda Accord DX. At the time I was going to Beverly Hills High School, and being cool was obviously a little serious. Plus, at Beverly Hills High, every kid was driving a super cool car like a BMW or a fuckin’ Benz like a 3-series or the 190E, which was kind of like a C-Class back then. It had a nice kit on it. At the least you had to have a Jeep Wrangler, like the Sahara Edition or something cool. At the worst you’d have to have a Volkswagen Jetta or a GTi or a Scirocco.

"But, I had the Honda Accord DX. It was the most basic-ass car, and there was nothing I could do about it. My mom worked hard as fuck, and I wasn’t the greatest student, so that’s what she got me. I wanted to put sounds in it and get a radio and all this other bullshit, but it was such a pussy fuckin’ chump car. I even had an Ungo alarm. eventually after that, I got a Honda Prelude. And the Prelude was kinda cool. I won’t even lie, the Prelude was dope. I had a Nakamichi system in there. Back then, to have Nakamichi was crazy. I had a pullout stereo. I had two 12’s. I had 8-10 speakers in the car. That was a big deal. Now they have 10 speakers in a lot of cars, but back then, you had four. We had an amp and everything, and that was the shit.

"The first car that I ever bought was a baby blue 1964 Chevy Impala, and that was in 1992. I bought that car, because my Honda Prelude got stolen, and I was too embarrassed to tell my mom that I couldn’t pay the insurance, so it was a total loss. But, they found the shell of the car, and the motor was in there. I was able to get like $2,500 for that, and I was able to get $500 for myself and I bought the two-door hardtop Impala. That was the biggest piece of junk, because there were a lot of coolant issues, so it was drama. I’ve had a lot of cars, and It just evolved from there.

"When I finally got a decent job, my first high-paying job, the first nice car that I bought myself was a black 1995 Lexus GS300. It was crazy, because the car was designed by Pininfarina, and they were the fuckin’ shit. So, the funny story is that Jay-Z was working with me at the time. We were at the same label, and he got the GS300 Touring Edition and shot it in his video. I was like, “dude, I need that car more than anything,” and that was my first nice car that I got myself.

"Fast forward to 2004. My first nice, nice car was a 2001 Ferrari 360 Spyder. It was grey market, it was in Arizona but from Europe, and I couldn’t even register it over here. It was the loudest fucking car on the fuckin’ earth. It was a yellow spider, and it was just a nightmare. I would get calls from across the street, and those were long blocks. I’m in the garage warming the car up, and people inside the other building were complaining about it."

Related: Ben Baller Picks His 10 Favorite Cars of All Time

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