{"id":1947180,"date":"2026-05-21T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1947180"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:25:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:25:00","slug":"these-are-the-historical-figures-youd-ride-shotgun-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1947180","title":{"rendered":"These Are The Historical Figures You’d Ride Shotgun With"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A relaxing drive or full-on road trip is only as fun as the company that you keep in the seat next to you. It could be family, or friends, or even a great historical figure.\u00a0That’s what I asked you earlier this week<\/a>:\u00a0who, in all of history, would you like to ride shotgun with? As usual, Jalopnik’s readers served up a diverse array of answers. Presidents were a popular choice. Really\u00a0I can’t imagine choosing to spend time with a politician myself, but more power to you all. At least you know\u00a0Benjamin Franklin would have been a fun hang. Another popular category was musicians. A commenter chose David Bowie<\/a> and I can’t imagine a more enjoyable time than hanging around that weird and wonderful man.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next category where historical figures from the actual history of cars<\/a>.\u00a0To which I say, what are ya, a bunch of nerds? You can like things other than cars. Though riding along with Junior Johnson in his prime would be pretty sick. OK, you nerds convinced me. Scroll through to see what historical figures your fellow readers would like to ride along with.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

I’d want a full-on road trip with Julia Child. We’d have to swap driving duty off and on, ’cause I’d absolutely encourage her to get tore up from the floor up wherever she picked for chow. We could discuss cuisine, the intelligence sector, her thoughts on Meryl Streep’s depiction of her (and\/or half the rest of civilization) or she could just read the phone book after a half glass of wine. Wherever the conversation or GPS took us, I’m confident it’d be a damn delight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Uncle Charley<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Probably not the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Rog<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Denis Jenkinson sitting next to driver Sterling Moss during the 1955 Mille Miglia has to have been the greatest experience of riding shotgun in history. I’ve no idea what Moss was like as a person except that he was an unrepentant misogynist. Perhaps he doesn’t rate as much of an historical figure. But if the choice is among historical shotgun rides rather than selecting some historical person to drive my Subaru, then riding with Moss in Mille Miglia has to be the ne plus ultra.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0JaquesTati<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Any? I think it’s gotta be Benjamin Franklin for me. I admit, I really would like to take Audrey Hepburn out on date on a two-seater convertible, I gotta go with Franklin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From JBJB<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Frank Zappa. You know he’d be an interesting chatter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Evildad<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

FDR, because I want his take on why helping the working man gave way to helping billionaires \ud83d\ude20<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Jimboy II, The Sequel<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Junior Johnson in his souped-up black Ford coupe flying down some Carolina backroads.<\/p>\n

The stories he could tell. The life experiences he could relay. Getting to ride with the man credited with popularizing\/codifying the “bootleg\/J-turn”… as long as it was a situation where I was on his “good side” and he was in the mood to chat while driving.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0DiRF<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Neil Armstrong. It would be fun to have discussions on all things space, ranging from the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union to today’s privatization of the Final Frontier by companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Giantsgiants<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

I know this is a very basic American Answer, but I would love to go on a drive with Mr. Shelby. I want to hear about his time racing, and all the crazyness that was done in Shelby American during the 60s. Sadly this dream could have been possible, a childhood friend of mine’s family is apparently friends with the Shelbys. Sadly, I didn’t find that out until 2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0DiamondBlz<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

Neil Peart \u2013 anything from his car collection<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Mark Rosenthal<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

David Bowie<\/p>\n

Never met him personally, but always thought he would be one hell of a cool guy to spend some time with.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0Not Me<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n

I mean, other than car racers of the past, and since we are riding shotgun, then there is really only one answer:<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n

And this quote from him sums up why he’d be the guy:<\/p>\n

‘There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.’<\/p>\n

He drove ambulances in a war zone during World War I on the Italian front lines. He’s probably a good driver (or entirely reckless!), and, who boy! He’s got tales to tell! Plus there’ll be excellent daiquiries!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From\u00a0NotLewisHamilton<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A relaxing drive or full-on road trip is only as fun as the company that you keep in the seat next to you. It could be family, or friends, or even a great historical figure.\u00a0That’s what I asked you earlier this week:\u00a0who, in all of history, would you like to ride shotgun with? As usual, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,247],"class_list":["post-1947180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-jalopnik-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1947180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1947180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1947180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1947180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}