The Chevrolet Bel Air is another iconic ride that Bruce Springsteen has enjoyed for many years. CarHP reports that the vehicle is priced at $67,300, and Motor1 reported in December 2016 that the vehicle — eventually repainted yellow with flames added around the hood and body — sold at auction for $350,000.
To make things even more dramatic, the singer purchased the Bel Air in a convertible configuration, of course, as his first motor for $2,000 after releasing “Born to Run.” Funny enough, GQ notes that in his memoir, he says “that summer I bought my first set of wheels … a ’57 Chevy with dual, four-barrel carbs, a Hurst on the floor…” The car, GQ notes, featured a fuel-injected 4.6L V8 with 283 brake horsepower. The same model starred alongside Harrison Ford in 1973’s classic, “American Graffiti.”
One of Springsteen’s most often overlooked auditory characters is thought to exist in two renditions of brothers and bridges: In “Brothers Under the Bridges” and the “Tom Joad.” In the first appearance, his narrator is a teenager looking forward to getting his license and first set of wheels. “Me and Tommy we was just fourteen, didn’t have our licenses yet / Our walls were covered with pictures of cars we’d get,” he sings.
One can easily imagine a similarly bright-eyed Springsteen finally taking the wheel of his own vehicle — this ’57 Bel Air — after singing about so many other cars in the years before.
