You’ve probably heard of comedian Adam Carolla from his chart-topping podcast The Adam Carolla Show or his stint co-hosting MTV’s Loveline. His latest project, and directorial debut, is the film “Road Hard,” based on a tough time in his life when he was forced to go back out on the road to support his family. It was 2009, and he had just lost his job in terrestrial radio. The phone wasn’t ringing and the economy was in the tank. “Someone flipped a switch, and it just stopped,” he told Elvis Mitchell on KCRW’s The Treatment.



Going on a comedy tour, playing one dingy comedy club after the other, spending endless nights in budget hotel rooms and always flying coach, is “kind of fun when you’re 27,” he said, “but it’s not so fun when you’re 45.”

Now, with a successful podcasting empire and a couple films under his belt, Carolla knows something about life on the road, in a different sense. Once he became a successful comedian, he started collecting vintage Datsuns. Now he has a collection of over 20 vintage cars. After the interview with Elvis, he took him on a private tour of his vintage race car collection, which includes a BRE Datsun Roadster, a 1970 Lamborghini Miura, and a 1968 Lamborghini Islero.

Carolla’s next project is a documentary about Paul Newman’s car racing career based on the book “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman” by Matt Stone. Carolla became interested in Newman after buying a 1984 Nissan raced by Newman, and then its 1985 sister car. “The more I learned about him,” Carolla blogged in 2014, “the more I was surprised to find out that he was doing serious racing at the height of his popularity as an actor.”

The documentary is scheduled for release later this year.