Tina Turner’s love for cars. Image: Screengrab / Twitter / dsgolson
Tina Turner’s other love: Cars!
The late Tina Turner was not just a music legend who loved to sing and perform. She was also an avid motor enthusiast.
Tina Turner’s love for cars. Image: Screengrab / Twitter / dsgolson
Tina Turner had another passion unknown to most – a love of cars.
The Queen of Rock ’n Roll, who died on 24 May at the age of 83, loved the freedom that cars provided her.
CARS: AN ESCAPISM
The international star, who was increasingly trying to remain out of the public eye found a sense of freedom and privacy when driving her cars.
According to Hagerty, motor cars afforded Turner the ability to “escape”.
“It may sound silly,” Turner wrote in her autobiography, My Love Story, “but one of my favorite escapes, and a secret pleasure, was driving my Jaguar. I loved it because it was something I could do by myself, one of the few times I could be alone and free.”
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A LOVE FOR JAGUAR
Turner found pleasure in motor vehicles, especially her white Jaguar XJ6, which was a gift from American music artist Sammy Davis Jr. in 1970.
She also had a silver E-Type Jag, that she received from her first husband Ike Turner, in 1973.
Turner’s 2018 autobiography states that Davis originally intended to give Tina a Mercedes-Benz, but Turner’s assistant suggested a Jaguar instead because the singer “was into English cars.”
Turner admitted that the Jaguar “awakened my passion for fast cars.”
SPLURGING OUT
After divorcing Ike Turner in 1978, Tina launched a solo career. With the success of her comeback album, Private Dancer, in 1984 she decided to splurge on a Lamborghini LM002.
Turner and her longtime partner, German record producer Erwin Bach, who became Tina’s husband in 2013, later customized the rare Lamborghini model.
The biggest change to the vehicle was exchanging its V-12 engine and manual transmission for a V-8 engine as well as an automatic gearbox, which came from a Mercedes-Benz 500E.
Turner sold the rare SUV model in 2008.
The international singing sensation also owned several G-Wagen vehicles while living in Switzerland. She relocated to the central European country in 1995 and became a Swiss national in 2013.
