Joe Rogan Car Collection: The Restomods Behind the Podcast

Last updated 6 October 2026

Joe Rogan is the one man in our UFC series who buys old cars to rebuild them. A 1965 Corvette, a 1969 Nova and a 1970 Barracuda, all with modern engines, plus a Tesla, a Supra and an ICON Bronco. Here is the garage, and what a restomod is.

Joe Rogan’s car collection at a glance

Car	Year	Estimated value	Status
Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray restomod, built by Pure Vision Design	1965	n/a	Reported
Chevrolet Nova, built by Pure Vision Design	1969	n/a	Reported
Plymouth Barracuda, nicknamed Sick Fish	1970	n/a	Reported
Tesla Model S P100D	n/a	n/a	Reported
Toyota Supra MK IV	n/a	n/a	Reported
ICON BR Ford Bronco	n/a	n/a	Reported

Six vehicles, all Reported, and the best-documented Reported list in this series. Rogan has driven the Corvette on camera with Jay Leno and talked about the Nova with MotorTrend. We still grade them Reported because the evidence is television and magazines rather than his own channel or a dealer tagging him. The values are empty because nobody has priced one-off builds, and we will not.

What car does Joe Rogan drive?

Whichever one he last finished. Joe Rogan is the UFC’s long-time commentator, a comedian and the host of the biggest podcast in the world, and he is also the one person in this series who buys old cars and has them rebuilt. His garage is three American classics with modern running gear, an electric saloon, a Japanese icon and a reimagined Bronco.

That makes him the odd one out. Every fighter on the UFC fighters car collections 2026 page bought a car to own it. Rogan buys cars to change them. He was a guest on Jay Leno’s Garage with one of them, which is as close to a certificate of seriousness as a car owner can get.

What a restomod is, and why Rogan builds them

Three of the six vehicles here are restomods, so the word needs a definition. A restomod is a classic car restored on the outside and modernised underneath: original body, new engine, new suspension, new brakes, new wiring, often a new chassis. You get the shape of 1965 with the reliability and the pace of a current car.

Rogan told Jay Leno his own version of that definition: he has always loved the old looks and wanted the new underpinnings. That is the whole philosophy of this garage in one sentence, and it is why none of the three classics here is original. A purist would wince. Rogan would drive past him.

Restomods also explain the empty value column. A numbers-matching 1965 Corvette has a market. A 1965 Corvette with a supercharged modern engine on a custom chassis is worth whatever the next buyer thinks the build is worth, and nobody has published that figure for these cars.

Joe Rogan’s Corvette Sting Ray restomod

The car that went to Jay Leno’s Garage is a 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray, the second-generation C2, rebuilt by Steve Strope of Pure Vision Design. According to CorvetteBlogger’s account of the episode, Rogan bought the car from RK Motors in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then had Strope turn a restoration he was not happy with into something he was.

The C2 was built from 1963 to 1967 and is the Corvette most people picture when they hear the name: hidden headlights, the pinched waist, the split rear window on the 1963 coupe. Rogan’s is from the middle of the run. It is the car that made him a restomod owner, and it is the reason this page leads with a Chevrolet. More on the generations on our Chevrolet Corvette page.

Corvette Sting Ray restomod specs

These are build details reported from the Jay Leno’s Garage appearance by CorvetteBlogger and Motorious, not factory figures. A restomod has no factory figures.

Spec	Value
Base car	1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray (C2)
Builder	Steve Strope, Pure Vision Design
Engine	GM LS1 V8 with a Magnuson supercharger
Power	a little over 425 hp, as reported by Motorious
Chassis	tube chassis with independent front and rear suspension
Brakes	modern Corvette Grand Sport brake system
Wheels	flat-centre Centerline wheels
Bought from	RK Motors, Charlotte, North Carolina

The supercharger was added for low-down torque, Rogan said, which is the right reason: a 1965 body on a modern chassis does not need more top-end speed, it needs to pull hard from a stop without drama. Leno’s verdict from the passenger seat was that the car had the best of both worlds. Rogan agreed, while calling the then-current C7 a masterpiece.

The 1969 Chevrolet Nova by Pure Vision

The second Strope build is a 1969 Chevrolet Nova, the compact Chevrolet that became a muscle car when the big engines went in. Rogan had it stripped to bare metal and rebuilt by Pure Vision, and MotorTrend covered the result. GM Authority later reported the finished car runs a supercharged LT4, the engine from the Corvette Z06 of the time.

MotorTrend’s line on the car was that it showed what happens when out-of-the-box thinking meets modern engineering. That is a magazine’s way of saying the Nova is the more radical of the two Chevrolets. The Corvette looks like a 1965 Corvette. The Nova looks like a 1969 Nova that has been thinking about it.

We do not have a power figure from a source we trust, so the table does not give one. An LT4 in factory tune makes about 650 hp; what Rogan’s makes is between him and Strope.

The 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, Sick Fish

The third restomod is not a Chevrolet and was not built for Rogan. The 1970 Plymouth Barracuda he calls Sick Fish was, according to Rogan and to Motorious, once owned by NFL running back Reggie Bush. Motorious credits the design to Chip Foose and the build to Troy Trepanier, with a Chrysler Hemi V8 under the bonnet.

The 1970 Barracuda is the first year of the E-body, the platform Plymouth shared only with the Dodge Challenger, and the year the 426 Hemi became an option at 425 hp on the factory sheet. Which Hemi is in Sick Fish, and what it makes, is not reported. The nickname does the talking.

The Tesla Model S P100D and the Elon Musk podcast

The one car in the garage with no history is the Tesla Model S P100D, the top performance version of the first Model S. Rogan bought it after Elon Musk appeared on his podcast, which is the only purchase story on this page that needs no builder.

It is also the only car here that would beat the restomods from the lights, and the one Rogan has talked about least. For a man who likes engines he can hear, it reads as curiosity rather than conversion.

The Toyota Supra MK IV and the ICON BR Ford

Two more vehicles round out the list. A Toyota Supra MK IV, the fourth-generation Supra from the nineties whose twin-turbo straight six made it the most tunable Japanese car of its era. And an ICON BR Ford, a classic Ford Bronco rebuilt by ICON, the California company that does for 4x4s what Pure Vision does for muscle cars.

Neither has a reported year, spec or price. Both fit the pattern. The Supra is the car every tuner of Rogan’s generation wanted; the ICON Bronco is a restomod by another name. Even his off-roader was taken apart and put back together better.

How his garage compares

Within our UFC fighters car collections 2026, Rogan is the only owner who could tell you the suspension geometry of every car in his garage. The value of the collection is unknown, and that is the point: Conor McGregor‘s cars have prices because they were bought from showrooms. Rogan’s were built, and builds do not have list prices.

The nearest neighbour is Jorge Masvidal, who owns the only original classic in the series, a 1973 Porsche 911. Rogan and Masvidal are the two bridges from this group to the classic cars we will cover separately. One keeps his old car old. The other makes his old cars new.

For contrast, Sean O’Malley chooses cars for their colour and Rogan chooses them for what is underneath. Both garages are honest about what they are for. Every profile in our Celebrity car collections 2026 hub is graded the same way.

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