Paul Newman is sitting on a velour couch in the back of an Airstream motorhome trundling down a road somewhere south of Ensenada, Mexico. “I think,” he says, lifting his Armani sunglasses and peering out at the passing spaghetti western vista of cactuses and cloudless skies, “we filmed Butch Cassidy down here somewhere.” Then “the other” Ol’ Blue Eyes slumps back in his seat, lets the sunglasses fall back into place, and the most famous eyes in film history abruptly disappear.

We are en route for the start of last month’s Baja 1000 desert race. Running 1,000 miles down the length of Baja California the race is like a mini Paris-Dakar in which drivers negotiate a course littered with sand dunes and rocks at motorway speeds in specially modified buggies. Not that this fazes the 79-year-old actor.

“I’m looking forward to the race. It’s really the last of the great motoring adventures,” he says. “I did the pre-run (test) a few weeks ago. It was great fun. I was amazed at the capabilities of the cars to absorb bumps. They are just amazingly durable. The only thing is, my back is not too good, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ll just try to make sure that I don’t hit anything. But I’ll have a guide sitting there with a hammer, and if I do something wrong he will just hit me in the privates.”

Newman’s nonchalance is hardly surprising. Many film stars have dabbled with racing cars but he is one of the very few actually to have made a successful career on the circuit. In more than 30 years of racing he has come second at Le Mans in 1979, tested Indycars, and is co-owner of Newman/Haas Racing, the second most successful team in the history of the American Cart racing series, and the one Nigel Mansell joined when still the reigning Formula One world champion.

Newman had been in racing cars before but it was appearing in the 1969 film Winning, about an Indycar driver on a losing streak, that let him get up close to the cars and fired his passion. By 1972 he had his racing licence and began to turn down acting parts from March to October so he could concentrate on driving.

Surprisingly, as both careers begin to come to a close he says he can remember the races more than the movies. “That says I have a fairly good memory for racing and no memory at all for films,” he says, adding that it doesn’t mean he should have concentrated on racing from the start. “I would never have been in the first echelon of racers. I’m actually surprised that I’ve done as well as I have.”

Newman’s first brush with cars came as a teenager learning to drive in a 1937 Studebaker Commander. “I go back a bit, you see,” he jokes. “We got our licences when we were 16. You had to show them that you could drive in a straight line for 400ft without hitting anything. It was pretty loose. It’s not much better now.”

Since then he has had a variety of cars, from a 1929 Model A Ford right through to a race-tuned 670bhp Corvette which he plans to keep racing even when he hits 80. He also owns what you might think of as a more conventional pensioner’s car — a Volvo. Except this one just happens to have had a race-bred Cosworth V8 engine dropped into it. “It is a funny Volvo,” he admits. “It’s an old 950, last of the rear-wheel station wagon chassis. And it is hotted up a little bit . . .” In fact the engine is the size of a small piano, makes considerably more noise, and pumps out 400bhp.

However, Newman’s love of cars goes deeper than mere muscle power. He also runs a pair of Toyota Priuses that he and his actress wife Joanne Woodward have at homes in and around New York. “I think they are terrific cars. I get about 50 miles to the gallon depending how hard you push, but really you have to push them hard to not get good gas mileage,” he says.

I tell him about an observation Jay Leno, the Sunday Times Driving contributor and talk-show host, made about Hollywood stars using the Prius to look green and then hopping in a private jet and using in an hour the amount of fuel the average family uses in a year. Newman laughs. “They are trying to make a public show to make up for their indulgence,” he says. Given the circumstances I refrain from mentioning his ownership of a Sabreliner jet.

We are nearing our destination and Newman is fidgety. His Centrix Financial Team buggy looks like a mechanical praying mantis. Jacked up on suspension struts the tubular frame sits 3ft off the ground. Behind the open cockpit is a modified engine from an old Porsche 914.

As the desert stormer is tanked up, Newman limbers up, touching his toes with surprising ease. The call comes for him to clamber aboard. His assistant and a small group of fans shout “Good Luck!” and “Go Paul!”

Newman, his blue eyes finally visible, turns and looks back, then says: “I come away from this race with a pulse, that will do just fine.”

In fact he went on to finish fourth in his class. Not bad for a 79-year-old.

Explore Features

• Porsche

• BMW

• Mercedes

• Ferrari

• Bentley

• Audi

• Maserati

• Aston Martin

• Jaguar

• VW