George Lucas is not known for his conversation. In Hollywood, the film maker who defined a generation with the Star Wars series, introduced the world to Indiana Jones and is worth an estimated $3 billion (£1.6 billion), is regarded as something of a recluse. Unwilling to speak to reporters, he rarely ventures far from his sprawling 7,000-acre Skywalker ranch in the hills of Marin County, California.



It is something of surprise then to see him wandering cheerfully among the cars at last weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. “I’ve been fascinated with cars all my life, I love them,” he explains. “I always have and at one point I loved to race.”

Despite his wealth, he claims to be decidedly frugal when it comes to buying motors. “I don’t really collect cars,” he says. “I have two Tuckers (classic American 1940s cars), a 1974 Ferrari Dino, a Ferrari 360 Modena and a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro. That’s it.”

Lucas’s love affair with cars began many years before he was able to drive, and, as it turns out, was to be the central theme of his childhood. “My first memory of cars was when I was about six years old and my next door neighbour’s father built a plywood car with a lawnmower engine on it,” he says. “I was completely obsessed with that. From then on I became fascinated with Detroit iron in the period of big fins, and as I grew closer to being a teenager I got more interested in foreign cars and sports car racing. That really became my obsession until I graduated from high school.”

His fixation was fuelled by the fact that without a car life in the rural town of Modesto, California, where the family lived on a small ranch, could be life-sappingly dull. It would also lead to an epiphany without which Lucas may never have made a film in his life.

His first car came when he was 15 and was a tiny Autobianchi Bianchina. The Italian-made two-cylinder car was not the vehicle that Lucas had imagined himself driving: “(It had) a sewing-machine engine; it was a dumb car,” he was to claim later. “What could I do with that, it was practically a motor scooter.”

Too young for a driving licence, Lucas remembers bombing about the family’s ranch dodging his father’s walnut trees. As soon as he passed his test he transferred his recklessness straight onto the road and promptly rolled the car at 70mph while trying to take a bend.

Lucas was unhurt but the Bianchina was a write-off. Far from putting Lucas off motoring, though, he restored, customised and started racing the wreck. It was the time of hot rods and late-night cruises, girls and drive-in cinemas: a vision of small-town 1960s life that the director would later immortalise in his Oscar-nominated film American Graffiti.

Lucas once claimed that many of the stories in the movie came directly from his own experiences in Modesto. Today, he says he relished the period and admits: “I spent a great deal of time researching the movie when I was at high school.”

The teenage Lucas threw himself into his new motoring pursuits (much to his parents’ and teachers’ dismay), and began working as a mechanic for an autocross race team — the first step into the high-profile world of Nascar, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. On occasion he acted as co-driver in the team’s Ford Mustang Cobra, harbouring dreams of racing at Le Mans, Monte Carlo and Indianapolis.

But everything changed on Tuesday, June 12, 1962. Returning home from the library that afternoon, Lucas’s Bianchina was involved in a horrific accident with a Chevrolet Impala as he turned left onto the dirt track that led up to his house. Lucas’s seatbelt snapped and he was thrown clear of the car as it slammed into the side of a walnut tree at 60mph. Lucas was reported to have been left “without a pulse, his lungs collapsed and numerous bones crushed”.

The crash, and the months of convalescence in hospital, where the police unceremoniously presented him with a ticket for making an illegal left turn, marked a turning point in Lucas’s life. “It made me realise more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life,” he says of the crash. “And I really wanted to make something out of my life. I was in an accident that, in theory, no-one could survive.

“The accident allowed me to apply myself at school. I got great grades and I was able to push my photography even further and eventually discovered film and film schools.”

Not that he abandoned his passion for cars. His early student films all featured them. One, called Herbie, consisted solely of lovingly observed abstract shots of polished car surfaces and hub caps. Another, 1:42:08 One Man and his Car, was named after the lap time of the sports car that was its subject. The film had no sound apart from the roar of the car’s engine.

Today Lucas’s one concession to his past passion for speed is that his most cherished cars just happens to be the fastest. “My overall favourite is my Ferrari 360 Modena, which I chose for its looks and its handling and is very nice. But the car I like to drive the most and is the best car I have ever driven is the Dino,” he says. “I take them up and down the coast of California from Big Sur to Mendocino along the windy roads. It’s a beautiful drive.”

Even so, Lucas has been known to return to the racetrack on occasion. Four years ago he competed in the annual Long Beach Grand Prix road race where celebrities provide the warm-up action before the main Champ Car race. Unfortunately, his luck with cars had not improved: he was forced to retire — unhurt — after crashing his car into a wall.

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