Who Is Adam Carolla?

As part of our coverage of the announcement of the Top Gear USA pilot, we've put together a special feature on each of the three co-hosts. Believe it or not, Adam Carolla might actually know something about cars. Good thing, especially since he's going to be one of a trio of Top Gear USA hosts. Will his unenthusiastic enthusiasm help carry Top Gear to new and more 'merican heights, like Steve Carrell did with The Office? To better answer that question we look to his curriculum vitae below the jump.

First of all, he's named Carolla not Corolla. Let's get that out of the way. With a face for radio, Carolla started his career by doing lots of the local variety, plus some comedy on the side. His big break came when he was offered a spot co-hosting the call-in sex advice show Loveline, which I listened to on headphones underneath my covers, grasping to understand what sex meant. Rarely during the show did I ever hear Carolla actually talk about sex, instead he seemed to just rant about whatever was on his mind. That's a good sign...

His big television break came along with The Man Show on Comedy Central, which he started and co-hosted with his friend Jimmy Kimmel. If you saw one episode, you saw them all. If you never saw an episode it went like this: boobs, drinks, boobs, misogyny, boobs, drinks, belch...boobs on trampolines.

After The Man Show met what many might call a timely demise, he went on to host Too Late With Adam Carolla, a late night show actually worse than Colin Quinn's late night show. It lasted one season. Luckily, Carolla kept his bridges with Comedy Central unburned as he's stayed involved with the network via his talented voice work as Spanky Ham on Drawn Together. And by talented, we mean it's a show so bad it's actually worse when you watch it drunk. We kid, we're just happy Comedy Central found that sweet spot demographic of people who think South Park is too tame.

His most successful recent venture has been his eponymous radio show, which has run in major west coast markets since late 2005. Cars are a topic of discussion on the show and he has, by most accounts, come-off as though he's not only interested in the topic but well-versed enough to carry on in-depth conversation on most topics related to the automotive world.

But even if we couldn't verify how much he knows, we can certainly verify the guy has good taste in cars. As evidence of this we can look at his own garage, which has included vehicles ranging from a 1978 Datsun Pickup, to a far more sporting E30 BMW M3. Additional cars from the Carolla lineup include a Nissan 300ZX driven by Paul Newman in the 84 SCCA National Championship and a BRE-Replica Datsun 510. Nice.

But we're guessing he's there to fill the "funny" slot on the show — the proto-Clarkson if you will. Let's just hope he can talk about cars better than he can Fox Trot:

Send an email to Matt Hardigree, the author of this post, at matt@jalopnik.com.

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