Richard Jordan had everything he was told to want: cars, a house, a fiancé. Then his fiancé left him. So he sold everything, bought a Lamborghini Gallardo and set out across America.
This is his amazing story.
It’s a love story, but not a conventional one. Oh sure, there’s a woman. There always is. But it’s when the woman split that the real romance began. Richard Jordan lost love, then found it again in an exotic Italian sports car and the American road. Jordan’s journey would take him across the country and back again repeatedly as he racked up nearly 100,000 miles in a car so expensive most owners rarely drive them at all.
It was early 2006 and Jordan’s version of the American dream lay crumbled at his feet. After giving his girlfriend of five years a ring and a house in a north Texas suburb — a home purchased with the proceeds from selling his metal-fabrication business, his home and a few of his cars — she left him.
“I bought us the house and planned on moving in and as soon as I did, she left,” Jordan says. “So, I got stuck in a house I didn’t want, in an area I didn’t want to be in…. It was kind of emotionally traumatic. So I bought the car and wandered around.”
It wasn’t actually as easy as that.
No one wanted to buy Jordan’s house. He was stuck with it. It took months to sell the rest of his possessions. That money, combined with most of life savings, provided a $90,000 down payment on a Lamborghini Gallardo.
The Gallardo is named for a famous Spanish bull. Its mid-mounted V-10 engine unleashes 512 horsepower. Its sharp looks hint at its performance: The car does zero to 60 in just 4 seconds and tops out at 195 mph for the model Jordan purchased for $180,000.
After locating the right model and arranging the financing, Jordan picked up his black Gallardo Coupe from Lamborghini of Ohio on July 4, 2006. Independence Day was almost intentionally ironic, the day Jordan chose to leave everything he’d created but now no longer wanted.
“I’d become a prisoner to my house, to everything, to my fantasy of an American dream or anything I could remotely call home,” he says.
He owned one of the fastest cars in the world but had nowhere to put it. So, he started driving. For more than a year he wandered from place to place, living in motels and making new friends. He’d cross the country three times.
“It was just a feeling that I didn’t really have a home, there was no place to safely be but the Lambo,” he says. “That was the one thing that felt like it worked for me.”
Jordan visited ghost towns and big cities. He retraced childhood trips. As soon as he’d settle down, he’d get the itch to move, so he’d pack up and drive somewhere else. It quickly became difficult to pay for the house — the one remaining possession he couldn’t shake — and afford gas. He almost lost the house numerous times.
“I have a few hundred grand against me. I don’t like debt, but I’m used to it,” he says. “I’ve accumulated a lot and paid it back several times in my life.”
Wandering the country brought as much joy and humor as it did introspection and isolation. While visiting a strip club in Ohio, Jordan, who was 32 at the time, was mistaken for the musician Moby. The waitress was convinced because of his shaved head, glasses and fancy car.
“She’s like ‘You’re Moby, aren’t you?’ and I said ‘I’ll be anyone you want me to be,’” Jordan says. “She took it as ‘I’m Moby.’”
He isn’t, of course, but he’s not above accepting free bottles of champagne when offered.
“It was just ridiculous. The manager’s kissing my butt. I maybe spent $100 the whole night and it was just really, really silly and absurd,” he says.
Fifty-three, count 'em, speeding tickets.
Driving a Lamborghini means occasionally driving above the speed limit. Jordan’s honest about his desire to go fast and has 53 tickets to prove it. But it wasn’t speed that landed him in the handcuffs of an Indiana state trooper.
Though living on the road, Jordan did have family responsibilities, like serving as the best man in his cousin’s wedding. While en route to the wedding he was caught speeding and ran afoul of the Indiana State Police. He was soon looking down the highway at a roadblock. His registration expired the day before, giving the troopers cause to search his car
That’s when they found the handgun.
“I don’t travel without guns,” Jordan says. “I’ve been in too many situations so I always carry one or two guns with me. A car like that is an assault on the senses, and you could be in a decent area and just be barraged by people and you never knew who you’re dealing with.”
At first he didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation — the police thought he was moving drugs — so his calm demeanor, jokes about hating the town he was in and a general Blues Brothers-like schtick didn’t go over well. The troopers kept him in the back of a squad car for four hours, eventually releasing him on his own recognizance after realizing they couldn’t load the Lambo on a flatbed without his help. He eventually got the car back and the charges settled, but it cost him $25,000 in fines, travel and legal fees.
Most people who own an exotic don’t use it as a daily driver because they’re so expensive. The highest mileage among the Lamborghini Gallardos for sale on eBay Motors is 38,835 for a 2004 model, but most of them are below 10,000.
Jordan racked up 91,807.
“I can’t afford to buy something like that and drive it on the weekend,” he says. “The difference between being materialistic and not is when you use what you have.”
For Jordan, it’s a better value to drive the car because they lose so much value once you buy them. But all that driving comes at a price. After all that hard time on the road, the engine timing chain stretched, crunching the valves and turning Jordan’s car into an exotic and expensive paperweight. It’s worth less than he owes on it, and the bank refuses to grant him another loan.
“For me, it’s wasteful not to use it,” he says. He feels that way about everything. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a dishwasher. That’s not really socially acceptable. It’s not the way we’re programmed…. Most people don’t live like I do. I’d eat ramen noodles to pay for gasoline, just to avoid the monotony of being stuck in four walls.”
Considering the traumatic experience that led him to buy the car, its destruction doesn’t seem to burden him too much.
“It worked every day, it worked like it was supposed to, it never broke down,” he says. “It exceeded all my expectations.”
The loss of his car isn’t the end, but a beginning. He’s setting up a shop in Dallas and plans to build custom motorcycles. He also plans to repair or replace the Gallardo’s engine when he can afford it. But for now it sits in his shop, an interesting sculpture to show friends and prospective customers. He’s also met a new girl, but he’s taking things one step at a time.
Jordan doesn’t regret any of the decisions he’s made. He adopts a Zen-like calm tone — which would seem to clash with his mohawk — while explaining how lucky he was to be able to leave everything behind and do something many people dream about but few ever do.
“You’re never going to live up to anyone’s expectations, so you might as well live up to your own — and for me that’s to be as free as you can,” he says. “And if money doesn’t buy you freedom, then it’s useless.”
This story was originally published by Jalopnik.
Photos: Richard Jordan and Matt Hardigee / Jalopnik
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