DEAN MARTIN ONCE WRECKED A VINTAGE LUXURY CAR IN A McDONALD’S DRIVE-THRU — ALL FOR BING CROSBY’S GRANDSON
In the long history of Rat Pack legends, this one sounds almost too perfect to be true — yet it captures exactly who Dean Martin really was.
According to Phil Crosby Jr., grandson of Bing Crosby, Martin once destroyed the sides of a priceless vintage automobile while trying to buy a hamburger for a picky kid — and didn’t care one bit.
Crosby Jr. recently recalled that his mother, Peggy Crosby, dated — and was even briefly engaged to — Dean Martin in the mid-1970s, following her turbulent marriage to Bing Crosby’s son, Phil Crosby Sr. That relationship nearly made young Phil Martin’s stepson.
“I was almost Dean Martin’s stepson,” Crosby Jr. said. “If that had happened, I probably would have grown up with a silver spoon. But that’s not how it turned out.”
Even so, Martin left a lasting impression.
Though Crosby Jr. was very young at the time, he remembers Martin’s easygoing presence and his habit of calling him simply “the kid.” Years later, even after Martin and Peggy split, that nickname stuck. “Even when my mom ran into him later, I was still ‘the kid,’” Crosby said.
The most legendary story, however, has been passed down through family lore.
One night around 1976 in Santa Monica, Crosby Jr. — admittedly a “spoiled kid” — refused to eat dinner and insisted on McDonald’s. Drive-thrus were still relatively new, but Martin decided to indulge him. The problem? He was driving a massive Stutz Blackhawk, a wide, ultra-luxury vintage car worth a fortune.
The drive-thru was far too narrow.
Instead of backing out, Martin reportedly drove straight through anyway — crunching and scraping both sides of the car against the concrete walls as employees inside stared in horror. Metal screeched. The damage was unmistakable.
And Dean Martin? Completely unfazed.
By the time they reached the window, Peggy Crosby was laughing, the McDonald’s workers were stunned, and Martin brushed off the destruction as if it meant nothing. According to Crosby Jr., the damage was “nothing to him” — because Martin simply wasn’t materialistic.
“That told me everything about who he really was,” Crosby Jr. said. “He wasn’t temperamental. He wasn’t flashy about money. He was actually a very sweet man.”
The story stands in stark contrast to Martin’s larger-than-life Rat Pack image — the hard-drinking, carefree crooner sharing stages with Frank Sinatra. Those who knew him well often said Martin was the calmest, kindest, and most grounded of the group.
Crosby Jr. later met Martin once more as a teenager, shortly before Martin’s death. “He was a class act,” he said.
In the end, the image of Dean Martin destroying a priceless car for a child’s burger may be one of the most honest portraits of him ever told — not a reckless celebrity, but a generous man who valued people over possessions.
In Hollywood lore filled with ego and excess, this story endures for a simple reason:
Dean Martin didn’t care about the car.
He cared about the kid.
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