‘Burning my eyes’ – WWE once spent $40k on luxury car for Stone Cold Steve Austin only for him to trash it hours later

If the late 1990s in WWE were a non-stop cycle of Tom and Jerry, Stone Cold Steve Austin was cast in the role of Jerry more often than not.

While not always tiny in comparison to his rivals in terms of physical size, in figures like The Rock and The Undertaker he often faced enemies bigger than he was.

As such, The Rattlesnake might well have developed a complex which manifested itself in his character’s usual arsenal of weaponry – just ask, among others, Rock and Vince McMahon.

Those two villains copped the vast majority of the Texan’s anger back in the day, but the violence often spilled outside the wrestling ring, and that’s where the chaos really began.

The list of antics employed by Austin is plentiful. He filled McMahon’s car with cement until its windows shattered and hosed down his rival’s entire entourage with a beer hose – Triple H once got flipped in a car by the multi-time world champion, who also crashed an ambulance into another car The Game was in.

One of the more eye-catching bashings dished out by the toughest SOB in WWE history came in April 1999 when he and Rock were duelling over the WWE Championship. An arrogant and ridiculous Rock was maintaining that he’d ended Austin’s career by dropping him into a river during another of their clashes the previous week, and held a fake ‘funeral’ on Raw to commemorate the achievement.

Rock’s less-than-flattering eulogy for Austin was interrupted by very much not dead Stone Cold, who gained revenge in unimaginable style. Clearly keen to up the ante of the rivalry in terms of production cost, WWE forked out $40,000 for a new luxury Lincoln Continental – for Rock in the storyline, but very much for his foe to have fun with.

He entered the fray not on foot, but via a huge monster truck, which he promptly used to drive over the brand new Linc, crushing it just hours after it had been purchased.

Recalling the stunt in his autobiography, Austin admitted having a blast – even if the filming caused one or two issues for him, and the crew on hand.

He explained: “While they were shooting the beginning of this, I was sitting in the monster truck in a holding garage for two full minutes, and the fumes from that thing were burning my eyes.

“My eyes were watering really badly and I could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to choke to death. Then I got the green light to go. I gassed it so hard that all four wheels spun out.

“The truck was on a carpet, and the sudden acceleration shot the carpet out from under it.. you can see that the cameraman went flying. He was standing on the carpet and fifty feet worth of it shot out from under the guy, and he just went flying. But I did drive the thing, and I crushed that brand-new Lincoln Continental that was purchased that very morning.”

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Rock duly ended up taking his customary beating, too. Austin drove his monster truck into the area before later crushing the hearse The Great One had used for the ‘funeral’ and roughed him up, too.

The crushed Linc remains the iconic visual from that segment, though, with arguably the biggest star of the Attitude Era adding: “I[It’s] hard to believe, but Vince McMahon bought a brand, spanking-new Lincoln Continental that day at a local dealership just to have me destroy it! A $40,000 investment for just a few seconds of entertainment.”

Indeed, WWE clearly thought little of laying down $40k just to give Austin more toys to play with, but you can’t argue with the results…