"Iron Chef America's" Michael Symon is all about American muscle, his King Ranch Expedition - First Car and Favorite Trip - Celebrity Drive

To Lease or Not to Lease

Sometimes Symon leases, other times he buys his cars and his daily driver is now a lease.

"I go back and forth whether I like to lease or not like to lease," Symon said. "Sometimes you get lucky. Like I bought my Defender and then they stopped making them. I bought it for I think $24,000 and sold it for $35,000 because it became so in demand. They stopped producing them and everybody in the world wanted one. I drove it for two and a half years and made $11,000 on it."

Favorite Road Trip

"I like to drive up to Lake Chautauqua, which is a couple hours from here, that's a nice road trip," said Symon, who is based in Cleveland. "I just take it in whatever truck I have," he says, laughing. "It's nice, it's scenic, once you get out there, it's really relaxed. You're kind of driving through God's country to get there. There's a lot of great roads around here to drive on."

Courtesy Food Network

These days, when he is not shooting episodes of "Iron Chef America," Symon is working with his wife Liz at their Cleveland restaurants Lola and Lolita. She designs the restaurants and the wine programs.

"Unfortunately we work all the time," he says, laughing. "Sometimes the road trip is from here to home."

First Car

"Oh God, it was a beauty, it was a '75 LTD, this car was so big you had to dock it," Symon said. "You couldn't even park it, it was that big. It was frickin' huge."

The powder blue Ford LTD was his mom's car handed down to him. Symon learned to drive in it and after passing his driver's tests, he drove it for a couple years. He would often drive it to Cedar Point, an amusement park outside of Cleveland.

"Me and my buddies used to always road trip up to Cedar Point or at the Blossom to see concerts and I could fit eight people in it. Comfortably," he says, with a loud laugh. "It was so huge, it was the most giant car ever."

"It used to idle at like 20 miles an hour without your foot on the gas. If you put it in drive, you can just start rolling, you'd go 20 miles and hour. It was fantastic, you'd go to a drive-in movie and sneak like five guys in the trunk."

Symon's dad worked at the Ford plant which made the Mustang 302 engine. "I grew up around cars and Fords. So I've always kind of been a car guy, I love cars. As you can tell by the long list of them that I've had."