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2026 Chevrolet Tahoe ReviewThe Beach Boys Best Car Songs
For as much as the Beach Boys are associated with ‘60s surf culture, they wrote a lot of songs about California’s vibrant car culture.
The Beach Boys Take a Drive
As you might expect from a band named The Beach Boys, Brain Wilson and company wrote plenty of songs centering on the California surf culture of the early 1960s. Heck, their first three albums were “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” and “Surfer Girl.” Of course, the surf scene overlapped substantially with the California car culture burgeoning at precisely the same moment. Not only did Brian Wilson have his finger on the pulse of American youth culture, but The Beach Boys were devoted gear heads themselves. As a result, The Beach Boys’ car songs became some of their biggest hits and are arguably more indelible than their surfing themed songs.
The recent passing of Brian Wilson reminded the entire car community of The Beach Boys’ beloved contribution to automotive culture. Lots of recording artists have their “car song,” but few bands made cars and car culture a core part of their thematic repertoire the way The Beach Boys did. Below we highlight some of our favorites.
“409”
The Beach Boys’ “409” first appeared on the B-side to the 1962 “Surfin’ Safari” single and was subsequently included on the album of the same name. The 409 in question would be a brand-new Chevrolet Impala’s 409 big block V8 described further as “my four speed, dual quad, posi-traction 409.” Lyrics include “She’s real fine, my 409” with the refrain “giddy up, giddy up, 409.”
“I Get Around”
“I Get Around” gets lumped in with other Beach Boys’ car songs even as its direct automotive references are brief, consisting of “we always take my car ‘cause it’s never been beat.” The song, appearing on 1964’s “All Summer Long,” is about where the band found themselves at the time, with newfound success and growing notoriety leading to a sense of restlessness. The song begins with “I’m getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip/I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip,” followed by the peripatetic refrain of “I get around, from town to town.” You can almost smell the salty breeze blowing in as you cruise down Pacific Coast Highway.
“Little Deuce Coupe”
“Little Deuce Coupe” comes from the album of the same name, out in 1963. This song is possibly the Beach Boys at their most automotive if for no other reason than it’s about a car guy “not” bragging about his car. In fact, the lyrics clearly state “I’m not braggin,’ so don’t put me down…But I’ve got the fastest set of wheels in town.” Naturally, the rest of the song revolves around how fast this deuce coupe really is with lines like “She’s a little deuce coupe with a flathead mill, but she’ll walk a Thunderbird like she’s standin’ still.”
The “deuce coupe” in question is, of course, a Ford Model 18 with Ford’s flathead V8, popular among hotrodders of the time. The “Little Deuce Coupe” is clearly souped up with references to “lake pipes,” a “four on the floor,” and possessing the car’s “pink slip daddy.” (A racing style exhaust, four-speed manual, and limited slip differential, respectively.) With boasts like “She’s ported and relieved and she’s stroked and bored/She’ll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored,” the braggadocios refrain “You don’t know what I got” is perfectly, comically taunting.
“Shut Down”
The B-side to “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “Shut Down” appeared on the “Little Deuce Coupe” album in 1963.
“Shut Down” tells the tale of a drag race between fuel-injected Stingray (Corvette) and a 413 with the refrain of “tach it up, tach it up, buddy gonna shut you down.” Both the Corvette Stingray and the 413 Dodge Dart were new at the time. The second-generation Vette had just debuted in the fall of 1962 while the Max Wedge-equipped Dart arrived that same year. Note that the “super stock dodge” lyric isn’t apocryphal or incorrect; technically the Dodge version was officially the “Ramcharger 413” while the Plymouth Fury carried the “Super Stock” designation. Other lyrics include mechanical references like “he’s hot with ram induction, but it’s understood/I gotta fuel injected engine sittin’ under my hood.” The long doesn’t include the conclusion of the race, though we’re left to assume it was the Corvette that came out ahead.
“Fun, Fun, Fun”
Off their “Shut Down Vol 2” album, the song “Fun, Fun, Fun” is a tale of teenage automotive adventure as a young woman borrows her father’s Thunderbird. The lyrics tell of the typical teenage subterfuge at work: “seems she forgot all about the library like she told her old man, now/And with the radio blastin’ goes cruisin’ just as fast as she can, now.” The refrain of “you’ll have fun, fun, fun ‘til daddy takes the T-bird away” flips near the end of the song as the T-bird is confiscated and the singer consoles his girl, assuring her they can still have “fun, fun, fun, not that Daddy took the T-bird away.” Unlike other songs, “Fun, Fun, Fun” doesn’t make clear which T-bird we should imagine. Given the song came out in early 1964 it could be any of the first four generations of Thunderbird (the new fourth-gen ’64 Thunderbird arriving in late 1963), but we like to imagine a first-generation T-bird like the one from American Graffiti.
Honorable Mentions
“Our Car Club”
Another car-themed track from “Surfer Girl,” the song “Our Car Club” tells of starting, yes, a car club including “the roughest and the toughest initiation we can find.” Cars referenced include a “deuce coupe, Stingray, rail job, and an XKE.” The former two call back to other automotive Beach Boys songs while the latter are a dragster (rail job) and the Jaguar XKE. “Our Car Club” isn’t necessarily the best of The Beach Boys’ car songs, but you’ve got to appreciate deep cut car world lingo about “cutting real low ETs” on the dragstrip.
“Boogie Woodie”
Off “Surfer Girl,” “Boogie Woodie” is an instrumental but its title refers to the woody wagons popular among the surfer crowd in the early 1960s.
In “Little Deuce Coup,” it’s “I got the pink slip, Daddy.” The brag is that the car is paid for, and he has the title to it.