‘Shut up and drive’ decoded: is Rihanna secretly keen on a Noble M400?

You can’t beat a song that namechecks a car, from George Michael making a little room in his BMW to Kesha flying down the highway in the back seat of the Hyundai. Even better are songs that get model-specific, whether it’s Lloyd Cole recalling a lost lover’s Deux Cheveaux in ‘2CV’ or Central Cee going ‘from the Toyota Yaris to Urus’ in ‘Sprinter’. Extra points for naming the track after a van.

But then we have another type of song, the type that alludes to a car but doesn’t give you a name to go on. ‘Buck Rogers’ by Feeder, for example, in which there’s ‘a brand new car’ that ‘looks like a Jaguar’. What could this be? You might assume a Mazda Xedos 6 but the song came out two years after the car had died so maybe Feeder were simply Jaguar purists and this was a sneering reference to the X‑type. I don’t know. Nor do I know what Madness were on about in ‘Driving In My Car’ where the subject is ‘not quite a Jaguar’ but was ‘made in ’59 / In a factory by the Tyne’ yet also ‘says Morris on the door’. I think we have to conclude that the factory line is a red herring because they couldn’t find a word to rhyme with Cowley.

> £3m donuts, police joyrides and a Ferrari Enzo (almost) in a ditch

Nothing, however, leaves me guessing like ‘Shut Up And Drive’ by Rihanna. To start with, the Bajan songstress says it’s ‘got a sunroof top and a gangster lean’ which doesn’t really narrow it down, unless she means a literal lean in which case it’s an old Discovery and the air suspension has gone on the wonk. She follows that by declaring that her engine is ‘ready to explode, explode, explode’ so, again, maybe a Discovery. If it’s a TDV6 it’s probably your turbos, RiRi.

But then a curveball as Rihanna drops the news that she can do ‘zero to sixty in 3.5’ and you don’t need me to tell you that’s far in excess of even the fastest Disco. In an effort to crack this mystery I went to the back of evo and combed The Knowledge for a likely candidate. The BMW M3 Competition fits the bill, as does the Lamborghini Urus S, the Jaguar F‑type R P575, and the current Corvette Stingray, but then I remembered that ‘Shut Up And Drive’ came out in 2007 so I went into the loft and dug out the June ’07 issue of this magazine and pored over the stats to find this elusive beast that Rihanna believes requires a reverential silence to steer. The 3.5 to sixty club was much smaller back then and it contained a pair of Radicals, the SR3 and SR4 Tracksports. Thing is, Rihanna doesn’t strike me as the kind to enjoy a trackday, not unless ‘Umbrella’ was actually written about the awning she puts up in the paddock at Cadwell Park.

So I kept looking and noticed three other candidates: the Mercedes SLR McLaren 722, the Pagani Zonda F Roadster CS and, intriguingly, the Noble M400. Is it possible that, between performing and recording, Rihanna had time to visit an industrial unit in Leicestershire to accept the keys to her new sports car from the perma-smoking chassis maestro with his name over the door? Suddenly another line in the song made sense: ‘Got a ride that’s smoother than a limousine’. I mean, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but Nobles always rode beautifully given their handling ability and maybe the ‘gangster lean’ line is Ri giving a little nod to the body roll experienced under hard cornering thanks to a prudently compliant spring and damper set-up.

Searching for further clues, I then noticed the lyric ‘Got overdrive with a whole lot of boom in the back’ and that threw me right off. Overdrive? Like a Triumph Dolomite? Surely not, Rihanna. And let me tell you, if you’ve got a Dolly that can do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds then Trevor from the owners’ club is going to want to hear all about it. ‘A whole lot of boom in the back’ was perplexing too until I realised that, of course, the ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ hit-maker must be referring to a high-powered stereo with a rear-mounted subwoofer. Casting my mind back to 2007, I remembered that the Aston Martin Vanquish was available with a 1200-watt Linn system and I wondered if this was what Rihanna was referring to. But the Vanquish couldn’t hit sixty in under four seconds and nor, frankly, did it have a ride that was smoother than a limousine. If anything, it was a little unsettled for a GT car.

By now I was completely in knots trying to work out what car the Barbados-born superstar was referring to and went back to the lyrics looking for anything to give me a clue. ‘Get you where you wanna go, if you know what I mean… blah blah blah… can you handle the curves… do-be-do-be-do… step inside and ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride’. Frankly it remains a mystery. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if Rihanna is singing about a car at all.

This story was first featured in evo issue 312.