Robert Downey, Jr. (Fuel-Efficiently) Pimps His Rides

This week, the fleet, six cars in all, will be on display at the New York International Auto Show, at the Javits Center, where the first sweepstakes winner will be announced. Beforehand, the cars were temporarily parked at Mazzilli’s shop, in Plainview. Mazzilli showed a visitor around the garage. “This upside-down thing is a 1956 Corvette,” he said, beside a fibreglass husk that looked like a horseshoe crab’s exoskeleton. Mazzilli was born in 1965—the same year as his prized fuel-injected Corvette coupe—and has thinning silver hair and transition-lens glasses. When he was growing up, in Northport, he recalled, “my dad used to tell me stories about how he would race this ’58 Bel Air in Queens. So at a very young age I loved cars.” After studying menswear design at F.I.T., Mazzilli tried acting—he did a couple of “Law & Order” spots—then became a standup comic. In 1996, he opened Gotham Comedy Club, in Chelsea, which he still owns. He used his earnings to buy his father a 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS, then started his own collection, including a ’69 little red Corvette, which he’d driven to work that morning.