Sturgill Simpson lost a friend and mentor when folk icon John Prine died in April of COVID-19, but the late legend left the singer-songwriter something very special to remember him by: a Porsche.

Simpson recently inherited Prine's 2008 Porsche 911 Turbo, he recently shared with Stephen Colbert, which Simpson says was Prine's "bucket-list dream car." (For the uninitiated, the car is worth more than $120,000, per Car and Driver.) It's only got about 20,000 miles on it, per Simpson, who says his new ride feels like a fourth child.

"He's a total car guy," Simpson tells an incredulous Colbert of Prine, who, back in 2018, purchased a home in the Nashville area with a large garage and driveway in part to own "a place with space for more antique cars." After Prine's death, his wife Fiona shared that she and their three sons were honoring him by "wash[ing] all of his Cadillacs [and] park[ing] them all in the driveway."

"I like music and cars that go real fast, man," Simpson tells Colbert. "I just can't tell you — it's bittersweet, but it will be something I treasure the rest of my life."

Following Prine's death, at the age of 73, Simpson shared a tribute to Prine on Instagram, noting that the elder musician reminded Simpson of his grandfather. "There are sometimes people in this life that you meet, seldom and few and far between it would seem, whose souls are so good and pure and beautiful that when they leave it seems if only for a brief while that everything else good and pure and beautiful in this world just left along with them," Simpson wrote.

Simpson and Prine first met, he tells Colbert, while he was recording is Grammy-winning album A Sailor's Guide to Earth at Nashville's Butcher Shoppe recording studio, which Prine partially owned. Simpson returned to the studio for his most recent album, Cuttin' Grass, Vol. 1, which features bluegrass renditions of his previously released material.

"He was a mentor, and very giving with his time and wisdom," Simpson says of Prine, "and we were all grateful."

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