“You Killed the Car” – Chicago Magazine
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“You Killed the Car”
A Ferrari and a distinctive Highland Park home combined for an iconic scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This adapted excerpt from a new book details how it all went (crashing) down.
By Jason Klamm
Illustration by Nigel Buchanan
June 9, 2026, 6:00 am
Adapted from Ferris Bueller … You’re My Hero. © 2026 by Jason Klamm. Courtesy of 1984 Publishing.
Ferris Bueller’s best friend, Cameron Frye, can be summed up with one sequence, one prop, and one location. The sequence is at the Seurat painting at the Art Institute of Chicago — it’s the first time in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that we see Cameron (played by Alan Ruck) truly look inside himself and be afraid of what he sees. The prop is his dad’s Ferrari, which comes to symbolize everything that Cameron has been going through with his father. The location is the house at 370 Beech Street in Highland Park. The attention is on its pavilion, a 1974 addition serving as the garage. When we do see the house itself, a mid-century modern structure designed by A. James Speyer, it’s presented as a flat brown backdrop that doesn’t do it justice. It doesn’t need to. The clean lines and spaciousness add to how we perceive Cameron: alone and adrift.
“He puts his foot down, then backs off,” said John Hughes, the film’s director, in his commentary for the 1999 DVD release, describing the way Cameron tortures the engine of his 1982 “piece of shit” Alfa Romeo Alfetta before he heads out to grab Ferris (Matthew Broderick). “I like playing this with the headrest in focus, and him in the background having a tantrum.”
Adapted from Ferris Bueller … You’re My Hero. © 2026 by Jason Klamm. Courtesy of 1984 Publishing.
Whenever Cameron is alone, we get the most contemplative shots, done with an intentionality that doesn’t call attention to itself, the same way Speyer’s house, commissioned by textile designer Ben Rose, is intended to integrate with the surrounding forest while also existing as its own space. When Cameron jumps up and down from sheer frustration, he is shown out of focus. For us, the viewers, his tantrum is incidental; the focus remains on the car and the idea of moving forward, which is what Cameron should be focused on as well. It’s a perfect illustration of just how silly impotent rage can look.
Before settling on the Rose House, the crew originally sought a home for Cameron’s family on Lake Michigan. “We were spending all of our location-scouting time trying to find a house on a cliff on the shore of the lake,” says unit production manager Bill Coker, recalling the long days of driving around the North Shore with nine department heads crammed inside a passenger van. At that juncture, he says, the plan was for the car to shoot off into the lake. (Reviewing old scripts, I can’t find any draft that references a lake for this scene, but I can’t rule it out as an idea Hughes might have had at some point.)
Director John Hughes originally wanted to use a home along Lake Michigan, until he and the crew stumbled onto the Rose House — in particular, its cantilevered garage pavilion. The film’s star, Matthew Broderick, calls the pivotal scene, featuring actor Alan Ruck, “disturbing to watch.” Movie still: Paramount Pictures
The van was on a bridge in Highland Park when something caught Coker’s eye. “I saw this steel I-beam and glass building almost completely cantilevered off of this cliff and this arroyo, and I said, ‘Wow, look at that building. It’d be crazy if the car went out one of those windows and into that forest.’ ” Hughes, who was in the van, turned around in his seat and told Coker to get the house. Coker then went to location contact Billy Higgins for the owner’s information.
Producer Tom Jacobson remembers it differently. “[Hughes] looks in the woods and says, ‘Whoa, what’s that?’ ” The van stops, and the Rose House reveals itself. “It’s this beautiful glass and steel house. [Hughes says,] ‘That’s really cool, that looks like a Mies van der Rohe.’ ” He was close — Speyer was one of the famous architect’s star pupils. “We look at that back house, and John just completely visualizes the scene,” Jacobson continues. “Visualizes the car going out the window and into the ravine, which is so much better than what he wrote on the page. So this is an example of, like, ‘Oh, there’s something that presents itself to me, and this is what’s going to work.’ ”
The location crew made an appointment to speak with Ben Rose personally to make it clear they would take good care of the house, because by then they...