Kristin Cavallari Says Fans Think This Iconic Laguna Beach Scene Was Fake — but It Was Totally Real

Kristin Cavallari has admitted not everything that happened on Laguna Beach and its spinoff The Hills was completely real — but this one iconic scene is.

Cavallari, 38, talked about some of her most memorable reality show moments on the March 11 episode of her Let’s Be Honest podcast. She said that she didn’t pick the moments, but rather, found them on Google.

And one of the headlines was from when Cavallari’s car broke down in an early episode of Laguna Beach. The car stopped working in the middle of the Pacific Coast Highway, and she declared it “dunzo.”

“It is a word I wish I trademarked back in the day if I had my business sense about me,” she said. Cavallari said that people thought the scene was fake because, earlier in the episode, she and some of her castmates went to dealerships “because I wanted a new car.” Production sent them to look at luxury cars, and, she said, “Clearly, I'm not affording these cars my junior year of high school. So that was fake.”

“But on the way home from looking at these cars, my 10-year-old Isuzu Trooper really did break down,” she said. “So that's why everyone thought it was fake. And I was like, ‘This was actually probably the realest scene that I filmed on Laguna Beach.’ ” In the moments before the car broke down, Cavallari even remarked that it sounded like it was about to stop running — and then it did and even started smoking.

Cavallari said that in the moment, she was “really excited” because she “hated” her car and wanted a new one. “It literally had given up on me,” she said. “I was celebrating because I thought, perfect. Now I have to get a new car.”

But the breakdown scene itself was intense because her car stopped on the Pacific Coast Highway, which has only two lanes; with her car blocking one, traffic became a problem fast. “We caused so much traffic, and now there's cameras out filming us, and it's just creating such commotion,” she recalled. 

Her now-famous line — “My car is dunzo” — was “completely unprompted,” she said. “That was all just from me. That was how we talked in Laguna Beach.” She said the beach town had its own “lingo” that was heavily influenced by the surf community.  

“It just sort of naturally came out of my mouth,” she said. “The fact that, you know, my car is breaking down, and that's what I say, ‘My car is dunzo,’ speaks to where I was at mentally as a 16-year-old or 17-year-old. But this scene, rewatching this one back a couple of years ago, was hilarious.” 

“The s--- that came out of my mouth in this scene is truly, truly phenomenal,” she said. In the scene, Cavallari called AAA, yelled at people who honked their horns at her and even talked to a friend who happened to drive by. 

“That’s bad, that’s like gnarly traffic,” she said in the scene, before arguing with a traffic cop — whom she called an “idiot” — about how she couldn’t move her car. 

In the podcast, Cavallari noted that when the show was airing, she felt “very, very hated” by fans, but as people have rediscovered the show in recent years, she thinks viewers have “a newfound appreciation” for her.