Nike and Devin Booker Launch Book 2: A Sneaker Inspired by Vintage Impalas
The photo does the talking. A bronze 1959 Impala convertible, sneakers dangling from the rearview mirror where fuzzy dice used to live. The car belongs to Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker. Now it also doubles as the blueprint for his latest Nike signature shoe.
This is not just another athlete collab. It’s a sneaker built straight out of one man’s garage.
Book 2: Four Impalas, Four Stories
Nike and Booker have unveiled the Book 2, a four-shoe collection where every colorway is tied to a specific vintage Impala from his personal fleet: 1958, 1959, 1962, and 1963.
The headliner is “Pretty Penny,” the first release in the line. Its colors are lifted directly from that bronze ’59 convertible—the car Chevrolet credits with sparking Booker’s classic-car obsession. Last year’s Book 1 pulled its palette from his old Chevy Blazers. This time, the Impalas take center stage.
The idea goes deeper than a color match. Chevrolet says each Book 2 design mirrors its source car’s paint and folds in small, obsessive details: tongue tops shaped to echo the Impala hood ornament, the model year stitched into the shoe. It’s closer to a scale model than a themed sneaker.
Most player shoes lean on easy symbolism—team colors, a jersey number, a hometown nod. Book 2 raids the paint codes of actual cars parked in Booker’s collection. It feels less like branding, more like opening the garage door.
A Whole World Built Around One Car
The collaboration doesn’t stop at the shoes. The apparel and packaging lean hard into Chevrolet’s past.
A “Heartbeat of America” T-shirt resurrects the slogan from Chevy’s ad campaigns that ran through the 1980s and into the ’90s. The shoe box arrives styled like mid-century Chevrolet Accessories packaging: kraft-paper look, big block lettering, and that teal-and-orange combo the brand was using long before “heritage” became a marketing buzzword.
The message is clear: this isn’t a one-off gimmick. It’s a fully built universe where a retro Chevy and a modern signature sneaker live in the same frame.
Launching at Woodward, Not Just Online
Nike didn’t bury this in a routine online drop.
“Pretty Penny” got its first outing in Detroit on August 15, during the Woodward Dream Cruise—a one-day rolling showcase on roughly sixteen miles of Woodward Avenue that attracts around 40,000 vintage cars and crowds from across North America. Booker’s Impala joined the sea of metal. So did his shoe.
To get an early pair, fans had to do more than tap a screen. They registered via SNKRS Pass on August 14, then picked up winning pairs in person at Burn Rubber in Royal Oak, Michigan. It’s a regional-exclusive format Nike often uses for hyped releases, and it doubles as a live billboard: the shoes land first in front of the exact people who already worship old Impalas.
The global release hits today, August 26. The other three colorways, inspired by Booker’s ’58, ’62 and ’63 Impalas, are slated for December.
Why This Garage Matters
On paper, this is just another endorsement deal: an NBA All-Star, a global sneaker giant, an American automaker with a famous badge to protect. In practice, it cuts a little differently.
Most collaborations skim the surface of a player’s life—birthplace, lucky number, maybe a childhood memory. Here, the foundation is Booker's actual property. His cars. His collection. The project ties together his Michigan roots, his love of Chevy, and his habit of hunting down old metal, and it hands Chevrolet a fresh way to keep the Impala name alive long after the last new one left a dealer lot.
For Chevrolet, it’s smart business. The Impala is gone from showrooms, but not from culture. Putting it on a shoe box costs a fraction of a Super Bowl ad and reaches fans who weren’t born when the last big Impala rolled off the line. For Nike, it’s a way to give a signature line something more tangible than a logo and a slogan.
It also sets up a repeatable formula. Book 1 drew from Booker’s Blazers. Book 2 dives into his Impalas. If there’s a Book 3, it can just move down the driveway to whatever he buys next. As long as the garage keeps changing, the story can keep going.
Chasing Sneakers, Chasing Steel
For now, the hunt is simple. If you want “Pretty Penny,” the window is the global release, with three more Impala-based colorways waiting in December.
If the shoes send you down a different path—toward a real 1958–64 Impala—the homework gets heavier. The market is already hot, and anyone serious about buying one has to start with the basics: frame, paint, rust, history. The same details that make the shoe feel authentic are the ones that make the car worth the money.
Booker’s garage isn’t the only one blurring the line between athlete and automotive culture. Shaquille O’Neal’s one-off Impala boat, the custom 1959 Impala tied to a Nipsey Hussle music video, and LeBron James’ recent six-figure Maybach build all underline the same point: when stars buy cars, the cars become part of the story.
A shoe box is an unlikely museum for automotive history. But right now, it’s one of the loudest places keeping the Impala name in the conversation.
