As the host of the recently premiered Speed Channel series “101 Cars You Must Drive,” comedian Alonzo Bodden doesn’t just act as a whimsical tour guide for car aficionados. The car buff and funnyman also gets to drive all 101 of the vehicles in question – and not all of them are fancy-schmansy.

“I literally have driven everything on the show from a Ferrari Dino to a Ford Edsel. So it’s not all exotic cars or beautiful cars or dream cars,” says Bodden. “There are a few dream cars and a few – I don’t know if we’d call them nightmares – but let’s just call them ‘automotive mistakes’ or ‘hard-to-believe’ cars.”

Whether the tiny Fiat 500 that Bodden climbed into – or, more accurately, crawled into – in the opening episode counts as an automotive mistake is a matter of taste and opinion. But no one, Bodden included, can write off that miniscule product of Italian engineering as ordinary.

The sight of the 6-foot-3 Bodden scrunched up inside the Fiat while struggling to climb a hill is enough to elicit plenty of smiles, notwithstanding the “Last Comic Standing” alum’s off-the-cuff riffs on the pint-sized car. “That car makes a Mini Cooper look like a limo,” says Bodden, recounting the experience. “What everyone doesn’t realize is that the one who really suffered was the cameraman who was in there with me.”

The series is a compressed version of the book “365 Cars You Must Drive” and operates on the formula of “six degrees of separation,” which means that all of the cars in each episode are connected in one way or another. For example, the Fiat falls somewhere between an Alfa Romeo (which, like Fiat, is an Italian brand) and a Renault (a French automaker for which Fiat built engines). Another episode, which focuses on cars named after sons of famous auto designers, includes the ill-fated Edsel, named after Henry Ford’s only child, who passed away 15 years before the model bearing his moniker was introduced. “The great thing about the Edsel that we got was that it truly was an ‘Edsel,’” says Bodden. “Every time we stopped and then tried to put it in gear and make it go again, it would cut off.”

Bodden was selected as the host of “101 Cars” in part because of his skills at improvisation. It may have been inevitable that a comic would be chosen for the job, considering the tradition of stand-ups being car nuts. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen all own prodigious auto collections. Bodden, whose passion for cars dates back to his childhood, theorizes that comedians tend to be gear heads because of proximity.

“I think maybe it’s because we travel a lot and when you start out your career, you drive a lot before you can afford to fly,” he says. “And then you get to a point where you can afford them. I don’t know Jerry Seinfeld personally, but I would guess that that is the case when you become a collector of Porsches. You always dream of one and then suddenly you’re making $300 million a year and you can have as many as you want.”

Bodden’s personal automotive menagerie is nowhere close to those of some of his comedy brethren – he calls his collection his “Jay Leno starter kit” – but he’s proud of it, nonetheless.

On the extreme sides of the spectrum, he owns both a Hummer and – wait for it – a Mini Cooper, which makes his garage look like Abbott and Costello’s clubhouse. Then there’s his Alpina B7, which is a 500-horsepower, customized BMW 7 Series. It’s Bodden’s “road trip” car, “what they call the ‘executive hot rod.’ It’s comfortable, quiet, smooth and just unbelievably fast.” But the comedian’s vehicular pride and joy are his four motorcycles: two Ducatis and two Triumphs. He’s more likely to take one of his bikes out for a routine spin than any of his four-wheeled rides.

“There’s an old saying: You never see a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist’s office,” says Bodden. He likes the freedom that comes with riding a motorcycle and bemoans the advent of helmets equipped with Bluetooth wireless cell-phone capability. “We all want to destroy them,” he says. “We’re, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ The last thing I want to do is answer a cell phone while I’m on a bike.”

Rather, he prefers the solitude of the open air. “There is a rhythm to it that allows the mind to wander. And I’ve definitely been in creative spaces on a bike where sometimes I’ve had to pull over and write something down.”

Bodden, who worked as a mechanic (on jet planes, not cars) before turning to stand-up comedy full time, is such a motorcycle enthusiast, he’s already planning in his head a sequel to “101 Cars Your Must Drive” – something along the lines of the 101 best places to drive your car or bike. He has one audacious suggestion for that project: Germany, the home of the Autobahn and the Nürburgring, a curvy, 13-mile racetrack that’s open to the general public.

“It’s one of those things that I would love to do laps on,” Bodden says enthusiastically “I have a friend whom I’m trying to get to go, but he says that if he goes, he knows he’s going to buy another Porsche while he’s there.”

And no, that friend is not Jerry Seinfeld.

“101 Cars You Must Drive” airs Mondays at 9 p.m. (ET) on the Speed Channel.