The King's rides....And other celebrity car stories...

A lot of people are interested in cars that were owned by celebrities. I have to admit I fall into that category. Here's a few interesting stories about celebrity rides. # 1. Elvis Presley. You gotta start any celebrity discussion with the "King". It's widely known that Elvis had a lot of Cadillacs from the '50's until his death in 1977. But he also liked musclecars and sports cars as well. His favorite car was the Stutz Blackhawk. The Stutz Blackhawk was a custom hand-built luxury performance car based on the Pontiac Gran Prix platform. Elvis had four of them between 1971 and 1977. The first one was the prototype based on a 1970 Gran Prix. A businessman named James O' Donnel revived the Stutz Motor Company and teamed up with retired Chrysler Stylist Virgil Exner to create an exclusive high end luxury performance car. The 455 Pontiac / TH400 powertrain was powerful and reliable and was easy to get service and parts for. The Blackhawks could do 0-60 in 8 seconds and had a top speed over 130 mph. The bodywork was hand-rolled steel done by Ghia in Italy. The interior featured lush Australian wool carpeting, rich leather and real gold and walnut on the dash and accents. O' Donnel was smart in first marketing the car to celebrities. Frank Sinatra wanted the first one as well. When O' Donnel showed the car to Elvis he wanted to buy it on the spot. O Donnel  explained that he needed the car to show to other people and obtain orders, and that it was scheduled to debut at a big car show the following week. Elvis replied-"Do you think you'll sell more cars with you driving it, or with me driving it?" Sinatra refused to allow any pictures to be taken of him and the car and refused to let O Donnel borrow it for the car show where the Blackhawk's debut was planned. Elvis happily posed for pictures with the car and said O' Donnel could say he bought the first one and use his likeness in advertising it. He also agreed to let O' Donnel put it in the car show, and to take delivery after the show. Wisely, O' Donnel sold the car to Presley. Sinatra was furious, but O'Donnel didn't care. He'd made the same offer to Sinatra about buying the car as he did to Elvis.  Sinatra refused. Elvis made the deal. Elvis promoting the car was so huge,the impact couldn't be measured in dollars and cents. Orders from other celebrities poured in. Sammy Davis Jr, Evel Kneival,Dean Martin,Wilson Pickett,Lucille Ball,Elton John,Paul McCartney,Jerry Lewis, Robert Goulet, Boxer Larry Holmes,Frank Sinatra-after his initial anger and threat to never,ever buy one subsided-probably his close friends Martin and Davis having them helped, and countless others all purchased Stutz Blackhawks after Elvis did. Anyhow this first one got wrecked in an accident and Elvis had it stored at Graceland several years. Eventually it was restored. He bought another '71 model and a pearl white '72 model as well. However his favorite was the 1973 model. It was black with red leather interior. This was the car he was driving when he was photographed returning to Graceland on August 16, 1977 just hours before his death. This car is on display at Graceland. He also had a BMW 507 when he was in the Army in Germany. It was high-performance roadster that had been specially built for and driven by German race-car driver Hans Stucker.  Elvis thought he bought it, but the contract was in German. He had only leased it, and had to turn it in when he left Germany.  Another interesting story is the Elvis 'Cuda. While on tour in Ohio in 1971 Elvis had watched the car-chase cult classic movie "Vanishing Point" and decided he wanted a Challenger. He and Sonny West went to the local Dodge-Chrysler-Plymouth dealer. They didn't have a white Challenger, but they did have a Sub-Lime 'Cuda on the showroom. It was a 340 / Torqueflite model. After some negotiation, Elvis bought the car. He took it home to Tennessee, registered it, ( lucky for the future owners ). and kept it 8 months before selling it. The car went through various owners over the next 40 plus years. The current owner bought it with the intention of making it a badass hot rod, maybe even swapping a 440 or a crate hemi into it. When he was going through papers from the car he found a Tennessee registration from 1971 that listed the car's vin number and the owner's name and address-Elvis Aron Presley,### Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee.....and turned handsprings all the way home, and decided to restore it to it's original condition. The other funny one is the 1971 Pantera. Elvis bought it for $2,400 in 1974 for then-girlfriend Linda Thompson. That should have thrown up a red flag right there. Panteras were $10,000 when they debuted in 1971. The buff magazines called them the "Poor Mans's Lamborghini". However with the base price of a Pontiac Trans-Am being $4,300 and a Corvette being a little over $6,000-I doubt any poor people bought Panteras. They were selling for $12-15,000 in 1974 dollars. If somebody was selling one for $2,400, you knew there had to be a problem. The problem was electrical and sometimes it just wouldn't start for no reason. Wait an hour-it would fire right up. Memphis tow-truck drivers joked about several times picking up a furious Elvis and towing it back to Graceland. After one such incident he shot it, and the car started! It's on display at the Petersen auto museum in L.A. Before putting it in there the current owner asked Lisa Marie Presley if she wanted to display it at Graceland with the Stutz and the Cadillacs and Harleys and other toys. "Absolutely not." She said. "My daddy hated that car." "It left him and Linda stranded a bunch of times." "He thought it must have had a Gypsy curse on it or something ."  # 2. Evel Kneival. Evel was a huge Elvis fan-his jumping leathers were a lot like the King's show jump suits. So naturally he had to get a Stutz Blackhawk. His was blue. Evel also had a Ferarri 246 Dino, and a Cadillac Eldorado that was made into an El Camino type pickup. # 3. Steve McQueen. Some high-end sports car dealer back east really stepped in it trying to sell a 1971 Porsche 911S that was supposedly owned by the King of Cool. Actor Chad McQueen-his son-saw the ad and wrote Hemmings Motor News and the dealer a letter rebuking this claim. It basically said-"Gentlemen-"Steve McQueen's personal Porsche 911 is in my garage." It's not a '71 model, it's a 1969 911S." "It never left the family." "He purchased it brand-new in 1969." "He drove it several years and then gave it to my sister." "She kept it many years." "When she died of cancer a few years ago, her husband gave it back to me." "Like I said, it never left the family." "There's no possible way that you have Steve McQueen's 911." "It's in my garage."  The company quickly pulled the ad and apologized and vowed to do some research. Apparently while filming the race-car epic "LeMans" in 1970 and '71-McQueen drove a real Porsche 917 racer in the film, and got a lot help from the factory racing team to make it realistic. One day on the set he was talking to Ferdinand Porsche-the CEO of Porsche-and commented on the wonderful, twisty mountain roads they had in France and said "I wish I had my 911 over here." ":It would be great fun." Having formed a friendship with the star while working on the film, Mr. Porsche wanted to please his friend, so he called Stuttgart and had a new 911S shipped to France, which he said the actor could play with until filming wrapped. We all know pre-'90's 911s do not suffer fools lightly. Even experienced race car drivers like McQueen. Danny Ongais-who won the Indy 500 was once asked-how do you corner fast in your 911? He responded-"I don't corner fast in my 911".Anyhow, in the course of hot-rodding on his day off-McQueen wrecked the car. He wasn't injured, but the car was practically totalled. McQueen offered to pay for it, but Ferdinand Porsche said not to worry about it, they'd write it off as an expense of making the movie. The car was shipped back to Stuttgart and repaired. Even though it had been wrecked it was sold with the story of having been driven by McQueen while filming the movie. Apparently when the last owner sold the car to the dealer he told this story. Either the dealer manager, or an ad salesman at Hemmings-no one will admit it now-misunderstood and instead of saying the car was DRIVEN by McQueen, advertised it as being OWNED by McQueen. The car was eventually sold, at a much lower price than they were initially asking. The buyer was very lucky that Chad McQueen is a gearhead and happened to be reading that magazine and saw that ad and took action. Otherwise he'd have paid many thousands more for the car!! Remember the old saying-"Buyer Beware."  Mastermind