The Year in Celebrity Car Sales

The First Lady of Song custom ordered one of the 65 convertible versions of Benz’s post-war range topper. (She received a 10 percent celebrity discount.) While the car is in impeccable original condition, and includes a 1988 Annie Liebowitz photo of Ella standing alongside it, its $465,000 price is probably about twice what it’s worth.

Clark Gable bought the first Jaguar sold in America, an XK120 roadster, so named because it could achieve 120 mph. This was his third XK120, and to enhance it, he had it shaved and painted by famed hot rod shop Barris Kustoms. This, along with an impeccable restoration, explains why the car sold for $276,000 at Bring a Trailer, about 170 percent of top value.

Aside from Carroll Shelby, Steve McQueen also allegedly owned this windswept Chrysler. This straight-eight powered, three-on-the-floor shifted, mohair-upholstered, continental-tired, imperial nugget sold on Bring a Trailer for $68,000, high for an Airflow, but about the price of a mid-range Audi SUV.

And here’s Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s four-speed BMW E9. But this one didn’t just spend time parked at the Playboy Mansion (the address listed for delivery in the owner’s manual). It also allegedly did a stint at the Celebrity Car Museum in Branson, Missouri. Putting the kink in Hofmeister kink, Bring a Trailer sold this one for $66,000, placing it about mid-pack in the valuation of these lovely and sporting coupes.

In 1969, when Elvis returned to the stage, he was backed by the TCB Band. TCB stood for Taking Care of Business. Elvis adopted it as a personal motto and plastered the initials on his belongings, including this Mercedes limousine, one of the greatest and most imperious vehicles ever made, and a favorite of celebrities, CEOs, and murderous dictators. Within hours of its posting on Bring a Trailer, bidding was already in the six figures. It eventually sold for $288,888.

Wayne Gretzsky is one of the greatest hockey players of all time. The first re-do on the Ford GT is widely considered a slavish, terrifying, yet enduringly cool example of early 2000s automotive retroism. With a hackneyed Gulf livery, livened by Gretzsky’s No. 99 jersey number, and under 1000 miles since new, the $511,000 purchase price at RMSotheby’s October auction seems on par.

Zeppo Marx was probably the least famous Marx brother. He was mechanically inclined, and kept the family’s vehicles running during their vaudeville days. He spent his last decades in Palm Springs, where his wife had an affair with (and eventually married) Frank Sinatra. He died in 1979. But a few years before that, he bought this Rolls. In excellent condition, with only 30,000 miles on the clock, the $22,000 RMSothebys hammer price seems decent.

This convertible Cougar is arguably one of the best Mercury designs of the 60s, which helps explain why Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Dame Diana Rigg) drove it in the only George Lazenby Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The car sold in Bonhams’s December sale. Estimated to go for as much as $200,000, it sold for $484,000.

Auto executive extraordinaire Lee Iacocca helped to green-light and introduce the absurd Dodge Viper to the world. Though it was just a snaky jigsaw of a body wrapped around a destroyer anchor of a V-10 engine, Iacocca decided that he needed the very first Viper to run off the production line for his own personal collection. He was its only owner, keeping it until he died in mid-2019. Bonhams sold it for $285,500 in early 2020, about five times what any perfect Viper should be worth.

The Fresh Prince’s blown Bentley has been kicking around the secondary market for some time, having been sold at Julien’s in 2015, then consigned at the Russo & Steele auction house at the beginning of 2020, and then appearing near the end of this year in the Hemmings classifieds. Which is where we found it when we were writing this. The ad has since faded from the internet. We love these cars, so the $66,000 price tag Hemmings had on it seems reasonable.