Sir Michael Caine’s first automobile heads to public sale – Automotive Weblog
Movie legend Sir Michael Caine’s first ever automobile, a 1968 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow Drophead Coupe with a captivating historical past, is being auctioned on March 15 on the Imperial Struggle Museum, Duxford.
One in all simply 506 Silver Shadow Two-Door Drophead Coupes that have been hand constructed by Rolls-Royce’s in-house coachbuilder Mulliner Park Ward from 1967–1971, the automobile is estimated at between £100,000-£150,000 within the public sale hosted by H&H Classics.
The story goes that actor wandered into the Jack Barclay showroom on Berkeley Sq., with a handwritten buying listing which learn, “milk, bread, newspaper, cigarettes, Rolls-Royce.”
Unkempt and unshaven, he was ushered off the premises, so he popped over to Mayfair’s different Rolls-Royce dealership, H.A. Fox on Dover Avenue, the place he discovered the Silver Shadow which had been taken into inventory after the playwright and screenwriter, Terence Rattigan, cancelled his order for it.
Having purchased the automobile, regardless of not having his personal driving licence, the Italian Job star discovered it was less expensive to make use of a chauffeur than pay the premium his insurers quoted ought to he resolve to go down the ‘L-plate’ route.
He subsequently took nice pleasure in being pushed previous the offending Jack Barclay salesman in his new automobile and flicking him a V-sign.
The automobile went on to characteristic extensively within the 1969 documentary, Candid Caine.
Lower than two years later, the Silver Shadow was acquired by John Leonard Ernest Leach (Jack Leach), proprietor of the Gasworks restaurant in Fulham, which grew to become a infamous hotspot for the wealthy and well-known.
A well-recognized sight on the Fulham and Kings roads for many years afterwards, Leach continued to personal the automobile for the following 43 years till his dying in 2013.
The automobile has been handled to an intensive restoration by its present proprietor and is now refinished in its unique color of black, and it’ll go beneath the hammer the day after Caine’s ninetieth birthday.
