George Harrison's Porsche 928 S Was Almost Used For Spare Parts

Celebrity-owned cars are always an interesting corner of the automotive world. When they come up for sale, they can often cause quite a stir, resulting in surprising auction results — much like Kurt Cobain's '65 Dodge Dart did, selling for $375,000 a few years ago. While such cars are usually well-documented, sometimes their history requires a little unearthing, and that's exactly what happened in the case of George Harrison's 1980 Porsche 928 S. The Beatle owned the car for the first four years of its life, covering 11,000 miles or so. But later down the line, this Porsche wasn't any more special than other 928s.

It wasn't until 2003, when Raj Sedha purchased the car at auction, that the 928's true history revealed itself. It was actually his wife who checked the previous owner details and noticed the Harrison connection. In truth, Raj had actually purchased the 928 as a parts vehicle, but upon learning its history, a top-class restoration was carried out. (Unfortunately, it wasn't recorded, so it wasn't able to make the list of your favorite restoration videos on YouTube.)

In total, the restoration set Raj back around $125,000 – a significant expense on any Porsche, let alone the oft-overlooked 928 — but not everything was changed. While the exterior was thoroughly overhauled with a bare-metal respray, the interior was instead preserved. Replace everything, and it's no longer George Harrison's 928, is it?

The S model joined the 928 family as a 1980 model year, so George Harrison was among the very first to get behind the wheel of this version. S variants enjoyed numerous upgrades above and beyond the standard 928 specification, including black spoilers, an extra 200 cc of capacity (which helped boost output from 240 to 300 horsepower), and a few other, smaller cosmetic tweaks.

In a stylish move, Harrison chose a black-on-black combination for his 928 S. Instead of stashing it away in a locked garage and relying on chauffeurs, he used it very regularly, adding 11,000 miles during his tenure. In the following years, a further 108,000 would be added, though those miles would be achieved on a different engine block.

A restoration so thorough will always turn up surprises. In the case of this 928, one of the more pleasant surprises was the discovery of a 1980 cassette of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which was a piece of music known to be a favorite of Harrison's. Details like this just add to the charm of celeb-owned cars, and the latest owner – who paid $100,820 at RM Sotheby's 2022 Monterey auction – has the chance to enjoy listening along for a full, immersive Harrison experience. That's quite the sum for a 928, but it's significantly cheaper than the restoration costs, and certainly less than how much some of Harrison's other cars would now cost. His collection even includes a McLaren F1 that could potentially rival the cost of the 'one of one' F1 that headed to auction a few years ago.