Stop Saying This White Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Belonged To John Lennon

Some cars, although great in their own right, ascend to an entirely different level of fame and cool due to their famous owners, and one such example of a celebrity car is John Lennon's 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V. No, not the psychedelic Rolls-Royce that everybody immediately thinks of, but rather a model that was used to promote the launch of the "White Album" in 1968. Lennon's white Roller set him back some £12,000 (equivalent to £185,000 today, so roughly $250,000), largely due to the amount of customization work that he requested — that work being a respray in white, an all-white interior, white steering wheel, and a fitted telephone.

Following its promotional use by Lennon, it was then sold to music publisher and record label executive Allen Klein in 1969 for an alleged sum of $50,000 (approximately $445,000 in today's money), according to the memoirs of Klein's chauffeur. Bar a few movie appearances in the '70s, the Rolls went unspotted for decades — until it popped up in a business car park over in Pensacola, Florida, or did it? The story surrounding this abandoned-looking Rolls-Royce similar to the ones spotted in China is a messy one laced with many rumors, with some claiming it's been sitting there for around 30 years. Among the more popular rumors is that this very car in Pensacola is the Lennon Rolls, and while many believed the tale, we now know that not to be the case.

For starters, the interior is all wrong, the steering wheel is black, it's left-hand drive rather than right-hand drive, and there's no telephone — oh, and it's a Silver Cloud, not a Phantom. A nice rumor indeed, but sadly just that. What really put the rumor to rest, though, is when the actual Lennon Phantom V reemerged in 2016.

Provenance is key when proving that an old painting is the work of a notable artist, and the same applies when claiming your old Roller was owned by a notable artist of another kind, be it Lennon or Elizabeth Taylor, whose customizations made this 1960 Rolls-Royce drophead coupe stunning.

Fortunately, chassis number 5VD63 has immaculate provenance, as Klein passed it down to his son, Jody Klein. The line back to Lennon then is arrow-straight, whereas the Pensacola car always presented numerous unanswerable questions. Klein had the car restored to its original Lennon specification, white interior, paintwork, and steering wheel intact. It still bears the original registration too, EUC 100C. It was displayed at a Rolls-Royce concours event in 2016, and wound up taking home a "Best In Class" result — a testament to not only the importance of the car, but also to the quality of the restoration.

It might not quite live up to the fame of its sister, the psychedelic car which achieved a mighty $3 million at auction back in 1985, but Lennon fans interested in the story of his "missing" Phantom can now at least rest easy knowing the car is in good hands and has been restored to its former glory.