Crazy-Car Craze

At an auction in Boca Raton, Fla., recently, a man from Lake George, N.Y., bought his daughter an unusual present for $37,000: the "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" car, complete with wings and propeller, used in the 1968 Walt Disney movie. In Indianapolis last year, Greta Garbo's old Duesenberg brought $95,000. In Hollywood, TV Producer Burt Sugarman recently picked up a unique addition to his collection of classic cars: a 1927 Brewster Stratford Rolls. The price: $125,000.

Offbeat automobiles of assorted vintages and makes are in greater demand than ever. Such serious collectors of classic cars as Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler Jr. are still very much in the market. Many others have discovered that luxury cars, particularly the more exotic models of Rolls-Royce, can be bought, enjoyed and sold at a gain. In Hollywood, an elderly elevator operator cashed in his life insurance to buy a 1954 Bentley for $10,000; he figures that the car will soon be worth more to his heirs than the insurance. Physicians and other professionals are buying cars at $20,000 and up, declaring them as business expenses for income tax purposes, and taking further profit when it is time to sell.

Hollywood, which experienced something of a motorcycle and Volkswagen phase a couple of years ago, is back to glamour cars with a vengeance. Last year 120 Rolls-Royces were sold in Beverly Hills alone. Polly Bergen traded in her new Mercedes for a one-of-a-kind 1957 Bentley convertible, while Dick Martin and Elvis Presley have bought $35,000 Stutz Blackhawks. Steve McQueen recently wanted a very special present for his friend Ali MacGraw--a limited-edition 1969 Mercedes 280-3 convertible. A dealer found one in St. Louis and had it flown to Los Angeles only to have McQueen turn it down. The interior, said the actor, was the wrong color.

Meeting the demand is driving dealers and amateurs alike to unusual measures in acquiring even low-priced finds. Warner Bros. Costume Designer Theodora Van Runkle bought a 1937 Chevrolet convertible five years ago for $200. The car looks like an old Bentley and recently attracted a $3,000 offer from a passer-by on the street. "It used to be that you could go to Europe and pick up an old Rolls or Mercedes for practically nothing," says Charles Schmitt, a Los Angeles dealer. "Now the European collectors are coming over here." Says Sugarman: "You can spend months tracking a car. You finally find one by phone, and the owner gives you two days to get there--and hangs up."

The fantastic prices a rare model can command are attracting some hucksterish high jinks. A recent full-page ad in the New York Times offered his-and-her Phantom V Rolls-Royce limousines, custom-built by the famed James Young Coachworks, for $250,000. Five years ago, one of the cars was sold for only $8,000 to a dealer by an eccentric Maryland horse breeder who used the car as a hay wagon. The market is glutted with high-priced limousines that were supposedly once owned by Hitler. Most of these, the experts say, are fake.

There is more than history or high finance in owning classic cars. For one thing, they are fun to tinker with. The cars can also affect their owners' personalities. "It changes their style completely," says Schmitt. "All of a sudden, they're wearing fine old tweeds and hand-tooled leather gloves." But even the choicest classic can bug its owner. Palm Beach Socialite Trink Wakeman's 1929 Dual-Cowl Phaeton Rolls suddenly came down with a bad case of termites in the teak running boards. She had to have it fumigated.

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