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Buy It Now for $15,950 on eBay Motors. “Over $60,000 invested” in this four door roadster (doesn’t have a top). “1983 Rolls Royce Silver Spirit Roadster. $10K custom candy metal flake paint with flames and a full white interior with red piping. Just about anything that can be gold plated was.”
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If I buy it, do I get to be a dictator of some backwater country for a day? If yes, how about throwing in a complementary gold-plated AK-74?
“Over $60,000 invested”
By a total moron.
I bought the car in Italy last May.
And I question myself: what am I?
I like it. But then, I could very well be a total moron.
This is what I don’t get… people who spend ridiculous money on pimping a vehicle only for its value to race in the opposite direction. Not to mention, this vehicle should get filed in Merriam-Webster under the definition of “tacky”.
Last week at DTW I found myself sitting next to some chatty teenage kid mouthing off to me about how he’s dropped over $15K in mods on his hand-me-down (non-turbo) Volvo S60. He’d be lucky if it would sell for $10K. I wanted to smack the kid upside his head for being so dumb.
It is quite a feat to take a very expensive car and make it look like a poorly customized K-car.
$60K = wallet bigger than brain.
Jeez, you know its a sign of bad financial times when the proud owner has to part with such a treasure as this.
That “$60,000 invested” at least held its value better than Bear Stearns.
Reminds me of Pimp John’s bass-boat-green, metallic-speckled, tonneau-covered-with-diamond-shaped-cutouts-for-rear-window Rolls Royce two streets up from me.
I’d buy it and wear fashionable 80s clothes and throw monopoly money out of it while driving around Beverly Hills.
Is this the one with a turbo motor of “adequate” power?
We just had a QOTD, “What is the most elegant car available today?”
This is almost as far away from elegant as one can get.
For 16k I’d buy a RR. Tacky? Yes. Ugly? Yes. Better than any car you can buy for 16 grand? Hell Yes! Lets be honest here, for that price you can afford some de-pimping, a new roof, and whatever else you’d want on it.
Ol’ Henry Royce and Charles Rolls must be rollin’ around in their respective graves.
I hope they haunt the moron who did that to no end.
That boomerang shaped tv-antenna made it for me. So very 80’s. Though the shape of the car with the roof off is not altogether wrong. Why didn’t RR offer a Silver Spirit-based convertible?
Really it isn’t too bad looking with exception to the paint job, even the gold plating isn’t terrible with a burgundy base color. The interior actually looks pretty good, though it would be a pain to keep clean. Honestly I’ve seen worse, just not any on such a nice car.
As I said yesterday with the SEMA question:
“There is some modification, such as stretching or camino-izing, that must be done by the owner because the owner’s tastes are too perverse unique to be satisfied by mass production, or because the owner want’s to make an ironic statement – this is a very small percentage of modding.”
We have just found one example of that small percentage.
arapaima: Rolls depreciate as quickly as rocks fall, for $16K you can get a 1983 Rolls Royce that hasn’t been ruined. (Although the Corniches do hold their value better than the sedans, so this might be the cheapest way into a drop-top rolls).
I really, really like this. It’s not trying to be anything more than a brash, pimped out roller — there’s something about the 80s design that complements this ridiculously awesome paintjob; the over-the-top gold plating makes it even more insane. It will turn heads in a way that a stock ’83 Rolls just couldn’t.. if I had a spare $16k + all of the cash to keep that thing maintained, I’d consider it for the novelty alone.
@arapaima
Maintenance costs ALONE are probably $16k on an old RR.
That’s a nearly 30 year old low production british car.
Not a bad deal. I invested substantially more than that in my ’83 911SC track car, the infamous “gold-plated Porsche,” and it doesn’t have a bit of gold on it. If I got $20,000 for it, I’d be enormously lucky….
Just goes to prove that spending big bucks on a custom project will never return the investment. This happens a lot with motorcycles too. The best return is bone stock and unmolested.
On the other side this is an abomination that would never be driven around. Few people are willing to be seen in this. A respray would correct most of it but not having a top on the car seals it as a non-starter for most people/
If the UK had a version of The Dukes of Hazzard, Boss Hog would drive that car.
Only 3 days to Hallowe’en
Which part of the Middle East is the owner from?
After I saw the plates, I knew for sure what vehicle this was. I met this guy in a bar in Tulsa, and he was bragging about the car.
For anyone who might be interested, know that he attempted to use it as a limo rental. Evidently unsuccessful in that endeavor, shocking as it may seem.
As far as the car, if indeed this is some extreme exercise in irony, then at least its good for a laugh, but I somehow doubt that.
If I had a car like that I’d jack up the rear end, put some traction bars underneath it, get rid of those wheels and put Torque Thrust D’s on it with wider tires, and side pipes. I might even ditch the RR motor for a big block Chevy with a super charger blower sticking out through the hood.
If the car hadn’t been a convertible, and had a roof instead, I’d lower it, put a ground effects kit on it, fender flares, much wider wheels and tires, and a big assed wing on the back and have a Rolls Royce DTM-style racecar.
I had a relative with a Rolls just like that. Well not nasty tacky like that but the same model year, in white with the white leather. It was a nice looking car but I never understood it for the $150,000+ is was back then. It felt like riding around in Fort Knox it was so heavy and slow.
I didn’t know they had gotten to be so cheap on the used market or did that guy manage to make it worth less.
EDIT: after reading you comments I think I am confising this for my cousin’s grandfather’s ROLLS ROYCE CORNICHE, since it was a convertable.
I had to take a second look at this.
The interior actually isn’t that bad. The gold-plated grille/bumpers/etc might be acceptable. The custom paint job is a little weird on a RR, but could be okay. The custom roof-job could be pretty cool if someone bought to garage and drive specifically on sunny days.
Any of these, by themselves, could be weird but not completely in bad taste. All together, it is the perfect storm of tastelessness.
Actually, the motor is already a very-big-block GM V8. Just add the blower.
That Rolls is fantastic, ok so “$60k invested” is code for “vulgar waste of money” but the world would be a far less interesting place if everyone had sense and no-one followed their passion.
Click through to ebay and check out the matching GMC Van.
CoffeeJones :
October 28th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
@arapaima
Maintenance costs ALONE are probably $16k on an old RR.
That’s a nearly 30 year old low production british car.
Only if you keep taking it to the Rolls Royce dealership. You’d be surprised! Older RRs use a number of off-the-shelf GM parts, and apparently are not too difficult to work on.
You know, the more I look at it and imagine myself stopping by the taco truck down the street from my house for, well, tacos, the more I think the headline should read, “Right.”
I actually think this car is completely awesome in a Graceland kind of way. Some Southern-fried rock or hip-hop group should buy it (Southern Culture on the Skids?) and use it to cruise up to outdoor gigs. This shrieks “notice me!” in a much more lovably declasse way than a bright-orange Murcielago or a lot of other attention-whoring cars ten times the price.
Check out the seller’s other items for sale. $65K spent on a GMC Savanna!?
I took a picture of that Rolls at the Leake Auction in Tulsa last June. It was parked between a pimpified Lincoln convertible and a GMC conversion van, which also had paint jobs like the Rolls. My notation at the time:
“Supposedly it cost $10,000 to put the special paint on that ’83 Rolls-Royce four door convertible in the middle. Apparently it didn’t impress the auction crowd much; bidding petered out at $8,600.”
Robert, do you see yourself behind the wheel with or without the fuzzy pimp hat?
Areitu:
I’ve never owned one, but I get the same impression also. I’ve heard that the naturally aspirated versions of the pushrod V8 are pretty bulletproof, and the transmissions are regular GM transmissions.
Also, unlike the complex, Achilles heel ridden innovative designs in Italian and German cars, from what I’ve heard everything was designed in a very basic, conventional way, so nothing should be look too confusing to a trustworthy independent mechanic.
Beautiful.
More money than brains…
and this case, more money than taste.
Spending, gambling and investing are three completely different things. Unfortunately, the majority of the population, regardless of education level, doesn’t understand the distinctions!
Are you sure this isn’t the Obama presidential limo?
I’m not an accountant, but if Rolls Royce bought this thing and drove it into the ocean, it should count as a business expense. You’ve got to defend your brand, right?
George Clinton’s (Parliment-Funkadelic) daily driver. ;-)
You Americans are so conservative.
Anything that isn’t silver and totally stock is considered ugly and radical. It’s just a flaming gold Rolls. Geez.
$15k to jump start your pimping career, it’s a bargain.
Having owned an ’84 version of this car, umpimped, I can tell you it cost a fortune to keep it on the road.
Areitu:
Also, unlike the complex, Achilles heel ridden innovative designs in Italian and German cars, from what I’ve heard everything was designed in a very basic, conventional way, so nothing should be look too confusing to a trustworthy independent mechanic.
If you ever get a look at one of these things check out the brake system, (home of the $6,000 brake job) that takes $15 a pint mineral brake oil to feed a plumbing system that would rival an oil refinery. Be prepared to replace the steering rack ($3,200) about every 10,000 miles.
Don’t like truck tires on your 3 ton car? That will be 4 Avons imported from England for only $1,600. Crack a taillight? That will be $450. This car is equipped with Lucas electrics (Lord Lucas, Lord of Darkness) and has a failure prone relay for anything with a wire. I could go on, but you get the message.
Stock, presentable versions of this car can be had for $12K – $15K.
Zarba :
“Over $60,000 invested”
By a total moron.
Robert Farago :
I like it. But then, I could very well be a total moron.
Surprisingly enough, I like it too; never would have thought I had it in me!
I’d drive it!
Heh heh, talk about putting lipstick on a pig. That is more like clown make up.
How much would it cost to paint it black?
Yuppie :
October 28th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
If I buy it, do I get to be a dictator of some backwater country for a day? If yes, how about throwing in a complementary gold-plated AK-74?
Great comment! LOL
that’s just awful. I suppose worse things have been done, though.
money into a car is not an investment