On the night of June 19, 1997, one of the most famous cars in the world disappeared.
The car, estimated at $10 million, was pulled from a hangar at Boca Raton Airport, Florida, in a brazen heist. The thieves did so with such precision that no alarm sounded and no security guard noticed.
All of that remained an unsolved persistent mystery. The car, an Aston Martin DB5 used in the 007 film “Goldfinger”, was never found.
“When other people borrow those cars, they can’t sell them on the open market,” said Lee Coates, a spokesperson for Select Car Leasing. “If you borrow an expensive car, you’ll probably sell it to a very rich thief who just needs the car in his garage to have it. He’ll belong somewhere to a black thief.
Coates spent the month above betting on car detectives for Select Car Leasing, a new and used car rental company in the UK that blogs on various car-related topics. Coates studies and writes about the cases surrounding the disappearance of 20 rare and notorious cars around the world.
The concept came to him after reading about 19 historic cars stolen from the Orlando Classic Cars warehouse in Florida on June 1, he said, but a few days later, nine of them were discovered in California after others posted comments on social media. he said.
“It was great to see other people on the local network take pictures of car sightings and get in touch to locate them,” Coates said. “That’s why I made the decision to do this. Also, with the upcoming James Bond film released in November, one of the cars that disappeared was from a James Bond movie and I’m a big fan of James Bond. “
Coates relied on media reports, most commonly those written around the time the car disappeared, and on some old documents, in his research, he said.
While the 20 cars he registered were recovered today, it is estimated to total around $149 million overall, he said.
“I’m surprised that this number of cars, in terms of price, is scarce and no one knows where they are,” Coates said. “If a diamond disappears, the general public can see its price, but other people who don’t like Cars don’t know where the price comes from. A car that costs $10 million and is missing is more expensive than a diamond ».
Here are the stories of some of the 20 missing and the ones that were found.
In 1964, the silver Aston Martin DB5 that actor Sean Connery drove in the James Bond film “Goldfinger” was sold to a personal collector for about $ 15,500 and was activated with a variety of accessory devices, such as guns and tire shredders. according to reports.
The original owner sold it to collector Anthony Pugliese III for about $324,000 and kept it in a hangar with his other cars at Boca Raton Airport Authority in Florida.
“On the night of June 19, 1997, he broke in and stole it,” Coates said. “As far as we can tell, the airport hangar had moldings and they used a saw to insert and cut the lock and turned off the alarm and used chains and cables to load it into a platform truck. “
The car was supposedly so heavy that it had to be removed from its axles. Tire tracks left the only clue: they might have taken him to a place where he was loaded into a cargo plane, missing forever.
“The other people who stole the car hired personal investigators to locate the car and every few years there were observations,” Coates said. “Four weeks after his flight, there were several remarks, but he never noticed again. “
“There are still 123 Aston Martin DB5s and the ones that exist are valuable,” Coates said.
In 2019, a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 Berlina was sold at RM Sotheby’s in Monterey, California, for $6. 4 million. This style of car is worth about $1. 6 million, however, as used in the 1965 James Bond film “Thunderball”, brought even was manipulated with the various spy accessories used in the scenes of the film, said Hagerty, who specialized in the insurance and evaluation of collectible vehicles, to the press at the time.
Another 1965 Aston Martin DB5 was stolen on July 18 this year while stationed on a street in England. The car, manufactured in 1965 and valued at $1. 3 million, resembles those used in James Bond films, but this is not the case. on the Carscoops website, there is a $1312 eulogy for anyone with valid data that can lead to their recovery.
For more than 108 years, one of the rarest in the world has sat at the back of the icy North Atlantic Ocean amid the remains of the RMS Titanic.
The 1912 Renault Type CB Coupe de Ville, owned by William Carter of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in the domain of the doomed ocean liner garage bound for the states with its owner, Coates said. about $3,200, which would equate to 10 years’ salary for the average employee at the time, Coates said.
Carter, the heir to a fortune of coal and iron, coates said, and bought the car while traveling with his wife and children in Europe.
“He had 25 horses, ” said Coates. ” It had a more sensitive speed of 35 mph. The car was the first of its kind because the style was manufactured between 1912 and 1933. “
This fateful chaos on April night erupted when the Titanic sank and Carter separated from his wife and children. His circle of relatives and his maid boarded a lifeboat.
Later, when one of the last lifeboats came down, Carter boarded with another passenger, J. Bruce Ismay, president of the White Star Line, who owned the Titanic, coates said.
But Carter’s servant and his driving force said goodbye to the sumptuous Renault. The driving force had taken the circle of relatives in this car to the docks of Southampton to board the Titanic.
The story ceded to the attention of James Cameron, who directed the 1997 film “Titanic,” Coates said.
Cameron used a reproduction of the car in the famous love scene where the characters, played through Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, have a romantic date.
“It’s pretty good to see how the director knew this fact and put it in the film,” Coates said. “It’s a return to the falling car. “
In recent years, Coates said, there have been reports of collectors looking to place the car at the bottom of the ocean, but without luck. Coates said if they find him, it would be incredibly valuable. In 2008, a similar car was sold at a Sotheby’s auction. for $269,500, he said.
“I think this one would still be there, but if they get it back, it would sell more expensive because it failed with the Titanic. It depends on the amount of algae it contains,” Coates said. There are two wonderfully priced old cars in history that have sunk. “
The other, the Chrysler Norseman prototype, fell to the SS Andrea Doria, an Italian passenger ocean liner, while being sent to New York for a 1957 car show.
The Oldsmobile Golden Rocket concept car has been dubbed one of the most radical designs of the 1956 General Motors Motors Motor Hall.
The golden two-seater looked like a rocket. I intended to invoke a futuristic vision.
“It’s part of a promotional anthem called Design for Dreaming, it’s one of many cars,” Coates said. “But it’s a concept car, so only one was built. It was manufactured for General Motors Motorama in New York at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in January 1956. “
The car made the car salon circuit, but when it did, it was not unusual for automakers to abandon concept cars at the time, Coates said, so the Golden Rocket was sent to a backyard to be destroyed, he said.
“But there is no indication of his disposition, which is rare at this time. So, we have to say it’s missing or missing,” Coates said. “There is no evidence that anyone stole it, however, there is no document stating that it was discarded, so it is strange. “
He said there was a rumor he saw in New Jersey a few years after the Motorama, but this was never confirmed.
“One of the unfirmed theories is that other people who paint in junk parks see the price of cars and maybe take them and put a new engine or something like that,” Coates said. “But this car design influenced the cars that followed it. “
Electra Records was so happy with The Doors’ debut album in 1967 that they introduced lead singer Jim Morrison with a 1967 Shelby GT500 in dark blue with a white interior, Coates said.
The car had a 7-litre V8 engine and manual transmission. The rock star called her The Blue Lady, according to published reports, but the Blue Lady stayed for a long time in her life.
“Obviously, he lived a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle,” Coates said. “It was April 1967 and I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He crashed the car into a street pole.
The original theory is that after hitting the pole, Morrison walked down the street to Whiskey to Go Go, a bar where The Doors performed regularly. Later that night, when she went to pick up the car at the turn of destination location, she left and I never saw him again.
Another theory suggests that it was towed by police, but another is that Morrison left the car in a long-term parking lot at LAX Airport for a concert tour and returned to locate him towed and sold at a public auction. that Morrison totaled the car and was shredded as scrap metal.
No one knows what happened to that car, ” said Coates.
“Most cars that disappear have a towing history, but there’s no sign of towing,” Coates said.
Morrison’s car has been missing since April 1967, Coates said. If I ever found him, he’d be worth a fortune, he said. Last year, a Shelby GT500 of this era sold at auction for $2. 2 million, he said.
“When celebrities own cars, cars are becoming more valuable,” Coates said. “Then maybe it would be more than $2 million. “
The Delorean DMC12 is the most productive known for its leading role as a time device in the films “Back to the Future”. The studio owned several cars, but the “B” Delorean car disappeared, or we should say its parts are gone.
Seeing car “B”, the stunt car, took many photos.
“It is also known as a wrecked car because it was used in waterfalls. It was used in all 3 films,” Coates said. ” This is the car that hit during the exercise in one of the videos and exploded. Someone put all the pieces in combination and gave them to Planet Hollywood. “
The rooms, which included a door and a bumper, were from the ceiling as a component of Planet Hollywood’s Honolulu, Hawaii décor, Coates said.
Then, on April 18, 2010, this Planet Hollywood closed, he said. But while other memories of the local film were collected at auction, Delorean’s remains disappeared.
“Someone stole the car portions for their space because they enjoyed the movies,” Coates said.
Not all cars are lost forever, some are lost despite everything found.
Two 1968 Mustang GT Fastbacks were used in the film “Bullitt” with Steve McQueen. Or they disappeared for a while. One discovered in a heist in Mexico, but only a double.
The other, driven through McQueen, remained through a personal owner in a garage for about 40 years, before the owner’s son dusted him off and took him to the 2018 Detroit Motor Show when Ford filed his 2019 Bullitt Mustang tribute, Free Press reported.
In January of this year, the car was raised to an unsyged bidder for a record $3. 4 million – $3. 74 million after commissions and fees.
Then there’s the case of the 1974 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS: some young men who were digging in the dust in the front yard of a space in Los Angeles in 1978 hit something strong: it was the car. And how this happened is a possible black film.
The Ferrari in perfect condition when it was discovered in its suburban tomb for at least 4 years.
It had been purchased in October 1974 through Rosendo Cruz de la Alhambra, California. On December 7, 1974, Cruz had reported the theft of the car, according to a report published in Jalopnik.
But why the car had been buried in a backyard is a mystery. The other people who buried him probably expected to pick him up at some point because they had tried to “mummify it into plastic sheets and put towels in their sockets to keep him away. worms, ” reported Jalopnik.
With no clue in 1978, the case of the buried Ferrari has cooled. But Jalopnik put his theory of what happened at the base of a “golden snap” in the last 1970s. Cruz, the owner of the car in 1974, had hired some guys to make him disappear so that he could raise the insurance money. The plan for the hired thugs to steal it on Wilshire Boulevard on the night of December 7 while Cruz and his wife were at the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles.
The hires then had to cut the car and fence the rooms, submerging the rest in the ocean, Jalopnik wrote. Cruz would collect payment for the insurance.
But the recruiter fell in love with the lovely Italian car and might bring him the axe.
“They set fire to the back plate, perhaps as a souvenir, perhaps as a protest check,” Jalopnik reported. “Then they buried her in a backyard with suction cup west of Athens; some say it in an old mechanic’s well. The boss got his check, but the idiots never came back for her.
Thanks to a drought in Los Angeles during this period, the car remained well preserved in his grave, was restored through a personal owner in 1978 and survives today, providing Coates with his next car detective mission.
“I’d like to do a long-term article about the cars that have been found,” Coates said. “This shows that there is hope that these cars can be found. “
In addition: the famous Mustang Bullitt of 1968 through Steve McQueen will be auctioned
More: Mystery surrounds the $3. 74 million sale of the 1968 Mustang Bullitt: ”Only one knows” the buyer
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress. com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Learn more about General Motors and subscribe to our newsletter.