The latest auction held by UK auction house Hampsons at Bolesworth Castle in the UK recently saw a spectacular 1967 Ford Mustang once owned by football legend Thierry Henry achieving the highest price on the day.
Hampsons says the ex-Henry Mustang is "a glorious machine" and one of just a handful of officially licensed Mustangs built to replicate the famous ‘Eleanor’ from Gone in Sixty Seconds remake from 2000.
Instantly recognisable to fans of both the automotive action movie and muscle cars, the Mustang possesses the all-important official sanction of Gone in Sixty Seconds producer, Denise Halicki as well as featuring her signature on the dashboard.
The highly impressive piece of Americana sold for £140,625 (NZ$317,985) at the auction held on the 9th of March.
The 2000 version of Gone in Sixty Seconds starred Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie and was a loose remake of the 1974 film of the same name by H.B Halicki.
Both films centered around the premise of a car thief (Cage's improbably-named Memphis Raines and Halicki's even more improbably-named Maindrian Pace) who has to steal a set number of cars on a tight time frame; 48 cars in five days in the original and 50 in 24 hours in the remake.
Each car was given a code name, with the most difficult car to steal being called Eleanor, which was a yellow 1973 Ford Mustang fastback in the original and the distinctive customised 1967 Shelby GT500 in the remake. For the remake 'Eleanor' was designed by legendary US hot rod designer Chip Foose.
Eleven were made for the movie, with five being destroyed during filming and just three thought to still exist today, with one recently selling for US$825,500 (NZ$1.4 million) in 2020, while another that was driven by Cage for close-ups sold for US$1 million (NZ$1.7 million) in 2013.
The original film is best-known for featuring a 40-minute car chase scene (the longest in film history) which saw a total of 93 cars destroyed. Halicki did his own stunts in the film, being badly injured during one. He was killed during filming of a planned sequel in 1989 and his widow, Denise, would go on to produce the 2000 remake alongside action film-maestro Jerry Bruckheimer.
