One day in 1968, legendary actor Michael Caine wandered into the Jack Barclay showroom on Berkeley Square, London, with a handwritten shopping list. It read: “Milk, bread, newspaper, cigarettes, Rolls-Royce.”
Unkempt and unshaven, Caine was ushered off the premises, so he went to Mayfair’s other Rolls-Royce dealership, H.A. Fox on Dover Street, where he purchased a Silver Shadow which had been taken into stock after playwright and screenwriter, Terence Rattigan, cancelled his order.
Caine didn't have a licence, and found it much cheaper to employ a chauffeur than pay the premium his insurers quoted for him to drive as a learner. The 35-year-old actor was subsequently driven past the offending Jack Barclay salesman in his new car and flicked him a V-sign.
Apocryphal story? Perhaps. But the Rolls-Royce in question is very real, and Michael Caine's first car is now coming up for auction in the UK.
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Now fully restored and one of just 506 Silver Shadow two-door Drophead Coupes hand-built by Rolls-Royce’s in-house coachbuilder Mulliner Park Ward from 1967–1971, the car is estimated to fetch between NZ$190,000-$290,000 when it comes up at an H&H Classics auction on March 15 at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.
“Appearing in more than 160 films across seven decades, Sir Michael Caine is a true British icon, so it’s a pleasure to be able to offer his very first car for sale, which in itself is another great British classic,” says Damian Jones, senior motorcar specialist, H&H Classics.
Caine owned the car for less than two years, but it was sold to another famous Londoner: John Leonard Ernest Leach (Jack Leach), owner of the Gasworks restaurant in Fulham, which became a notorious hotspot for the rich and famous. A familiar sight on the Fulham and Kings roads for decades afterwards, Leach owned it for the next 43 years, until his death in 2013.