Rolls-Royce

There is little question that the name Rolls Royce is at or near the top of the list of the most luxurious cars ever manufactured. The company started out in March of 1906 and was founded in England by Henry Royce and Charles Stewart Royce. The partnership began when Royce put together his first car in 1904, and he subsequently met Mr. Rolls, who owned an automobile dealership, later that same year. The Royce prototype that he presented to Rolls for inspection was a 2-cylinder vehicle, and though Rolls was partial to the four cylinder, and even three cylinder models of the day, he liked the car. It was called the Royce 10, and Rolls told Henry Royce that he was willing to purchase whatever number of cars Royce could deliver.

That was the start of a long and profitable partnership, the result of which provided some of the most desirable collectors' cars on the market today. A Rolls Royce Phantom 1 Ascot Tourer was the vehicle that was driven by Robert Redford in the classic period piece The Great Gatsby, and that car was sold at auction in 2009 for $238,000. Real life celebrity Rolls Royce owners both alive and deceased are a veritable who's who of the rich and famous, and the list includes Michael Jackson, Sly Stallone, Elvis Presley (whose famed '66 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud sits in the Elvis Presley Automobile Museum), Brigitte Bardot, John Lennon, and Donald Trump, one of the foremost Rolls Royce collectors in the world.