The Hagerty Power List 2022: Musicians

The Hagerty Power List charts the impact of celebrity ownership on classic car prices, and chart success is number one when it comes to adding value.

Fans have paid thousands of times over the odds to own cars owned by their musical heroes, from high-buck supercars to fairly conventional machines with morbid histories. But – and this is where we adopt our best announcer voice – who breaks the Billboard? Below is our top-ten rundown of the musicians whose cars created records of their own.

See the other categories from The Hagerty Power List 2022

• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Movies
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Movie stars
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Royalty
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Drivers
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Notable and notorious
• About The Hagerty Power List

10. Rod Stewart

Rocker Rod’s cars are worth an average of 19 percent more than those not owned by the gravel-voiced singer. Hagerty’s analysts looked at 14 sales of cars previously owned by Rod the Mod to come up with the figure, and discovered that the rock star’s cars have a habit of Sailing in and out of the auctions time and again.

His 1983 Ferrari 400i has sold no less than four times since 1991, his 1977 Lamborghini Countach has been under the hammer twice, and his Miuras have sold five times between the lot of them. Rod’s biggest hit was arguably the 1972 Miura SV, which sold at Bonhams’ Goodwood Revival sale in 2013 for a then-world record price of £630,000 (around $990,612).

9. Nick Mason

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has one of the most impressive car collections in the world, and having him as a previous keeper adds a fifth to the value of a car, according to our Power List statisticians. Taking into account nine previous sales the provenance of past Mason ownership pushes the sales price up 19 percent on average.

In 2021, his far-from-mint 1991 Porsche 944 Turbo SE sold on the Car & Classic website for £22,500 (around $28,000) when the Hagerty guide price for a car in similar condition was just £13,900 ($17,151), and a 1998 Series 1 Lotus Elise drummed up £34,285 (around $43,205) at Silverstone Auctions the same year, fetching more than double our price guide value of £16,400 (around $20,200). Mason wasn’t so lucky in the past, however, with his 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 (sold both in 2000 and 2004) and 1936 Aston Martin two-liter (sold in 1992) both selling for less than market value, pushing him further down the charts than one might expect.

8. Frank Sinatra

The original Rat Packer packs a 51 percent premium based on the sale of his 1994 Mercedes-Benz E420 which sold in Las Vegas (of course) for $13,200 in 2019 despite presenting in distinctly average condition. Sinatra loved to swing about town in a host of fancy sleds—including a Lamborghini Miura and a rare Dual Ghia—but these haven’t come up for public sale in decades.

7. Cher

In seventh place is Cher, whose 1966 Ford Mustang fetched $55,000 at the Barrett-Jackson Mandalay Bay auction in 2016. That’s 56 percent more than one would Believe a Mustang to have made at the time.

6. Elton John

Sir Elton’s cars are the most frequently sold on our list, with 17 different sales to consider. That’s not surprising, considering the Rocket Man has owned some out of this world cars ranging from Aston Martin, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce and Bentley. On average, they have fetched 115 percent over the odds. When it comes to pure profit his 1956 Bentley S1 Continental Fastback is top of Elton’s playlist, having sold for £196,250 (around $283,000) in 2001 and achieving an astonishing 341 percent markup. His 1993 Jaguar XJ220 sold at the same time for £234,750 ($338,204) – a hike of 68 percent.

5. Sonny Bono

Even from beyond the grave, Sonny managed to make the statement “I got you babe”. At the very same Barrett Jackson auction in 2016, his almost identical 1966 Ford Mustang outsold Cher’s pony car. Achieving $71,500 its 123 percent inflation over an equivalent car was double what his ex-wife’s car managed.

4. Keith Richards 

Richards’ cars have racked up sales averaging 205 percent more than they would have without Rolling Stones’ ownership. A 1972 Ferrari Dino 246 GT that Keith bought new was auctioned at Bonham’s Goodwood Revival sale in 2019 for £442,750 (around $535,107), which was more than $185,000 beyond book value at the time, but it’s his 1983 Ferrari 400i and 1965 Bentley S1 Continental Flying Spur that provided the most Satisfaction to sellers, with the Ferrari fetching three times more than a less rock’n’roll example would have done and the Bentley an incredible five times more.

3. Elvis Presley

As anyone who’s ever dropped by Graceland can attest, The King was a complete car nut. It’s no wonder that bidders get All Shook Up when one of his cars is up for grabs, and the result is an average 229 percent price hike if Elvis is listed as a previous owner.

Some 13 different sales going back to 1996 were studied by Hagerty boffins, including three Cadillacs, two Mercedes-Benzes, two Lincolns and a Rolls-Royce. Of the most recent exchanges, it’s an ordinary-by-Elvis-standards 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham which stands out after reaching £66,083 (around $81,500) during a Car & Classic online auction, which is 518 percent higher than if the King had never sat in its driving throne.

2. Tupac Shakur

It gets rather dark as we head into the top two. On September 7th, 1996, Tupac travelled through Las Vegas in a new BMW 750iL, leased by Death Row Records. As he stopped at a red light on East Flamingo Road, a Cadillac pulled alongside and the rear seat passenger opened fire. Tupac was hit four times and died six days later. When the car was listed in November 2019, it had been restored, removing all traces of violence. The price was $1.75 million and with a mid-90s Seven Series not exactly being the most collectible of cars, that represented a morbid markup of 8,233 percent.

1. The Notorious B.I.G.

Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls or The Notorious B.I.G. was, in a case of grim irony, in Los Angeles to promote his second album Life After Death when he, too, was killed in a drive-by shooting. In the early hours of the morning of 9 March 1997, Biggie and his entourage stopped at traffic lights on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue when a Chevrolet Impala drew up next to them and the driver shot the rapper. He died within the hour at the age of just 24.

20 years later, the 1997 GMC Suburban that he was traveling in on that fateful night sold for $1.5 million, an increase of 18,650 percent compared to a similar Suburban. A family had been using it for years, though the only remaining evidence of the night in question was a bullet hole in one seatbelt.

The Hagerty Valuation Team says:

The top of our list is a pretty gruesome sight, with the cars in which The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac were shot dead holding the first two places. That said, we’ve just heard that the Tupac car sale has not gone though, so at present, that’s an advertised value rather than a sale price. B.I.G’s car also shows a huge margin as it is a very standard model; a GMC Suburban complete with patched-up bullet hole in the safety belt. Advertised in 2017 for $1.5m, that’s a lot more than the $8,000 (£6,500) Hagerty bills it at face value. Still, there are some real petrolheads on our list: we tracked 13 cars linked to Elvis, 13 to Elton John, 14 to Rod Stewart and 10 to Jay Kay. Unfortunately, the cars linked to Jay Z were a job-lot of trucks that failed to light the public’s imagination.

See the other categories from The Hagerty Power List 2022

• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Movies
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Movie stars
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Royalty
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Drivers
• The Hagerty Power List 2022: Notable and notorious
• About The Hagerty Power List