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eBay Find of the Day: Andy Warhol's 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow

Andy Warhol is one of the most recognizable artists of the 20th Century. With hits like his famous Campbell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe portraits, he is likely the first name you think of in association with the pop art movement. He isn't known for being an auto enthusiast, though, but maybe that's not entirely the case - there was his BMW M1 art car, after all. Now, Warhol's 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow is up for auction on eBay Motors.
According the seller, Warhol never had a driver's license, but he still wanted to own a luxurious car. It's claimed that he occasionally had his famous friends, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, chauffeur him around in the Rolls. Following Warhol's death in 1987, the car was auctioned for $77,000, and since then it has only been sold to one additional owner.
The Rolls is painted Walnut and Mason's Black, which appears closer to a shade of brown in these photos, with a black leather interior. The engine is the company's' popular 6.75-liter V8 with a three-speed automatic transmission, and there are just 56,000 miles on this luxurious classic. The seller is including copies of original purchase order from Rolls-Royce and the title to Warhol Enterprises to prove the famous artist's ownership of the car, plus all of its service records.

Rolls-Royce Wraith Eagle VIII commemorates 1919 transatlantic flight

Rolls-Royce is building a 50-car limited edition of the Wraith called the Eagle VIII that will debut at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este event at the Lake Como. The vehicle commemorates two pilots that completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight 100 years ago. The story behind the flight is fascinating: Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Brown flew all the way from St John's in Newfoundland to Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, in a WWI Vickers Vimy bomber. The aircraft's engines were two 20.3-liter Rolls-Royce Eagle VII units, and it appears the engines were the only reliable thing on the flight apart from the crew themselves: the radio and navigation instruments failed right at the beginning of the journey as the wind-driven electrical generator broke, which also meant there was no heating. Because of this, the men had to rely on stars to find Ireland, when dense clouds finally subsided. And it's the clouds and stars that form the centerpieces of the special edition car. The headliner contains 1,183 fibers that light up to form the celestial arrangement at the time of the flight in 1919, with the exact moment when the Vickers plane emerged from the clouds highlighted in red. The decorative wood has silver and copper inlays so it resembles a night-time Earth seen from above. Plaques read "The celestial arrangement at the halfway point 00:17am June 15 1919, 50" 07' Latitude North – 31" Longitude West", and next to the brass speaker grilles, there is a Winston Churchill quote commending the crew, the plane and their unprecedented achievement. "I do not know what we should most admire - their audacity, determination, skill, science, their aeroplane, their Rolls-Royce engines - or their good fortune", it reads. The crash-landing location coordinates are engraved below the dashboard clock. The 1,880-mile ordeal with no heat, occasional snow and a constant barrage of noise from burst exhaust piping took Alcock and Brown 15 hours and 57 minutes, at an average speed of 115 mph. Both aviators were awarded the honor of Knights Commanders of the British Empire by King George V. Alcock later perished after crashing another Vickers plane en route to the Paris Airshow in December 1919. Brown passed away at the age of 62 in 1948. Other detailing on the two-tone Gunmetal and Selby Grey car is also related to the record-breaking Vickers plane, including the black grille vanes that mimic the plane's engine cowling.

Rolls-Royce Wraith revealed, ready to battle Bentley

Bentley may have rounded out the redesign of its Continental line of cars with the new Flying Spur four-door's debut at this week's Geneva Motor Show, but Rolls-Royce has shown up in Switzerland with the Wraith, a GT coupe version of the Ghost sedan that moves the brand one step closer to having an answer for everything that wears a Flying B.
The Wraith's natural combatant would be Bentley's Continental GT Coupe, though as all Rollers come in orders of magnitude more expensive than their already costly competitors from Crewe, the new coupe's €245,000 initial starting price will be $100k USD more than the base price of the most expensive Continental, a GT Speed coupe.
What your CEO bonus money will get you is a 624-bhp V12 engine cranking out 590 pound-feet of torque. The sprint to 60 miles per hour will pass by in 4.4 seconds, with a unique 8-speed ZF automatic transmission snapping off shifts using a new Satellite Aided Transmission technology that works with GPS to pre-select the right gear for not only the road you're on, but the road you'll be coming up on ahead.