Cars and Killers (and autographs)

[Josh Board]

I remember as a kid reading a Sports Illustrated story on Reggie Jackson. The baseball Hall of Famer had an impressive collection of 28 cars (years later I read that his garage burned down and they were destroyed).

We all drool over Jay Leno’s car collection, but for autograph and memorabilia collectors, we sometimes like cars for other reasons. They joked on Seinfeld once when Kramer bought a car that was supposedly owned by Jon Voight.

I remember driving into Las Vegas and seeing the Bonnie & Clyde car, complete with bullet holes on the side, in Whiskey Pete’s Casino. That would be a nice item no matter what you collected.

A few days later at the Imperial Palace Casino, I saw a car the Pope once owned, and one that the reclusive Howard Hughes had specially made. He spent $50,000 for an air purification system to be installed (for those that don’t know, he got rather obsessive about germs later in his life).

There was a Lincoln at that same casino that was used for JFK a few times. It was bullet proof.

I thought about all these various cars a few weeks ago when USA Today did a story on the white Ford Bronco O.J. Simpson tried fleeing from the cops in. It was on June 17, 1994, so it was the 20 year “anniversary” of the vehicle.

My favorite thing about the car was my friend buying a white Ford Bronco months later. He wanted the license plate “NOT OJS” but the DMV wouldn’t let him get it.

For those that don’t remember the Simpson story, here it is a nutshell. He’s a Hall of Fame football player that killed his ex-wife and a man at her house (“allegedly” I’ll put, to make Steve Cyrkin and the lawyers happy).

In a case that had more evidence against him than perhaps any other murder case ever, he was found “not guilty.” Of course, it hurt his movie and commercial career, and he was eventually jailed in Las Vegas after breaking into the hotel room of a guy that was selling his autographed footballs and jerseys. It doesn’t help when you bring goons with guns and are heard shouting on a tape, “Don’t let anybody out of this room!”

That, my friends, is called kidnapping. Let’s hope this murderer (allegedly) stays behind bars forever.

The Ford Bronco has been free and was never charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive.

Memorabilia collector Michael Kronick was in Las Vegas at an Elvis Presley estate auction and saw the TV chase on the news. He called his attorney and said, “We’ve got to have that truck. That’s going to be the most famous truck.”

Since the SUV actually belonged to A.C. Cowlings, a former teammate and longtime friend of O.J.’s, he tracked him down.

Cowlings gave the green light (no pun intended) to sell the vehicle. Kronick met with his people, and it was going to be purchased for $75,000 (that sure isn’t blue book for a car that came off the assembly line just 14 months after the slow speed chase).

Now, $75,000 seems a bit pricey, but get this. Kronick had the deal sweetened by saying he wanted 250 autographed photos of Cowlings driving the car.

The day of the sale, Cowlings decided not to sell. Kronick sued Cowlings for damages in excess of $200,000. They reached an undisclosed settlement.

According to Cowling’s attorney, the car was sold for $200,000, and the buyer wasn’t identified. Yet a collector who was a client of the lawyers – Michael Pulwer – ended up with the vehicle. He owns a porn shop in Las Vegas and ended up producing more than 50 movies, with big names in the porn industry (Traci Lords and Ron Jeremy, to name a few).

The car ended up in an underground parking garage at a luxury condominium complex in Los Angeles. It wasn’t until 2012 that there were plans to move it to a museum in Las Vegas. It ended up outside the Luxor hotel, at the opening of “Score!” That’s a sports memorabilia museum and exhibit hall. Months later, the car would be in Greenwich, Conn. It was at an exhibit for an artist that did a topless picture of Nicole Brown Simpson (talk about bad taste).

Pulwer has said the car is well taken care of, and he thinks it might someday end up in a museum for famous and infamous cars.

I’m guessing a collector won’t ever be interested. People like cars when it’s something like the Rolls Royce that John Lennon painted all psychedelic. They like the lowrider Snoop Dogg painted yellow and purple, with the Los Angeles Lakers all on the hood. To own a car that a coward fled in – you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody now that’s interested.