The Volo Auto Museum in Lake County, Illinois is now displaying a pink Cadillac that once belonged to the king of rock and roll Elvis Presley. The museum's director, Brian Grams, stumbled across the 1974 station wagon while hunting for a new exhibit for the museum.
The car had been kept hidden for almost four decades since being bought for $50,000 by a fanatical collector in November 1977, and is thought to be the only one of Presley's cars unaccounted for. It has now been put on public display for the first time since 1977.
Sydney-based Cadillac expert Allan Levinson believes the car to be a customised four-door Sedan de Ville, a conversion carried out by the American Sunroof Company, which also built a car for crooner Dean Martin. Unlike similar conversions, the white and pink car is of pillarless design, while its interesting rear hatch opens by sliding the window glass into a cavity in the roof.
The car was bought by Presley, along with four other vehicles, from Madison Cadillac in 1974, but he promptly sold it after just a few months of ownership. It still sports its Tennessee nameplates and original registration documents, and can also be seen in a number of period photographs of Graceland.
The Volo Auto Museum's example isn't the only piece of Elvis automobilia to change hands in recent years. A 1972 Cadillac once belonging to him crossed the block at Mecum's Santa Monica sale in 2013, but failed to sell.