Celebrity car collections we would love to have

Property is boring and celebrity restaurant owners all seem to go bust, so what about filling the shed behind the mansion with a few - or a few hundred - interesting cars?

Over many decades prominent people have owned and in some cases accumulated many cars. Some vehicles have become as famous - or infamous - as their celebrity owners. However it is the ones with a passion for cars that borders on obsessive who are the most fascinating. Here are a few of the most accomplished.

Presley wasn't so much a car collector as a prolific car buyer. He bought Cadillacs in the same way other people buy wine; by the dozen and to share with friends and associates. Sometimes he would just give cars away to people who he felt were deserving or who had admired the model he happened to be driving.

Elvis' car cravings weren't confined to Cadillacs. One of his most interesting indulgences was a gorgeous and scarce BMW 507 Roadster which he used while on National Service in Germany. Another German-made model that would later make its way into the Graceland garage was a massive, six-door Mercedes-Benz 600 'Grosser' limousine. However Elvis still preferred US-built products.

In the late 1960s when opportunists revived the famous Stutz automotive name and announced their intention to produce several hundred, 'The King' signed up for the first car off the production line. During the decades which followed, Elvis owned several of them and a Stutz is believed to be the last car he ever drove. Late on the evening before his death in 1977, Presley was photographed returning to Graceland in a favoured black coupe with distinctive gold-plated interior fittings.

The one-time king of US talk TV isn't as well known in Australia but in his homeland he is famous for automotive exploits and a massive collection of cars and motorcycles. Leno owns an estimated 150 cars with a total value exceeding US$50 million and including some rare American products from the pre-vintage era. However, Leno isn't so over-awed by the significance of his cars or his own celebrity that he leaves them to sit in a darkened warehouse.

Leno is regarded as a 'regular car guy' who turns up at shows with one or sometimes more of his collection, holding forums, chatting with other owners and joining 'cruises'. Since leaving full-time television he has made programs that document the restoration of cars from his collection and has written humorous columns on the perils of older car ownership.

One of the cars that characterises Leno, famous for his prominent jawline, is the custom-made 'Blastoline Special'. With 1930s styling in aluminium and an immense bonnet, the vehicle Leno calls the 'Tank Car' measures 6.4 metres and produces 800kW from an 18-litre V12 with twin turbochargers (added at Leno's request) that came from a 52 ton Patton tank.

Mason gained fame as drummer and songwriter with Pink Floyd but a significant slice of his considerable fortune has come from owning and occasionally reselling an inspired array of significant cars.

The one which underscore's Mason's acquisitive knack and which he has resisted all temptation to sell, is an old Ferrari, bought at the height of Floyd's success in 1977 for a then-astronomical UK£35,000.

The car is a Ferrari 250GTO, one of just 36 ever built and similar to a car sold recently for a reported US$70 million. Like most of Mason's cars the Ferrari isn't kept in a cocoon, but still used in earnest on some of Britain's most challenging circuits.

Sharing garage space with the GTO are models that will make any car collector go weak at the wallet. Among them is a Le Mans D Type Jaguar worth more than $10 Million plus several other significant Ferraris and a Tipo 61 'Birdcage' Maserati sports/racer. It was so named because the lightweight metal tubes that form its structure resemble the flimsy wire framework of a budgie's cage.

Despite not holding a proper job for 18 years after his TV series ended, Jerry Seinfeld has managed to accumulate and maintain one of the world's most important collections of Porsches. A 'cull' in 2016 saw 15 cars worth US$22 million go under the auction hammer, but that still left Jerry's collection at over 80 cars, with the majority being Porsches.

Among the cars sold was a 917 CanAm Spyder; turbocharged to deliver almost 1000kW and said to be the most powerful Porsche ever built.

Those left in the shed -aka  Jerry's three-level garage in New York - include examples of every important 911 variant and a Lamborghini Miura, For an episode of his series 'Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee' starring president Barack Obama, Seinfeld chose from his stocks of US models a 1963 Corvette Stingray.

Aussie celebrities like their cars, of that there is no doubt. However, the quest to find a local entertainment celeb with a genuinely significant collection of interesting cars proved impossible.

Among Australia's most prominent collectors is a bloke who reputedly can't sing a note but who built one of the nation's largest transport fleets - the Linfox Group - has tipped many of his millions into an extraordinary vehicle collection.

However, the enthusiastic Lindsay Fox doesn't believe in keeping his collection hidden. Several years ago he did a deal with Melbourne Council to lease a historic building in central Docklands where at any one time visitors can wander amongst 50 of the world's best classic and super-performance models.

Moving from Melbourne to the leafy coast of Queensland we encounter the Bowden Collection with its focus on Australian motor sporting history. From Brock to Johnson, Richards, Beechey and Bartlett, the collection established by entrepreneur David Bowden during the 1990s and numbers around 100 vehicles.

In common with UK collectors like Nick Mason, the Bowdens' approach ensures that many of their cars still race and those which don't are still unleashed for 'demonstration' laps of race-circuits across the country.

In years gone by, Sydney radio star John Laws was known for his collection of cars which he scattered across various lo locations and rarely drove. Most of the Laws cars, including a very rare Jaguar XK120, were sent to auction more than 15 years ago.

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