Old School: Sex, drugs and Rajneesh's 93 Rolls-Royces
Who knew that an Indian guru, along with his orange-clad followers, built a utopian city in middle-of-nowhere Oregon, USA, during the early 1980s?It seems that only a few of us recall a famous 60 Minutes ad featuring a lady smartly scowling at her interviewer and declaring, “Tough titties.”
But since we’ve all started binge watching Wild Wild Country – the documentary about the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (also known as Osho), his Rajneeshee followers and Rajneeshpuram, the city they collectively built – that phrase is so back in vogue.
The Netflix docu-series hit walks a line that makes you wonder: maybe these people, as they tried to create their utopia, were onto something – or maybe they were as unhinged as some of their decisions suggest. As always, the truth is somewhere in between. Many questions are left unanswered, however: How did this guru end up with 93 Rolls-Royces? Why did he need them? And what happened to his collection of cars when he eventually fled the country after he and his people were implicated in a number of serious crimes? Let’s take a look into Rajneesh’s Rolls-Royces, a strange side-chapter of automotive love in an even stranger story of cultish spirituality.
Rajneesh’s first Rolls-Royce
After touching down in the US at JFK airport, Rajneesh proclaimed, “I am the Messiah America has been waiting for,” and he moved into a castle-like house in New Jersey with his followers – his sanyassins. Here, he and his sannyasins started to court trouble long before settling down and causing a ruckus out west in Oregon. The New York Times was already onto this secret sect: a story written not long after Rajneesh’s arrival uses the word ‘cult’ and opens with: “A guru from India wheels into town in a Rolls-Royce, buys the biggest house in the community…”
In this New Jersey mansion with views across to the New York City skyline, Rajneesh kept his very first Rolls, a Corniche model, a sporty two-door. He said a trip in a Rolls is a “ride in a tranquility that compares with the peace by Buddha”. Rolls-Royce never sought to use that line as an advertising slogan.
Rajneesh on the loose
Once settled in, Rajneesh set the sanyassins to work renovating the expansive house. While they worked long, physically taxing days painting walls and fixing floors, their guru was out hooning the streets in his Rolls, accumulating speeding tickets. Around this time, the Corniche received some serious modifications: bullet-proofing panels and tyres were added; jewels adorned the interior; a TV, VCR and telephone were installed; and tear-gas canisters and gun compartments were thrown in, just in case. The Corniche even got the stretch treatment, transforming it from a sporty two-door into a limousine fit for a guru.
The Silver Spur: the only Rolls for Osho
As much as being chauffeured in a limo suited the guru’s luxury mantra of “I am a man of simple taste – I just like the best”, Rajneesh loved to drive. The sporty Corniche didn’t cut it, or, rather, cut it too much: Rajneesh had back problems that were only exacerbated by the Corniche’s unforgiving seats. Touched on in Wild Wild Country is Rajneesh’s (rumoured) rampant drug use, huffing nitrous oxide and chomping down valium like candy as self-managed treatment for a number of ailments, including back pain. Thankfully for Rajneesh, not only did he have the funds to self-medicate to a spiritual level, but he also found the Rolls-Royce model, the Silver Spur, to his taste: “The driver’s seat in that car fits perfectly, gives me no trouble.”
In the series, it’s the Silver Spur – 93 in total – that we see queued up in a row along the main street of Rajneeshpuram.
How did Rajneesh get 93 Rolls-Royces, and what did he do with them?
Rajneesh did not eschew wealth. In fact, his teachings celebrate it. His wealth came from donations by followers both within Rajneeshpuram and across the world. In India, he made money from wealthy locals, but, as his popularity grew in the West, he started making his fortunes directly from followers across the globe. Notes from a Rajneeshee meeting in 1982 say: “Money is easier to get from those who have it.” Makes sense.
Rajneesh’s love of Rolls-Royces was surpassed only by his followers’ love for him, so they continued to buy him new ‘Rollers’, and often. Supporters of the movement included
As Rajneesh himself would say when speaking about his cars, “They were presents from outside, from all over the world.” Rolls-Royce appreciated the business so much that they sent engineers to the Rajneeshpuram service centre to maintain the custom-painted fleet.
Which Rolls will it be today, Raj?
Around the time the Rolls-Royce collection count neared 40, the guru thought he’d combine the two things he enjoyed most: driving a Rolls-Royce and being adored by people dressed in orange. Rajneesh’s drive-by blessings were a daily ritual in Rajneeshpuram. Followers lined the road and hurled flowers at Rajneesh’s Rolls as he moseyed along, grinning slightly. Once their leader had driven by, the sannyasin faithful would head straight back to working their gruelling 100- to 120-hour weeks.
Where are they now?
If the continued suspicion and opposition from Oregon locals wasn’t enough to send Rajneesh and his people packing, implication in bio-terror plots, election rigging and planned assassinations did the trick: Rajneesh was deported, eventually landing back in Pune, India. Throughout their time at Rajneeshpuram, the guru and his community had accumulated huge wealth – planes, guns and luxury items, plus the 93 Rolls-Royces. It all got liquidated, but the story goes that the cheeky Bhagwan found a smart way to retain eight Rollers: by buying them back.
The other 85 went to a Texan guy called Bob Roethlisberger for $7 million. It cost the guy $200,000 to transport them from Oregon to Texas, but Bob didn’t mind because Bob knew a thing or two about making a buck. He ended up selling 43 individually before he passed on, and the rest went to auction. The last one sold featured a green-and-gold lace-patterned paint job and teargas guns hidden in the fenders.
From time to time, Rajneesh’s Rolls-Royces pop up for sale, like the black kimono in the video above. Many are now in the hands of devoted Rajneesh (now Osho) followers still committed to the movement long after Rajneesh’s death of heart failure at Pune in 1990 – though rumours of poisoning at the hands of the US government linger on…
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