Led Zeppelin manager’s car set to soar at auction

A CAR owned for 25 years by Led Zeppelin’s larger than life manager Peter Grant will go under the hammer at classic car auctioneer Historics at Brooklands’ next sale on November 24.
Grant was renowned as a hands-on manager who travelled the world with his artists, and it was on Zeppelin’s first tour of the USA in 1968/69 that he discovered the 1929 Pierce-Arrow Model B Doctor’s Coupé, buying it with cash from a recently signed deal with Atlantic Records.
The 34-show tour wound up on February 15, 1969, at which point Grant, the most revered rock band manager since Brian Epstein oversaw the Beatles, had the Arrow shipped back to the UK alongside the band’s music gear.
The current owner of the Doctor’s Coupé – occasionally referred to as a Golfer’s Coupé in the US – cared for it on behalf of Grant, as well as a number of his other cars, and following Grant’s death in 1995, took on ownership of the car.
Although lesser-known on these shores, the Buffalo-based American manufacturer Pierce-Arrow is regarded as the maker of some of the finest luxury cars of the period, owned by many Hollywood stars and business tycoons.
About to appear in a new book on ‘Rockstars and their Cars’, the left hand drive Model B has a pre-sale estimate of £68,000-£78,000.
Serviced and MoT’d every year by experts NP Veteran Engineering, who transported the car to the south of France each summer, the Arrow has undergone a light restoration that included a new honeycomb radiator, cooling fan and brakes.
Finished in blue with black leather interior, white wall tyres and matching white hood, the auction coincides with the imminent release of the concert film Celebration Day, charting a 2007 UK concert by Led Zeppelin.