When money meets motoring, things get weird

Most of us buy a car because it fits the family, the driveway and the budget. Give someone a stadium tour, a Premier League contract or a hereditary title, and those constraints disappear entirely. What follows is often magnificent, occasionally baffling, and always entertaining.

Here are some of the oddest celebrity garages ever assembled.

The rock stars

John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce

In 1965 Lennon bought a Rolls-Royce Phantom V in respectable black. Two years later he had it repainted in swirling yellow floral patterns by a Surrey coachbuilder, complete with a Romany-inspired scroll design. The Rolls-Royce establishment was reportedly horrified. One elderly woman allegedly attacked it with an umbrella in London, shouting that he had no right to do that to a Rolls. The car later sold at auction for millions and sits in a Canadian museum.

Keith Moon's questionable driving career

The Who's drummer owned a Rolls, a Ferrari Dino and a milk float. Yes, a milk float. He also bought a Lincoln Continental that he reportedly parked in unusual places. The legendary story about driving a Rolls into a swimming pool has been denied, confirmed and re-denied so many times that it has become motoring folklore in its own right.

Nick Mason's actual museum

Pink Floyd's drummer is the exception: a genuinely serious collector. His collection includes a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO bought in the seventies for a figure that would now barely cover the insurance, plus Bugattis, a Maserati Birdcage and an Aston Martin Ulster. He races them rather than hiding them under covers, which earns him considerable respect among enthusiasts.

The footballers

Footballer taste has evolved. In the 1970s, a top player drove a Jaguar XJ6 or a Ford Capri. By the 2000s the car park at any Premier League training ground looked like a Middle Eastern supercar dealership.

Some standouts over the years have included chrome-wrapped Range Rovers, matte-finished Lamborghinis in colours not found in nature, and Bugattis used for the fifteen-minute commute to training. One notable collection reportedly includes a Bugatti Veyron, several Rolls-Royces and a Ford Fiesta kept purely for sentimental reasons, which is arguably the most relatable supercar collection detail ever recorded.

There is also a long tradition of players buying the exact same model as their teammate in a different colour, which turns club car parks into accidental colour charts.

The royals

British royalty has produced some genuinely unusual vehicular choices.

The late Queen was a trained mechanic and wartime driver who famously drove her own Land Rover Defenders around Balmoral well into her nineties, and never held a driving licence because she did not need one. Her personal Defender was modified with a higher seat so she could see over hedgerows.

Prince Philip was the real oddity. He commissioned a Land Rover hearse, painted in military green, to carry his own coffin, and spent years designing it. He also drove an electric taxi around London long before electric cars were fashionable, and owned a curious Alpine-built city car.

Further afield, the Sultan of Brunei's collection remains the stuff of legend: thousands of vehicles including one-off Ferraris, bespoke Bentleys and estate cars built by Pininfarina that exist in single figures worldwide. A sizeable portion is believed to have quietly deteriorated in storage, which is enough to make any enthusiast wince.

The genuinely bizarre

 - A comedian who bought an amphibious car and used it to cross a river for a bet.

- A rapper with a fleet colour-matched to his trainers.

- A Hollywood star who owns a hovercraft alongside his Ferraris.

- A TV presenter with a collection of Soviet-era military vehicles, including a tank once used for legally crushing a rival's car.

The sad ending nobody mentions

Here is the unglamorous truth: plenty of celebrity cars eventually meet the same fate as everyone else's. Cars that sit unused for twenty years develop seized engines, perished seals and rotten sills. Without provenance paperwork, an exotic that has been left outdoors becomes a very expensive restoration project that nobody wants to fund.

Some end up at auction. Some end up in museums. And some end up in exactly the same place as the average family hatchback with a failed MOT: at a licensed recycler, where the metal gets a second life in something new.

If your own motor has reached that stage, it may not have a famous former owner, but the process is the same. Enter your registration for an instant scrap car quote and find out what it is worth today, or read our guide on how to scrap your car for the paperwork side of things.

No umbrella-wielding pensioners required.