While Vladimir Putin might disagree, it's no longer vogue to shoot Bengal tigers out the side of your Rolls-Royce.That's exactly what the owner of this 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom I did. The Indian maharaja of Kotah, Umed Singh II, outfitted this red-and-black-trimmed Rolls with searchlights, an elephant gun mounted on the rear bumper and a .45-caliber machine gun on a trailer, all so he could hunt the animals on his private grounds.
The vehicle was even fitted with taller tires and gear ratio spread for off-road duty, plus a gun rack for even more guns inside the cabin. A safe contained money for families of the king's guests who were killed on his hunting tours. And to top it off, the interior was trimmed in black crocodile.
Singh, who died in 1940, apparently wasn't happy killing tigers while riding elephants -- a common pastime in India -- and this 8-liter luxury car served to both entertain foreign leaders and dole out deadly force, which no doubt helped push the Bengal tiger into near-extinction. Fewer than 2,500 of the big cats remain in the wild, roughly 16 times as many as a century earlier.
The car is up for sale at the Barrett-Jackson Select Collection auction in Las Vegas starting today. It was originally up for auction by Bonhams in 2011 during the Pebble Beach Concours, where it was to hoped to fetch as much as $1.6 million. This time around, though, it may bring in only $500,000 to $1 million.
[Source: Barrett-Jackson via LA Times]
Source: MSN
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