George Harrison’s Porsche 928 S was almost used for spare parts – Jalopnik

Celebrity cars are always an interesting corner of the automotive world. When put up for sale, they can often cause quite a stir, leading to surprising auction results, much like Kurt Cobain’s 1965 Dodge Dart did, which sold for $375,000 a few years ago. While such cars are usually well documented, their history sometimes requires some digging, and that’s exactly what happened in the case of George Harrison’s 1980 Porsche 928 S. The Beatle owned the car for the first four years of his life, logging some 11,000 miles. But later this Porsche was no more special than other 928s.

It wasn’t until 2003, when Raj Sedha bought the car at auction, that the true history of the 928 revealed itself. It was actually his wife who checked the previous owner’s records and noticed the Harrison connection. In reality, Raj had actually purchased the 928 as a parts car, but upon learning its history, a top-notch restoration was carried out. (Unfortunately, it wasn’t recorded, so it couldn’t make it into the list of your favorite restoration videos on YouTube.)

In total, the restoration set Raj back some $125,000 – a significant expense for any Porsche, let alone the oft-overlooked 928 – but not everything changed. While the exterior was thoroughly overhauled and bare metal repainted, the interior was preserved. Replace everything, and it’s no longer George Harrison’s 928, right?

The S model was added to the 928 family in model year 1980, so George Harrison was one of the first to get behind the wheel of this version. S variants enjoyed numerous upgrades beyond the standard 928 specification, including black spoilers, an additional 200 cc of engine capacity (which helped increase power from 240 to 300 hp) and a few other, smaller cosmetic tweaks.

In stylish fashion, Harrison opted for a black-on-black combination for his 928 S. Instead of storing it in a locked garage and relying on drivers, he used it very regularly, adding 11,000 miles during his tenure. In the following years, another 108,000 would be added, although those kilometers would be driven on a different engine block.

Such a thorough restoration will always provide surprises. In the case of this 928, one of the more pleasant surprises was the discovery of a 1980 cassette of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a piece of music known to be a favorite of Harrison. Details like these only add to the charm of celebrity cars, and the newest owner – who paid $100,820 at RM Sotheby’s 2022 Monterey auction – has the chance to tune in for a full, immersive Harrison experience. That’s a hefty sum for a 928, but it’s significantly cheaper than the cost of restoration, and certainly less than what some of Harrison’s other cars would cost now. His collection even includes a McLaren F1 that could potentially rival the cost of the ‘one of one’ F1 that was put up for auction a few years ago.