How Alfred Hitchcock's car went missing, resurfaced and could be yours

In 1969, famed Hollywood movie director Alfred Hitchcock was photographed walking next to his wife in Paris with his beloved 1958 Bentley parked in the background — he was so fond of the car that he had it shipped from his home in California to Paris so he could drive it while visiting the city of lights.

That was the last public sighting of the car for nearly three decades. The car simply vanished.

"I am going to subscribe the disappearance to him being the master of suspense," said Harry Clark, founder of Classic Promenade, a high-end boutique collector car dealership in Phoenix, Arizona.

Hitchcock is known for directing suspenseful and thrilling movies such as his masterpiece, "Psycho," which featured cars throughout the plot, including a scene in which Janet Leigh's character buys a used car that would later become her coffin.

As it turned out, Hitchcock was a bit of a car guy — at least when it came to his 1958 Bentley S1 Continental sedan, which collectors know he owned for at least 11 years, likely longer. Hitchcock died in 1980 at age 80 and his wife, Alma Reville, died two years later at age 82. Even after both deaths, there was no record of where the car went until 1997.

"It’s highly unusual. I handle more vintage Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars than anybody else in North America and I only remember one other car that had that long of a void in its history and in the records," Clark said. "What it means is whoever had it next, never went to a Rolls-Royce or Bentley dealer and were never part of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley community, which is very rare. Out of 400 cars, I’ve only seen one other that had that kind of void in its history.”

Clark has his theory on what happened to the car, so more on that later. But for now, Hitchcock's car — which is currently owned by Timothy Tranni, an art collector in Massachusetts — will be auctioned through Classic Promenade starting Nov. 10 through Nov. 18 at www.bringatrailer.com. Clark said Tranni hopes to get "a few hundred thousand dollars" for the car which has 39,600 miles it.

Classic Promenade auctioned off another famous Hollywood car in 2020: The yellow Rolls-Royce that Robert Redford drove in the 1974 movie, "The Great Gatsby." That car fetched close to $1 million at auction, Clark said.

Hitchcock's purchase of the car

A Hitchcock movie typically put the audience in the position of knowing more than the characters did — a formula guaranteed to create intense suspense. Also, his film classics — such as "North by Northwest," "Psycho," "Rear Window," and "The Birds" — often placed regular people in bizarre and dangerous situations.

His career started in the 1920s in England, it hit a high in 1941 when his film, "Rebecca," won an Oscar for best picture, but it was 1951 through 1963 when Hitchcock was in his Golden Decade. That was the era when he'd mastered the art of suspense and directed some of his masterpieces. Also, in 1955, he launched the hit television anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," which made his silhouette and deadpan voice globally recognized.

"Steve McQueen and all the top stars … wanted to be on that show," Clark said of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." "Not only that, but he had all of these hit movies. He was nominated for five Academy Awards."

And, it was in the midst of his Golden Decade when Hitchcock purchased his 1958 Bentley S1 Continental, with the rare "Flying Spur" six-light saloon body built by H.J. Mulliner.

Hitchcock, known for making background cameos in all of his movies, even gave his car a cameo of sorts. At the time of the car's delivery, Hitchcock was working on the sixth season of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and Clark said it is said that Cash Bentley, a central character of the episode “O Youth and Beauty” was a wink and a nod to this Bentley vehicle.

A unique car for a unique person

Clark shared the car's order records with the Detroit Free Press. They show that Hitchcock ordered the hand-built vehicle on Jan. 27, 1958, when he had just wrapped up his film "The Wrong Man."

He got the invoice and paid the $17,500 for it on May 20, 1958, about a week before his highly acclaimed film "Vertigo," starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, would open in theaters.

In today's dollars, Clark said a similar vehicle would cost about $600,000. Put another way, that $17,500 exceeded the median cost of an American home by more than 40% at the time, Clark said.

Hitchcock received the vehicle at his California home on Aug. 27, 1958, just as he was heading into making another classic, "North by Northwest," starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. He would make "Psycho" in 1960.

Before you start to think this was just another beautiful car bought by a successful Hollywood type, Clark said, not so.

"Hitchcock was British. So he had a European sophistication about cars and this particular car he ordered was hand-built, highly sculpted and far more beautiful than a normal Bentley," Clark said. "A normal Bentley was not hand-built, they were still a very high-end cars, but this was a totally different level."

No chauffer, Hitchcock drove it

According to Bentley’s website, from 1955 to 1959, the automaker made just 217 Bentley S1 Continentals with bodies by H.J. Mulliner. Of those, there are only 16 that were built in the “six light” Flying Spur design with left-hand drive, Clark said. This car is one of those 16 rarities.

Clark said it is an all-aluminum bodied car in which Bentely produced the chassis with the engine and then sent it to the coach builder, H.J. Mulliner, to make the body and interior.

"It wasn’t a normal Bentley chassis," Clark said. "This was a Continental — which was high-performance so they upgraded the engine to make it a little more powerful and changed the gearing to tour the continent."

With a straight-six, 4.9-liter engine and a four-speed automatic transmission that is a slightly modified General Motors hydromatic transmission, Clark said, the car was built to travel across Europe nonstop at 100 mph.

The car had power steering, power brakes, an electric antenna and air conditioning, all of which were highly unusual features in 1958. Clark estimates one out of 20 cars from Rolls-Royce and Bentley would have had air conditioning back then. But what made the car particularly interesing is that it was not a limousine.

"This is more sporty," Clark said. "In a normal Rolls or Bentley the front seats would be a bench seat. This has bucket seats that are more sporting and a small bench seat for rear passengers. It is not designed to be chauffer driven; it is designed to be owner driven and from what I can see, (Hitchcock) drove it. I don’t see any evidence of him having a driver; that’s not say he didn’t. But even when he’s in Paris with the car, there was no driver.”

A full description of the car and its specs can be found on www.classicpromenade.com, but the car's exterior, which was originally a silver gray, is now a deep rich green called Velvet Green. It seats four people comfortably in a tan-colored interior that feels like a luxurious club more than a car.

“It’s beautiful, it’s like sitting in a club or a lounge," Clark said. "It’s Connolly leather. It is basically leather for Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari has used it … it’s very soft and supple."

The carpet is Wilton wool, which is a luxurious woven floor covering, and there is "magnificent" burl Walnut throughout the veneer. Burl means there are swirls in the walnut. The interior of the car has been restored, Clark said, but the same materials used originally were used in the restoration. The walnut is the original, but was refinished.

“It all makes it feel like you’re sitting in your library at home or a private club," Clark said.

As for driving it, Clark said, “it’s not quick by today’s standards. So zero to 60 is maybe 10 seconds. The typical minivan today could out-accelerate it. But the big thing was it was designed to tour at 100 mph all day long. That’s a big deal for 1958. It's smooth riding, powerful, relative for the time, and quiet. It’s lovely and it’s very easy to drive, it’s no different than driving a modern car.”

The disappearance and a dead car

It's hard to say if Hitchcock was truely a car guy or just liked this car, Clark said.

There photos of Hitchcock with chauffer-driven Cadillac cars at awards ceremonies and at his daughter’s wedding. There was a photo of Hitchcock driving a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 190-SL out of the studio once, but “that’s the only photo of him driving a car and I’ve been through thousands of photos," Clark said. "He really controlled his photos to the studios. We don’t know … if he owned that Mercedes or not. It could have been the studio's."

But he did own the Bentley and Clark said Hitchcock obviously loved the car and had it many years.

"I suspect that’s why it disappeared," Clark said. "He probably kept it through his life and his wife probably kept it and then it didn’t leave their estate until the late 1980s or early 1990s, that’s my guess.”

Clark believes the car was in the Hitchcock's estate, sitting in a garage as "a dead car," meaning it wasn't being driven for a good 10 to 15 years. The car came back on the record books in 1997 when Gerard Martel of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, bought it. He owned it until 2006 when Dr. Gail Reingold of Los Angeles bought it and restored it that year.

Reingold owned the car until 2024 when Clark's client bought the Bentley at RM Auction and sent the car immediately to Clark to resell it. That's when Timothy Tranni bought it for just over $300,000 at Bring a Trailer auction in 2024.

So who should own it next? Clark said it should also be a person who appreciates beauty and rareness.

"A true collector whether, it’s of art or architecture, but someone who appreciates beauty and someone who appreciates Hollywood and specifically Alfred Hitchcock and his significance," Clark said. "His significance worldwide was enormous.”

And maybe someone who also appreciates a little suspense and mystery of not knowing just where the car went for three decades.

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Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer at USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.