Grace's wheels; gracious to fatal.

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A year ago some of the inventory of Monaco’s only (public) motoring museum was auctioned: wheels from the late Prince Rainier III’s collection. It wasn’t something to be much excited about as the place was a hotchpotch of common classics and prestige cars without any context, or so I remembered it. Also: much to my disappointment there was nothing to commemorate Rainier’s ex-wife Grace Kelly. While she was the one I associated with cars rather then her husband. A blue Sunbeam Alpine in the first place, that she drove ever so graceful - pink scarf, white driving gloves, mystic smile - on the winding roads of what was to become her own Principality in later days. Tragically, she died on the very same winding road, too. It was in September 1982 that the actress turned princess drove her Rover 3500 S towards ‘Devil’s Curse’ on the CD37, lost control and crashed it. Why it happened? She suffered from a stroke, or so they say. Remarkably not much information about car and crash appears to be known. The Rover, dark in colour, is said to have been a 1971 model, which seems rather old for a princess. Why didn’t she drive one of the several other cars from Rainier’s collection? Did she like the P6 that much? Did the car play a role in the accident? And what happened to it? Questions, questions, questions… (Jeroen Booij)

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