A piece of history

eBay may be selling Fergie's Hummer, but the Volo Auto Museum, located in Volo, has one-upped the online auction giant.

Greg Grams, the museum's owner and an ardent car collector, recently acquired the 1996 black Rolls Royce Silver Spur the late Princess of Wales rode in while visiting Chicago and Evanston to raise money for cancer research.

Save for 18,000 miles on the odometer, the specially ordered car is just as the princess left it in 1996.

Complete with Diana's $150 bottle of Pol Roger French champagne resting on the right-rear passenger's side inlaid picnic table. Luxury at its zenith, topped by a gleaming metal grille that puts rapper Paul Wall's to shame.

Don't get too excited though. Here's the rub: Unlike some of the museum's 300 other cars -- a collection that includes vintage, TV, movie and muscle cars, as well as rare military vehicles -- this baby ain't for sale. It's for viewing pleasure only. After Christmas, the 6,400-pound beauty will join Grams' private collection, only to return for special occasions.

If you can believe it, the car has changed hands only once in its 11 years. After Diana's three-day visit, Vernon Smith, a retired Roll Royce dealer who had handpicked the car, sold it to a wealthy southern lady in Las Vegas. Also a huge Princess Diana fan, she'd have "her chauffeur pull it out of the garage even if she wasn't going anywhere," says Smith, a Lake Bluff resident.

Now aiming to pare down her own high-maintenance lifestyle, she sold it back to Smith earlier this year, a month before the 10th anniversary of Diana's death.

Aside from arranging transportation for Princess Diana and several other Royal Family visits to play up the car's British roots, Smith has sold cars to Louis Farrakhan, Mr. T and the Rolling Stones. Smith was headed to international auction with the car and when Grams found out, he convinced Smith to let him buy it.

The car's significance lay in the fact that Diana's Midwest trip marked one of her last in North America, shortly before her untimely death 14 months later on Aug. 31, 1997. "This car cannot leave here. It's Diana's legacy to Chicago and Illinois," Smith remembered Grams saying.

"Had it gone to the auction, it could have gone anywhere in the world," Grams said.

Selling the car at auction would've probably netted Smith double. But being more devout Englishmen than profiteer, Smith, who lent to the display letters from Diana's personal secretary and one from Diana herself thanking him for making her trip, has refused to cash in on the princess' death. "I don't want to put a monetary value on Diana," he declares.

Neither Smith nor Grams will divulge what Grams paid for the Rolls, even though Volo Auto Museum, now celebrating its 47th year in business, sits on 30 acres blanketed with several million dollars in cars. If you ask, Smith will only reply that he sold it for "fair market value based on the value of a Rolls Royce of that vintage." In 1996, when it was new, the car cost $185,000.

Princess Diana's Rolls is perhaps the single-most exclusive car, although certainly not the most famous, among the museum's collection. The Batmobile, Grandpa Munster's Dragula, Herbie the Love Bug and the "Miami Vice" Ferrari all share its regal space.

"I like a car that's more expensive than my house," jokes Daniel McAleer, the man responsible for chauffeuring the princess.

Then the deputy chief of police at Northwestern University, which hosted Diana's visit, McAleer was chosen to replace Smith, who'd gone to England to attend to business at the Roll Royce headquarters.

Initially intimidated by the car's gravitas until Smith took him for a test drive, McAleer recalled, "It's unlike anything I've driven before or since."

If you go

What: Rolls Royce and Princess Diana display

Where: Volo Auto Museum, 27582 W. Volo Village Road, Volo

When: Open daily, year-round

For information: Visit www.volocars.com or call (815) 385-3644