Originally Posted by Pooka

There is such a V-grilled Mercedes used in the Marx Brothers film 'A Night in Casablanca' when they are driving down a runway. If you freeze frame it during a sweeping turn you can see where someone compounded the German Eagle off the side of the door.

A bit more about the storage facility.... Places like this can only exist where there is an overabundance of big money types that can afford this. But oddly enough you do get what you pay for.

The cars are kept in a climate controlled building where the temp and humidity are controlled to prevent any type of decay. Engines are turned over every few days by hand to keep valve springs from losing their strength. Every ten days the cars are started and run for 15 minutes, and they are waxed with the finest wax you can buy and dusted only with feather dusters. Wiping off dust can leave a scratch.

There was once (40 years ago) one of these in Grand Prairie, Texas, in about the 2200 block of West Main. I used to hang out there a bit and helped to maintain someone's Kaiser Darrin. The cost was high then, too, but you got what you paid for.

And when you contact your insurance agent about insuring your home where you are keeping a $500,000 car you can expect your homeowners rates to jump a bit. Insurance is included in the storage cost, so it really boils down to you are getting all of the service for free.

I looked into starting one of these myself back then, but no one was interested in what I was pitching. I finally was informed that no bank in Dallas would ever loan me money for such a venture since the bigger banks all had their own parking garages and they offered storage service.

And sure enough, you could go to the parking garage of most large banks and under clear plastic tarps would be all sorts of cars but mostly Royces. The owners kept them there until they needed them for business, and the cost of parking them there was cheaper than the additional insurance they would have to cough up to keep them at home.