Swing low sweet chariot, you're next for auction

Selling Celebrity:There's a great market these days for cars that were formerly owned by a celebrity. A quick Google reveals that you can buy a 1963 Bentley formerly owned by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees for $225,000 (€154,728).

Never been crashed, apparently. Not surprising, as Barry never drove it particularly fast, so concerned was he with stayin' alive.

At least one of David Beckham's old motors is for sale at any given time. He has expensive - if a bit vulgar - taste in cars. If you don't mind the passenger seat being streaked with fake tan, you may get a bargain.

Few celeb-owned cars attract as much attention as the heavenly chariots of religious royalty like popes and saints. Maybe the new owners think these cars, having been touched by the hand of God, are uncrashable. And that white, rather than black, smoke comes out of the exhaust pipe.

You may remember some years ago that a 1999 VW Golf once owned by Pope Benedict was sold on eBay for a mad €188,000. (This is the same pope who travelled in an armour-plated popemobile on his visit to Turkey last year. To paraphrase the late, great, Bill Hicks, driving around encased in Kevlar and hardened steel is hardly a good advert for faith in action, is it?).

A few years previously, a Texan collector bought Pope John Paul II's 1975 Ford Escort GL. A snip at $690,000 (€474,398). Had it been previously owned by a prole such as you or I, you'd have got $690 for it. If you were lucky.

The latest heavenly chariot to go under the hammer is a 1959 Mercedes 180 that was briefly owned by Padre Pio. I wonder did it have a plastic Jesus on the dashboard? Or, even better, a faded sticker of himself on the window?

In case you are wondering what a supposedly impoverished Capuchin monk was doing swanning about in a Merc, it was donated to him by a wealthy family grateful to him for healing one of their number. (Not as implausible as it sounds. Did you never wonder how hospital consultants, on their Mickey Mouse wages, manage to fill their parking spaces with Aston Martins?)

Anyway, Padre Pio apparently drove it only once before giving it away. Can't blame him. Whatever about having to protect his image of being a frugal holy man, it must have been murder driving with the weeping sores on his hands. He may also have been concerned, despite his saintliness, that he may have some bother squeezing a Merc through the eye of a needle come Judgment Day.

The car fetched a whopping €240,000 at auction in Italy late last month. Which is a fairly hefty amount. But not quite the €1 million they'd reportedly been hoping for.

Padre Pio's stock has gone down in some sceptical quarters since allegations by Italian historian Sergio Luzzato that he had faked his stigmata, using carbolic acid rather than the intercession of a higher power to keep the wounds in his hands, sides and feet open.

The fact that the saint refused to have the gaping lesions treated by a doctor, resulting in him having what could best be described as a patchy service history, have given credence to Luzzatto's claims and increased suspicions Padre Pio may not have been following the manufacturer's manual to the letter.

There is a rumour, propagated by upset Padre Pioneers presumably, that Luzzato only wrote the book because he heard the Merc was coming up for sale and wanted to discredit the saint and get it for a knockdown price before publishing a retraction. Which sounds like the kind of shyster's trick a Capuchin with a pocket full of carbolic acid would pull. Were it true.

Personally, were I in the market for such things, I'd have steered clear of Padre Pio's Merc.

Whatever about the fact that, being covered in blood stains, it'd have cost a small fortune to valet, who in their right mind would spend that much money on a car with mysterious, unexplainable oil leaks?