No One Wants To Buy The Car Tupac Was Killed In
A Porsche 550, Chevy Suburban, a 1934 Ford V8. All these cars have one thing in common: famous people died in them. While people with more money than sense usually buy these things for whatever historic value they think they have, you have to admit it’s pretty weird [also read: cringe, disgusting, dark] to want to own a vehicle that someone famous died in. Which makes one wonder why a dealer in Las Vegas is still trying to sell the BMW 7 Series rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in.
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You can still see where the bullet holes were repaired on this thing.Image: Celebrity Cars Las Vegas
Tupac died in late 1996 on the Las Vegas Strip in what was essentially a drive by shooting. The car he was in was a 1996 BMW 750iL, owned by his record label, Death Row Records. While going into detail of what happened and who could have done it is its own separate rabbit hole, the car itself was the subject of many investigations over the years, because that’s what happens when people die in or around places.
After authorities were done with it, the BMW ended up as sort of a museum piece through the years, changing hands between collectors trying to make a nice chunk of change off the murder. People like one Gary Zimet, owner of Moments in Time who briefly owned the 7 Series a few years back (who also owned the aforementioned Suburban that rapper Biggie Smalls was shot in). He wanted $1.5 million for it.
Image: Celebrity Cars Las Vegas
Today, the 7 Series sits for sale at a Las Vegas dealership called Celebrity Cars, where the dealer is currently asking an eye-watering price $1,750,000 for it. Mind you, despite the dark history behind this thing, it’s not some mint condition, limited run special edition BMW. It’s a typical 1990s E38 7 Series with aftermarket rims. The CarFax report for the car shows that it’s not only changed hands a few times over the last 25 years, but it was regularly driven too.
The original owner was Death Row Records who purchased it brand new; an odometer reading from mid-June 1996 shows just 65 miles. After July 1996 there’s a gap, presumably because of everything that was going on concerning the investigation of the shooting. A record doesn’t appear for the car again until the summer of 1999. It was then driven and serviced regularly from then until late 2002 — presumably (and also weirdly) it was still owned and driven by people associated with Death Row Records.
Image: Celebrity Cars Las Vegas
Owner two put over 23,000 miles on it and owned it for just two years, selling it in 2004. Owner three only had it for a month in 2005. The fourth owner had it the longest, from 2005-2017 when it was sold. From 2017, it’s been in the hands of Celebrity Cars in Vegas, though CarFax notes that there is a mileage inconsistency. Whatever that inconsistency is, just know this thing has over 120,000 miles on it, so it wasn’t a museum piece. It also has a clean title with no accidents, which is good I suppose.
But at the end of the day, this is a vehicle someone lost their life in. Unless you go into this thing blind without knowing its history (which probably isn’t possible given the price that this thing is commanding), at best this should be a $2,500 car that’s driven and treated as such, not flipped by people briefly owning it for bragging rights. If you have $2 million burning a hole in your pocket, please don’t go and enable this continuous cycle of buying and selling the car Tupac was killed in.
