The late Princess Diana’s Ford Escort RS Turbo Series 1 sold for an astounding 724,500 pounds ($851,070) at an auction on Saturday at Britain’s Silverstone race track.
The vehicle, which has 24,961 miles on the odometer, is referred to as the Princess of Wales’ final Ford Escort on the Silverstone website. Between 1985 and 1988, the Princess of Wales owned it.
The princess put 6,800 miles on the automobile before returning it to Ford, and she was frequently spotted driving it about Chelsea and Kensington. According to the Silverstone website, the automobile had several owners after the return before returning to Ford.
The website makes no mention of the auction winner.
The RS Turbo Series 1 was usually made in white but the royal family police guard asked for Diana’s to be painted black “for discretion,” the auctioneers said.
Also read: Princess Diana’s one-of-a-kind Ford Escort goes up for auction
For the princess to drive the vehicle was “a very brave choice,” Arwel Richards, classic car specialist at Silverstone Auctions, told Reuters earlier this week.
Next week marks 25 years since Diana died, aged 36, when a limousine in which she was a passenger crashed in a Paris tunnel as it sped away from paparazzi giving chase on motorbikes.
($1 = 0.8513 pounds)
