Few vintage cars can match the Hollywood history of the 1927 Rolls-Royce Phantom 1 Playboy Roadster that Coys is offering in its auction at Bleinheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill. At one point silent screen star Tom Mix owned the car, which went into the Warner Brother’s movie fleet after his death. Over the next 30 years, it was seen in such films as “Giant,” “The FBI Story,” and “Inside Daisy Glover,” with Robert Redford behind the wheel. At the July 14th auction, it’s expected to sell for $171,000-$202,000.For most of the past 40 years, the Rolls has had just two owners, one of them drummer Hal Blaine. Vestiges of its Hollywood history remain, like the wooden blocks fitted to the car’s pedals so that the height-challenged Mr. Mix, an imposing cowboy star on the screen, could reach them. As it happened, he died in a 1940 car accident in another of his automobiles, an L29 Cord.
