John O’Quinn couldn’t take his cars with him
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
John O’Quinn, the high-profile Texas trial attorney who died Oct. 29 in Houston, loved cars. Loved 800 of them enough to own them. O’Quinn’s classic-car collection includes a Batmobile, an array of Duesenbergs, muscle cars and Ferraris, a Rolls-Royce once owned by Howard Hughes and a 1975 Ford Escort driven around by Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II.
The Houston Chronicle considered the extra-special used-car lot in a story earlier this week:
The value of the collection is hard to determine. It was once said to be worth more than $100 million, but that was more than 200 cars ago. Experts claim his collection has more cars with a price in excess of $1 million than any other, and that if the entire inventory was put up for auction it would depress the market by at least 40 percent.
And how did O’Quinn die? In a car accident, when he slammed his SUV into a tree after losing control on a rainy street. Neither he nor his passenger, Johnny Cutliff, were wearing seat belts.
To read the rest of the Houston Chronicle story, click here.
-- Claire Noland