Janis Joplin's Psychedelic 1964 Porsche 356C Cabriolet

A used Porsche and $500 worth of paint

In 1968 Janis Joplin saw a psychedelically painted car on the streets of San Francisco and loved it. With what the car's 2015 sale catalog called typical frugality, she bought a four-year-old Porsche 356 SC Cabriolet from a Beverly Hills used-car dealer for $3,500. It was gray.

She gave the car to Dave Richards, the jack-of-all-trades roadie for her band. Her brother Michael later recalled that 'she liked his work... she gave him $500 and not a whole lot of direction.'

Richards covered the gray in Candy Apple Red from nose to tail, then painted, inch by inch, what he called 'The History of the Universe.' Portraits of the members of Big Brother and the Holding Company run up the left side. Joplin's astrological sign, Capricorn, sits on the right rear quarter panel. The right door shows a green Northern California valley with a brown road winding beneath mountains, and the front hood carries 'The Eye of God,' watching over everything. No square inch of the body was left bare, and Richards sealed it all under clear coat.

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was born January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas, the eldest of three children; her younger siblings were Laura and Michael, who would later own the car. She found her voice in the records of blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

She rose to fame in June 1967 at the Monterey International Pop Festival as the singer of a little-known San Francisco band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. After two albums with the band she went solo, first with the Kozmic Blues Band and then with the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She played Woodstock in the early hours of Sunday, August 17, 1969.

Through all of it the Porsche was no stage prop. It was her everyday car, and she drove it herself, a familiar sight around the Bay Area with her hair blowing and feathered dresses in the wind, in the catalog's words. Her favorite drink was Southern Comfort, which the catalog also worked into its description of the paint.

The last ride

Joplin bought the car in 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, Richard Nixon was elected president, and Apollo 8 left for the Moon. By 1969 Big Brother had split, and by 1970 she was fronting Full Tilt Boogie.

In late August 1970 she checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood to record what became 'Pearl,' her best-selling album. On the evening of October 4, 1970, she parked her Porsche outside the hotel. She died that night of a heroin overdose, at 27.

'Pearl' was released in January 1971, three months after her death, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Stolen, rescued, repainted, restored

Even in Joplin's lifetime the car had adventures. It was stolen one night from a San Francisco street, and the thief, realizing he had taken the most recognizable car in town, started repainting it. The car was recovered quickly, and because Richards had protected his work in clear coat, the primer came off with little damage.

After her death, her attorney, Bob Gordon, pulled the car away from the press outside the hotel and garaged it. It went back to the Joplin family and was given to her manager, Albert Grossman, who took it to New York and lent it to friends and clients. In 1973 Michael and Laura Joplin retrieved it and took it to Michael's home in Ohio, where he rebuilt the original engine. The siblings shared the car for years and then had it restored in Denver to its original Dolphin Gray, painting over Richards's mural.

By the early 1990s the family decided the artwork belonged on the car. They commissioned Jana Mitchell and Amber Owen of the Denver Center Theater Company to re-create it from stacks of period photographs, brush stroke by brush stroke. In 1995 the car went on loan to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the same year Joplin was inducted. Apart from short trips, including a touring exhibition on psychedelic art and an appearance at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, it stayed on the museum's main floor for 20 years.

After a mechanical recommissioning that returned its numbers-matching drivetrain to running order, Michael and Laura Joplin offered the car at auction in New York on December 10, 2015, as lot 206. The published estimate was $400,000 to $600,000. After spirited bidding it sold for $1.76 million, including the 10 percent buyer's premium.

What makes this car the car

This is a 1964 Porsche 356 C 1600 SC Cabriolet with coachwork by Reutter, chassis 160371, engine 811908 and gearbox 77912, with a 95-horsepower, 1,582 cc air-cooled four-cylinder engine, a four-speed manual and four-wheel disc brakes. The 2015 catalog described the drivetrain as numbers-matching. Some popular accounts call it a 1965 car; the sale catalog and the auction report both give 1964.

The paint is not the paint Joplin saw. Richards's original mural was covered when the car was restored to gray, and the mural on it today is the 1990s re-creation. Autoweek noted after the sale that much of the car's physical history had been erased, and asked whether bidders were paying for Joplin's ownership or for reproduced art. The answer at $1.76 million, nearly three times the high estimate, was that the story carried the price.

Its legacy is that story. Bought cheap, painted for $500, driven daily, stolen and recovered, and parked outside the hotel on her last night, it was part of Joplin's daily life in a way few surviving objects are.

Timeline

1. Jan 19, 1943

   Janis Joplin is born in Port Arthur, Texas.

2. 1964

   The Porsche 356 C 1600 SC Cabriolet, chassis 160371, is built, with Reutter coachwork.

3. Jun 1967

   Joplin's breakthrough with Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival.

4. 1968

   Joplin buys the four-year-old gray Porsche in Beverly Hills for $3,500 and gives Dave Richards $500 to paint it.

5. Aug 17, 1969

   Joplin performs at Woodstock.

6. Oct 4, 1970

   Joplin parks the Porsche outside the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood and dies that night.

7. 1970

   Her attorney garages the car; it is later given to manager Albert Grossman, who takes it to New York.

8. 1973

   Michael and Laura Joplin retrieve the car; Michael rebuilds the engine in Ohio.

9. 1990

   Early 1990s: artists Jana Mitchell and Amber Owen re-create Richards's mural from period photographs.

10. 1995

    The car goes on loan to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland; Joplin is inducted the same year.

11. Dec 10, 2015

    Sold at auction in New York as lot 206 for $1.76 million, against a $400,000 to $600,000 estimate.

The world in 1968

• Apr 4, 1968

  Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead in Memphis.

• Jun 5, 1968

  Robert F. Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles; he dies the next day.

• Nov 5, 1968

  Richard Nixon is elected president.

• Dec 21, 1968

  Apollo 8 launches toward the Moon.

• Aug 17, 1969

  Woodstock: Joplin takes the stage around 2 a.m.

• Jun 28, 1970

  Joplin joins the Festival Express train tour across Canada with the Grateful Dead, The Band and others.

• Jan 1971

  'Pearl' is released and reaches No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Janis Joplin's Psychedelic 1964 Porsche 356C Cabriolet is number 50 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (50 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The whole psychedelic paint job was commissioned for $500 and 'not a whole lot of direction.'
• A thief who stole the car started repainting it after realizing it was the most recognizable car in San Francisco.
• Richards's clear coat saved the mural from the thief's primer, but not from the family's own restoration to gray in later years.
• The mural on the car today was re-created in the 1990s by two theater scenic artists working from photographs.
• The car sold for nearly three times its high estimate in 2015.
• Joplin's siblings owned the car for 42 years, from 1973 until the 2015 sale.