You just don’t expect Hollywood celebrity to turn up in the pages of carsales.com.au.

But Herbie is there at the moment. Listed under VW Beetle. One of seven Herbies in private hands around the world. Asking price, $150,000. He doesn’t come with a roadworthy certificate.

Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo was the first movie I ever saw. For a 4 ½ year old kid, it was a perfect big screen initiation. There was the unscrupulous Bruno Von Stickle and his ominous Porsche 917 (referred to in the film as a Lazer 917 GT Coupé), painted in the colours of a German flag. There was the helmeted Claude Gilbert, who we knew was bad because he had a dodgy French accent and never removed his helmet. And what I know about love, I learned from the romantic subplot between Herbie and a powder-blue 1976 Lancia Scorpion driven by a pretty strawberry blonde who takes 75 minutes to be convinced that some cars possess human personalities, and that when this happens, they should be left to fall in love with female cars of their choosing.  

And yes, eventually, (spoiler alert) Herbie gets to Monte Carlo (first) and gets the girl (car).

It was the best movie I’d ever seen, and remained so until I saw The Shaggy D.A. five weeks later.

And now Herbie is on carsales.com.au.

Is there nothing more glamorous? Does Variety magazine not have a classified section?

The advertisement says that this Herbie was also used in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) which fans remember as the Godfather III of the franchise. To this former seven year old, the script for Bananas (tagline ‘The Road To Rio Has Never Been Bumpier!’) starring a streetwise orphan named Paco, did a great disservice to Herbie, who should have sacked his agent and refused to wear his identifiable number 53. Instead, his career hit the skids, and he ended up in a junkyard with three other original Herbies. You’ll note that in the wording of the ad, the vendor brushes over this South American misadventure by saying that Herbie has been restored ‘back to Monte Carlo specs in every detail’ (my emphasis). People now want to pretend Bananas just never happened.

That said, Paco has signed the glovebox. My guess is that Herbie got to Disney World for the 40^th anniversary reunion, Paco had a pen out, Dean Jones was busy signing for the hard core fans, Don Knotts had already passed away, and nobody had the courage to say, ‘not such a great idea, Paco’.

Other points of interest in the ad: Herbie has a flapping bonnet, his headlights and indicators flash as well as ‘peering’ left and right, and most importantly, there’s an oil or water squirter next to the rear wheel in case you’re at the lights, and are suddenly set upon by one of the baddies from Brum.

The car also comes with its stunt chassis, rigged with four wheel steering for its twinkle-tyred performance in the bullfight scene in Bananas. You remember when Captain Blythe says, ‘I can’t believe this. Thirty years at sea, and I’m going to die in a bullring’? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. But somebody has it up on IMDB as the only memorable quote from the entire Bananas disaster.

Will Aussie Herbie sell? Is it worth $150,000? I’d buy it if I had the money, although I’d probably prefer to buy the kennel from The Shaggy D.A (his shagginess himself having passed away 31 years ago). Does anyone know if there is a classifieds for famous kennels? Surely that piece would move for under $1000?

Herbie is still for sale, despite being listed in February.

Is the asking price too high? Is Herbie worth a third of the Back to the Future DeLorien? An eighth of the little black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s? I wish Alexander from Sydney well with his piece of Hollywood history. And I am sad to hear it didn’t work out between Herbie and the Lancia Scorpion.

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