Rare Auction-Bought Crosley Convertible Stars In The Grand Tour

If you’ve been watching the latest ‘Eurocrash’ episode of The Grand Tour, you might have wondered: “Where did James May buy his Crosley?”. As he mentioned during the episode, it was purchased from “a well-known car auction website” with some ‘help’ from a bottle of wine.

After bidding on the 1940s American curio, James May told a national newspaper he has a new ‘cork out, phone off’ rule. For those who have been enjoying the Collecting Cars marketplace for the last couple of years, the Crosley CC Four Convertible as seen on The Grand Tour will be very familiar, as it sold one evening in March 2022 for a winning bid of €11,050.

Located in Finland at the time, the Crosley was offered following a lengthy restoration process, making it one of the best examples of its kind – despite its obvious shortcomings in power, stability and chassis dynamics.

As James May states during The Grand Tour’s ‘Eurocrash’ episode, the Crosley automotive division was conceived by an American industrialist, Powel Crosley Jr, who wanted to provide compact and affordable motor cars for the US market, in a way that was not dissimilar to that of the VW Beetle in Europe. In total, the Crosley company built more than 20,000 cars between 1939 and 1952, though of course only a fraction of that number remain intact today.

During the ‘Eurocrash’ episode, James May drives his Crosley CC Four Convertible bought at auction as part of a 1400-mile road trip across continental Europe, taking in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.

We won’t include any spoilers here; suffice to say, the little Crosley proves – perhaps unsurprisingly – charming and frustrating in equal measure across such a huge distance. Check out the full ‘Eurocrash’ episode of The Grand Tour to see what James makes of his auction-bought American oddity.

Photo credits: The Grand Tour / Amazon Prime