Drummer Kenney Jones rose to fame in the late 1960s in the bands Small Faces and then Faces, before replacing Keith Moon in The Who in 1978. He went on to form The Law in the 1990s and later, The Jones Gang.
“I’ve had fun out of all of my cars over the years, but if someone wanted to give them back to me, I’d like all of them back, please! If I had to pick, however, there are two that got away. One is a 1974 Ferrari Dino Spyder. I bought that in ’74 for about six thousand quid. It was red; all Ferraris should be red.
I was in Faces at the time, and one day when we were recording at Olympic studios in London, [band-mate] Ronnie Lane said I’m gonna nip back [home] and get my acoustic guitar. When he came [back] with the acoustic guitar he said ‘Oh Kenney’, he said, ‘I just reversed over your Ferrari in my Land Rover with a tow bar on the back’. I thought he was joking, so I went downstairs and discovered he’d driven straight over the front of it. Everyone was laughing at me and joking about it, but it was an accident so I didn’t make him pay for it. He’s one of my dearest friends.
I won’t tell you all of what I did in that car for all the tea in China, but I had a great time! It looked like it belonged on a race track rather than a road, so driving it round Richmond Park, where I lived before they had speed limits, was great.
When Rod Stewart bought a Lamborghini, we were going backwards and forwards saying mine’s faster than yours, no mine’s faster than yours, so we decided to solve the problem. We were rehearsing at Shepperton Studios, and there’s a nice long road outside so our roadies said Come on we’ll start you two off! When the flag went up, we raced as fast as we could until we ran out of road. I won, but I did burn my clutch out. Rod just laughed.
All Ferraris have that beautiful tone. Mine had a really nice roar, so I never switched the radio on because I loved listening to that sound.
The Spyder was a fantastic car, but I was forever fiddling with the carburettors, making it go out of tune, or taking it back and forth to Maranello’s, a Ferrari specialist in Egham in Surrey, because it was backfiring. The gears crunched too. I never got the gearbox fixed so had to double declutch a lot.
I drove it all the way to Cornwall once, with a very worried grin on my face, because the roads are narrow when you get to St Ives. The only place to park it was literally on the beach, so I had to leave it there overnight. It was a very sleepless night.
The only thing I didn’t like about it was that the roof came off and it kept leaking, but I think after about three or four years, the novelty wore off. When I sold it, I wouldn’t have got much more than I paid for it.
A few years back, we had a big Ferrari day at my local polo club and my Dino turned up – I could believe it! I sat inside and all these memories started flooding back. I recently saw it again for sale for 295 thousand quid. I want it back for the same price I bought it!
With cars, I go from one extreme to the other, so the second one that got away is a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Continental. It was a Royal Blue Mulliner Park Ward drophead coupe. It belonged to actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr before me and I bought it off a friend of mine called Eddie Mallett, who was his chauffeur. I think this was 1982, and I paid around 30 thousand quid.
I was about 33, and at the time, everything was happening. I was in The Who, we were doing tours, (and god knows what else), and I’d just moved into a new house in Surrey. I loved driving it around locally on the country lanes, but it was one of those cars you wouldn’t drive every day, it was one that you got out at the weekend and have fun with it. I didn’t like taking it into London, because I was frightened of it getting scratched or bumped. Past experience had proven my point!
It wasn’t the rarity of the Rolls-Royce that attracted me [79 total produced]. I just fell in love with the look of it. It was a beautiful car, but the thing was, I’m not very tall, so every time I went to dip the headlights I had to slide down the seat, because the switch was so far down in the footwell. Doulgas Fairbanks Jr was about 6ft-6in, so he probably didn’t have that problem.
I spent a fortune getting it restored, which took about six months. The sills below the door had rusted away, which was common for this kind of car, and I had to get a new roof. I don’t know why I sold it – it was just time to move on. I sold it to a guy called Vangelis, [Evangelos Papathanassiou] a star well-known for his music. I think I got about 48 thousand quid.
There was a rumour that he smashed it up, but five years ago someone called me up and said I’ve got your old car. It was being stored in Ockley, in Surrey, just down the road from where I live. He said, ‘you wanna have a drive’? And I said yeah, so we met at the polo club and I drove it. When I went to stop, there was hardly any response in the brakes; it hadn’t been driven in years.
All the memories of where I’d been came flooding back and I checked to see if the little bar underneath a pull-out table in the front was still there. It was, and there were a few little glasses and some booze in it. The guy said, I’m selling it for 250 thousand quid. I said, well don’t look at me, I’ve had my fun out of it! I wish I’d have kept the bloody thing now!
So that’s the two that got away. They are extremes: One is a car for a fun young kid, and the other is more of a statesman’s car. I’m not as wild as I used to be, I’m more of a cruiser. I’ve slowed right down. Now I’ve got a VW Touran that I love to bits. It works and it doesn’t cause me any problems.
I love the excitement of buying, using, and appreciating a car, then moving on to the next one. So even if I only had them for five minutes, at least I had lots of fun. Still, I’d have them all back if I could.”
I’m not a Ferrari fan but an interesting story. Think I would rather have that LandRover !