If you ever watched “Moonwalker,” you remember the moment. It’s Michael Jackson’s 1988 movie, part concert film and part wild fantasy, and right in the middle of it he does something no pop star had done before. During the “Smooth Criminal” stretch, with the bad guys closing in, Michael doesn’t run. He changes into a sleek silver sports car and speeds off.
For years fans wondered if that car was ever a real thing you could walk up to and touch. It was. Sort of.
The filmmakers built three prop bodies for the scene, and none of them could drive. They were shells, styled after a famous 1970 concept car called the Lancia Stratos Zero, the kind of low wedge-shaped machine that looks like it rolled straight out of a dream.
Then a British car designer named Andy Saunders got hold of one back in 2003. He didn’t want a shell just sitting in a garage. He put it on the running parts of a little Fiat sports car, made the whole thing road legal, and finished it in bright metallic orange in 2006. A movie prop that couldn’t move an inch became a car you could start up and actually drive.
Here’s the clip that started it all, the scene where Michael turns into the car.
The “Moonwalker” scene where Michael becomes the silver car
Decades on, the car ended up with an owner in Michigan, who put it up for sale on Bring a Trailer, the online auction site car people love to browse. The listing didn’t dress it up as anything it wasn’t. It “began its life as one of three static-use props built for use in pop star Michael Jackson’s 1988 anthology film Moonwalker.” A “Moonwalker” Blu-ray even came along with it.
Now, about the money.
Four days before the auction closed, the top bid was sitting at $22,000. A fair number for an unusual custom car, nothing jaw-dropping. Most folks probably figured that was about where it would finish.
It didn’t.
When the sale ended on Monday, October 19, 2026, the final winning bid was $82,000. That’s almost four times the figure from just four days earlier. In those last days the bidding caught fire, and people who wanted a piece of Michael Jackson movie history kept driving it higher and higher.
One thing worth saying plainly. This isn’t Michael’s personal car, and he never owned it or drove it. It’s one of the movie’s prop car bodies, rebuilt years later by someone who loved the craft. But it’s about the closest thing in the world to that unforgettable scene, and that’s exactly why the price climbed the way it did.
Watch the moment again and the appeal makes sense. A man turns into a car. Almost forty years later, folks are still paying real money to own a little piece of it.