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Jay Leno Drives John Frankenheimer's 1965 Rolls-Royce, Enjoys the Grey Poupon

Jay Leno has been featuring a lot of museum cars on his online series recently. This time around, he showcases a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III he borrowed from the Petersen Automotive Museum. But it's not any regular 1960s Rolls; this massive British rig used to belong to film and television director John Frankenheimer.
Jay Leno takes a look at the 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III 1 photo
Photo: Jay Leno's Garage/YouTube
Known for movies such as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Ronin," Frankenheimer purchased the Rolls-Royce brand-new for his wife, and it has remained in the family long after his death in 2002. His wife eventually donated the luxury car to the Petersen Museum.

Frankenheimer used to drive this car to work, so it's believed that almost every famous actor featured in his movies eventually took a ride in it. It's also the car that on June 6, 1968, was parked at the Ambassador hotel waiting for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. He was assassinated before he got there.

Despite being used for almost four decades, the two-tone Silver Cloud shows only 27,000 miles on the odometer—a testament to the fact that you don't get a lot of free time as a film director.

As always, Leno spends a lot of time talking about the history and features of this car. Apparently, he's very familiar with the Silver Cloud III as he used to work for a shop that got a lot of them back in the day. He obviously enjoys telling stories about it, and he seems to love the classy interior.

He describes sitting in the front seat as being in a library and says that he feels like eating Grey Poupon mustard out of the jar when sitting in the back seat. If you're too young to know what this is all about, Grey Poupon is a brand of whole-grain mustard that became popular in the United States in the late 1970s. The brand released a few commercials featuring rich people riding in Rolls-Royce limousines while eating mustard in the early 1990s.

Rolls-Royce introduced the Silver Cloud III in 1963 and kept it into production until 1966. It was offered with a 6.2-liter V8 engine rated at 220 horsepower and a hydramatic transmission that Rolls-Royce licensed from General Motors. The Silver Cloud III was later replaced by the Silver Shadow. Check out Leno's review of the car below; I've also included a few Grey Poupon commercials featuring Rolls-Royce vehicles in there too.

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About the author: Ciprian Florea
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Ask Ciprian about cars and he'll reveal an obsession with classics and an annoyance with modern design cues. Read his articles and you'll understand why his ideal SUV is the 1969 Chevrolet K5 Blazer.
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