Car Spotting in LA: Charles Agapiou Rolls Royce/Bentley

I'm almost done with the Los Angeles car spotting articles.  In these last two sections, we'll be looking at two dealers in Hollywood to give you a taste of the good life.  Going down Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, in search of an In-N-Out Burger (which I can report is just as good as everyone says it is!), I saw this Rolls Royce Corniche convertible parked curbside.  Hmm...

And a jet-black Bentley Turbo R behind it.  If there's a better name for a Bentley out there than Turbo R, I'm not aware of it.  I got out of the car and wandered up the sidewalk into the front lot of Charles Agapiou Ltd Bentley/Rolls Servicing and Sales.  A dealer and shop that specializes in old, "real" (that is to say, not a Volkswagen Phaeton) Bentleys and Rollers.  Ahh, Hollywood.  I love you.

Just the front of their lot is impressive.  Check this out: a Bentley Continental T.  This was the "sporting" variant of the Continental R, with a 4" shorter wheelbase, wider fenders, and a warmed-up version of the 6 ¾L Bentley turbocharged V8.  With 420 horsepower and an "are you serious?' 650 lb-ft of torque, this old-school pushrod V8 can push the 5,400lb Continental T to 60 in under 6 seconds.  This is a real Bentley, not some new-money rappermobile.

My kind of traffic jam is when your Continental T is blocked in by a 335i on one side, and a Bentley Arnage on the other.

Moving inside, there is a great selection of used cars to pick from.  Somewhat out of place, but welcome nonetheless was this late-model Ferrari 456M GTA.  (That's the one with the 4-speed automatic.)

Here's a 1964 Rolls Royce Convertible.  Based on the Silver Cloud III, this Mulliner-bodied convertible is one of the last separate-frame Rolls Royce vehicles made.

Just absolutely beautiful.

Some cars look smaller in real life, like the Veyron.  Some look bigger, like the Arnage.  Enormous.

An 80's Bentley convertible, from back when they were nearly indistinguishable from Rollers - besides the grille.  I don't think the wheels really suit, but this was the 80's, man!

Parked behind that was a Bentley Azure convertible by Mulliner.  This giant convertible was the drop-top variant of the Continental.

Bentley knows how to do interiors.  This is Classy with a capital C.  All that wood, leather, and hand-made everything, the car as an art form rather than a commodity.  No wonder they were so expensive.

The last thing I'll showcase here is something you're guaranteed to never see somewhere else.  Ever.

This is a 1967 Jaguar Pirana.  Excuse me, this is the 1967 Jaguar Pirana, a one-off concept car built for the 1967 London Motor Show.  The styling is by Marcello Gandini of Bertone, and it's built off of a 4.2L Jaguar E Type 2+2 chassis with a steel monocoque body.

It was actually designed with input from the Daily Telegraph.  Companies that provided a hand on the Pirana project included Smiths Industries (a special A/C system, instruments and stereo), Triplex (special laminated glass), Lucas Electronics (oh lord, the headlights), Connolly (the leather), and Britax.  If the styling looks like a Lamborghini Espada and a DeTomaso Mangusta had a baby, that's because Gandini penned the Espada as well, which came out a year after this concept.

It was originally painted silver (you can see the original brochure for the car here), but at some point acquired a green paint job and moved across the Atlantic Ocean.  The idea was to create the "ideal car," a 2+2 grand tourer that could streak down the highway for hours at a time.  It's not every day that you see a 44 year-old one off Bertone/Jaguar concept car!  That would be somewhat like finding the Jaguar/Bertone B99 concept in the back corner of a used car dealer in 2055.  Not likely.

Gallery below - check it out!