It was on this day in 1964 that shocking reports emerged that rockstar Ringo Starr had driven at 140mph on a recently-built stretch of the M6 motorway in his brand new Facel Vega II sports car.

Feeling he deserved a special car at the height of ‘Beatlemania’, the iconic drummer made national headlines when paying an undisclosed fee to purchase the 390 bhp, limited edition supercar - then marketed as "the world’s fastest four-seater” - directly from the stand at the Earls Court Motor Show.

Within days, a newspaper report claimed that Starr had reached terrifying speeds of 140 mph on the M6 when driving himself to a Beatles concert in Leicester, though police charges were never brought.

Starr and his wife Barbara Bach were to famously hit the headlines some years later in 1980 when they cheated death after crashing their luxury Mercedes just yards from the same accident blackspot where fellow pop star Marc Bolan was killed three years earlier.

Starr owned the Facel Vega II coupe for four years in all and, such was its fame, it sold for a record £337,000 when sold at a Bonhams auction in 2013.

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