Earlier this week, a gossip columnist from tabloid rag the New York Post ran a story about confronting Sharon Stone about her benevolence in donating “seven cars to charity auctions over 21 years.” An odd angle to take, but let’s go with it. The impetus for the piece was the sale of her most recent vehicle to go under the hammer, a 1958 Chevrolet Apache truck Stone gifted to the Drever Family Foundation last week. That got the scribe wondering where all the sheet metal was coming from. The columnist said, “There seems to be an assembly line for vintage vehicles being auctioned off as Sharon Stone’s car.”
When approached by the Post, Stone bristled, snapping that she had the titles to all those cars in her collection. Some of the steel Stone’s donated from that collection includes a 1974 Corvette which sold for 200,000 euros before the 2008 Monaco Grand Prix, a 1972 Ford LTD (which fetched a paltry $15,000 at a 2009 alcohol and drug awareness benefit), and a 1979 MG B Roadster that Mecum sold back in ‘09.
The columnist thinks Stone “didn’t really drive all these cars. She got them just so she could donate them,”confirmed in an email he sent to Jezebel, who was as puzzled by that weird reply as we were. You don’t have to drive a car to be a collector, fella. We hit up Stone’s rep to get her side of the story and were pointed to the actress’ Facebook page, where she had posted a lengthy response to the allegations. In case you don’t want to read her 589 words, allow us to break out the good bits.
“I did not acquire [those cars] to drive around,” Stone wrote. “They are Collectible Cars, for the most part from eras before disc brakes and air bags. I personally did not drive most of them as I made an educated decision as a single Mom not to drive any vehicles without air bags, which none of them has.” [sic] That ‘58 Apache truck was driven, as it was a family gift for Stone’s fiftieth birthday. “I’m a car lover who learned to drive [with a] pickup truck on a dirt road in Pennsylvania.”
We asked Stone’s rep to chat with the actress about what’s currently in her garages, but were denied an interview. So we’ll leave you with some interesting footage from when Stone emceed a Barrett Jackson auction last year. While we can appreciate her passion for the vehicles and the cause, perhaps she should’ve rehearsed what she was going to say a smidgen more.
