photo #5588316

In 1968 Janis Joplin bought a used white 1965 Porsche 356C cabriolet from a California car dealer. She decided that the car looked boring. She and her friends thought it would be fun to redo the car with a multi color psychedelic paint job featuring symbols of the time – hallucinogenic mushrooms, flowers, butterflies, astrological signs, peaceful mountain scenes, blood on an American flag, a sketch of Janis and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company and much more. Band roadie/artist Dave Richards took the ideas, created and painted Janis’ psychedelic Porsche.Joplin used the Porsche as her daily driver rather than using it as a stage prop, becoming a familiar sight in San Francisco at the tail end of the 1960s, and she continued driving the car through the breakup of Big Brother and through her years in Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt Boogie band.Immediately after Joplin's death in 1970, her manager Albert Grossman retained the car, eventually returning it to Joplin's brother and sister, who had continued to use it. Her brother Michael, living in Ohio at the time, rebuilt the original engine and later returned the car to its original dolphin gray finish. The auction description is silent as to how the car was used in the years after the restoration, though by the 1990s a decision was made to replicate Richards' artwork on the car. Luckily, there were plenty of photos of the artwork from the period, and artists Jana Mitchell and Amber Owen were able to re-create the artwork from photographs.It was sold for $1.76 million at RM Sotheby's "Driven by Disruption" sale in New York City.Photo by Jim Marshall