IN THE SMALL HOURS OF JANUARY 16, 1972, Marc Bolan, still wearing the sparkling gold jacket he’d worn on-stage earlier that night, was returning home to London in a 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud 1 driven by his wife June. He’d recently bought the car on the back of Number 1 hits Hot Love and Get It On, naming it ‘The White Swan’ in honour of the song that had turned his life around the previous winter.
“I’m not into status stuff,” Bolan told journalist Michael Wale. He just had a weakness for cars and liked singing about them, from Ford Mustangs and Cadillacs to the girl with the “hubcap diamond star halo” in Get It On that had ever yone talking about poetr y in pop again. Besides, it was the shape of the Roller that turned him on.