Is this car worth a cool million? That's his price.

VIRGINIA BEACH

Pete Peters wants someone to buy his car and make him a millionaire.

He's asking $1.5 million, but that's negotiable. He might go down to $1 million. No further.

The car in question is a 1954 Austin Princess limousine. It was formerly owned by Winston Churchill, a legendary prime minister of England. Or so Peters say s.

The claim is almost impossible to verify. At least, Peters won't offer proof right away. Not now. Not for this newspaper story. But eventually, for the right buyer, he said, he would do it.

"If you come with a check," Peters said, "I'll give you any documentation you want."

Peter's classified ad appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on Sunday, Dec. 9.

A similar ad, with two photos, ran in the Miami section of craigslist.org. In that ad, Peters retreated on the Churchill claim just a bit, saying the car was "reportedly once owned by Churchill."

The car definitely exists. It sits in a tiny, one-car body shop among a sea of body shops on Birdneck Road, where Peters runs his company, J.P. House of Cars. The company has a Web site, but it's not working.

For the moment, the car is somewhere between rusted wreck and restored treasure. The back seat is temporarily missing. It is in Peters' house, being re-upholstered. The trunk door is detached. So is the driver's door. The engine doesn't run. The back is filled with assorted tools and bric-a-brac.

Still, Peters is making progress. From the front, the Princess is impressive. It could be a wedding limousine. White primer paint covers the formerly black body. Some of the chrome shines. The headlights and grille are elegant. The leather front seat needs a dusting but looks sharp.

What the Princess lacks, however, is provenance - visible proof of its heritage.

Peters said he found the car rusting in a field in North Carolina. Squirrels were living in it. He said he paid $1,000 to the car's previous owner, whose wife begged him to tow it away.

He would not give the former owner's name or phone number. That wouldn't be right, he said.

Peters said he discovered the car's heritage after listing it for sale online. He said Churchill's granddaughter in England - or maybe his great-granddaughter - called to say, "Hey, that looks like my grandfather's car!" And, he said, it was. He said she offered proof.

Peters said the Englishwoman's name is Kate. He offered her phone number in the United Kingdom. The Virginian-Pilot called that number, but it turned out to be another Kate - Peters' daughter. She said she knew nothing about the car's history.

Later, Peters said he mixed up the phone numbers. He said Churchill's granddaughter, or maybe great-granddaughter, is also named Kate and also lives in England. But he would not provide her phone number. He said she wants to buy the car herself and she would not be happy to hear that he is advertising it to others.

Confirming the car's authenticity is not easy.

Sarah Clarke, exhibitions manager at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms in London, said Churchill had no grandchildren named Kate but that she does not know about great-grandchildren.

Also, she could not find any specifics on Churchill's cars during the 1950s. Churchill died in 1965.

An antique specialty car collector in England - Ian Coombes, chairman of the Austin Sheerline & Princess Club - said the club has no record of Churchill owning a Princess limousine but that the British government used them as officials' cars at home and abroad.

The government, Coombes said, sometimes shipped the cars overseas for royal tours and official visits, "so why not for a visit to the U.S.A. by a famous statesman?"

On the other hand, Coombes said, in the 1970s "a number of Princess Limousines were sold to the U.S.A. with bogus histories, and this could be one of them."

The only way to know for sure, Coombes said, was to check the car's chassis number against the manufacturer's records.

Peters gave The Pilot a chassis number: 105428. But Stephen Laing, curator of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, said that was an incomplete number. "I think it is missing a prefix," he said. If he had the complete chassis number, Laing said, he could look up the car's history.

And then there's the issue of price. If the Peters car really was owned or used by Churchill, is it worth $1.5 million?

As it happens, a similar car owned by another famous Briton was sold at auction two years ago in California.

In 2005, Julien's Auctions, of West Hollywood, Calif., sold a black 1956 Austin Princess limousine hearse formerly owned by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The car was featured in Lennon's 1973 video for the song "Imagine."

Before the auction, Julien's estimated the car was worth $200,000 to $300,000.

It sold for $135,000.

Without the Churchill connection, of course, Peters' car would be worth much less. Coombes said a 1954 model is "quite rare" and would be worth about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds - roughly $20,000 to $24,000 - "in restored condition, providing the correct quality materials have been used."

The same car restored with cheaper materials for the interior would be worth 5,000 to 7,000 pounds, or roughly $10,000 to $14,000, Coombes said.

Peters said he is putting about $90,000 worth of parts and labor into restoring the car. Asked why he advertised the car in a local newspaper instead of, say, The Wall Street Journal, Peters said there are many people in Hampton Roads who can afford to buy the car.

"You know who has the money?" Peters said. "The millionaires. I'm not one yet. But I'm working on it."

Marc Davis, (757) 222-5131, marc.davis@pilotonline.com