In the monochrome world of post-war America, a big shiny car was the ultimate status symbol - and Elvis was the ultimate consumer. William Shaw lifts the hood on Presley's automania and meets the members of a most exclusive owners' club

Nobody knows how many of Elvis's cars there are out there. There could be hundreds. Elvis bought automobiles on a whim. Sometimes he'd go into a dealership and buy dozens at a time. On one single day he purchased 32 Cadillacs and had given them all away by the afternoon. The majority he never drove - he simply gave them to friends and acquaintances in staggering numbers.

Elvis fan Rex Fowler recently made a docu-mentary about Elvis's legendary gift-giving. He called it 200 Cadillacs after hearing a claim that Presley had given that many of the cars away. 'It's hard to get an actual number,' admits Fowler. 'There are people in Elvis's inner circle who say it wasn't anything like 200. But others say it was at least that many or more. I don't think we'll ever know.'

The combination of Elvis and cars is a potent one. Both represent a new era of jubilant consumption in the 50s and 60s - a time when America's cultural influence was never greater, and cars were never larger or gaudier. This was an era that promised luxury for the masses, and America is looking back on it right now with rose-tinted glasses.

'I'm old enough to remember 50s America,' says Rex Fowler. 'There was so much poverty before the war. The 50s were when people started doing well. The world was black and white, and if someone was lucky enough to have a great, shiny gorgeous car - it just didn't get any better than that. That was the ultimate status symbol. So when he first started making money, the first thing Elvis bought himself was a used Cadillac.'

That was the pink and white 1954 Cadillac he bought in 1955. Sadly, it's not a collector's item. The brake linings caught fire on the road to Texarkana, Arkansas in June that year, carrying Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys between shows.

But 25 years after Presley's death, the cars that survive retain a peculiar potency. There are Elvis cars scattered throughout America in museums, car showrooms, theme parks and roadside attractions. There are inevitably more Elvis cars out there than Elvis ever bought.

Their provenance varies. As Dick Messer, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, says drily: 'A person marches up with a photograph of a car that looks just like the one he has, and there's Elvis polishing it or sitting in the front seat, and that's supposed to make the car worth more?' Some owners have gone so far as to paint Elvis's famous 'TCB' ('Takin' Care of Business') logo on the front doors in the hope that it'll pass for one of his cars.

The Petersen Automotive Museum is the collection of publishing magnate Bob Petersen, and alongside Fred Astaire's Rolls-Royce, Jayne Mansfield's Lincoln and Jean Harlow's Packard, it boasts Elvis Presley's 1971 Ford Pantera - the high- testosterone car he bought for Priscilla shortly before they were married. He later took it back, so the story goes, deciding that it was too powerful a car for a woman to drive.

Elvis was mostly a Cadillac man - though his passion for Lincolns came a close second. The museum chose to buy a Pantera precisely because it was a rare choice for Presley. Messer agrees with at least two auction houses which have sold Elvis cars in the last 12 months. If Elvis's ownership is clearly proven by documents and supported by anecdotes, a classic car's value roughly trebles.

The Pantera's value is also helped by the fact that it has three bullet holes in it. After a bust-up with Priscilla, Presley apparently tried to drive off in the car. It wouldn't start. In true Presley style, he got out and shot the car with his .22 calibre pistol. 'He was pretty short-fused,' says Messer. 'If things didn't go right, he'd just pull out his gun_'

Elvis cars acquire a curious star power of their own. Auctioneers Barrett-Jackson recently sold an Elvis Lincoln Continental Mark IV to Beau Boeckmann - son of Californian multi-millionaire Bert Boeckmann - for $68,000. (The Boeckmanns, known as the 'first family of the San Fernando Valley', are substantial contributors to right-wing political causes such as the Christian Coalition and the Parents' Television Council. Beau is vice-president of his father's massive Galpin Motors dealership.) The car's value was no doubt aided by the fact that automobile collector Nicolas Cage visited the auction rooms the day before the sale with his then girlfriend, Lisa Marie Presley. 'Look, darling,' he said, 'you may actually have ridden in this one.'

The most colourful of Presley car owners is Jim McIngvale. He keeps his 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II - which also boasts a bullet hole - in his furniture showroom. 'Why do you want to know about it?' he snaps on the phone. 'You want to buy it?'

Jim himself paid $287,500 for what was one of Elvis's all-time favourite cars back in 1999 when it was auctioned off at Las Vegas to raise money for the Presley Palace - a home for the poor.

The 51-year-old McIngvale is something of a character. He's known as 'Mattress Mac' in Houston because of brow-beating appearances in adverts for his Gallery Furniture store. The low-production ads play on a constant loop there.

'Mattress Mac' is the co-author of the boosterish business title Always Think Big: How Mattress Mac's Uncompromising Attitude Built the Biggest Single Retail Store In America . It worked for him, anyway. His Gallery Furniture store has a turnover of $150 million a year. Currently, he's bidding to take over sponsorship of the Houston Astros playing field, formerly known as the Enron Field. If he succeeds it will become the Gallery Furniture Field. 'I'm a huckster,' says McIngvale, in Colonel-Tom-Parker style. 'That's all I've ever been.'

Retired businessman Gene Epstein isn't an Elvis fan - he just loves collecting and restoring rare cars. He owns a 1959 Rolls-Royce that belonged to Tony Curtis and he's just finishing work on a 1942 Lincoln Continental that belonged to Marlene Dietrich. He recently spotted a 1969 Mercedes 600 at a classic-car show. The Elvis 'TCB' slogan was painted on each front door - with the lightning flash running down between the letters - a touch that Elvis borrowed from his favourite comic hero, Captain Marvel. Authentic it may have been, but it was close to a wreck when he bought it. His wife despaired: 'Oh my god, why did you have to buy that piece of junk?'

Now restored, he finds it an invaluable attraction for raising money for his favourite charitable causes, and for Republican political fundraisers.

Elvis's cars draw crowds. Elvis collector and self-described King of Elvis Memorabilia Chris Davidson proudly displays his 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood Limo at his schlocky museum, Elvis-A-Rama on Industrial Road, Las Vegas.

That's a mere runaround compared to the main attraction at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. It boasts the famous 'Solid Gold' Cadillac - a customised 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood. Its hi-tech gadgetry includes a fridge, a 10-record automatic changer, a phone - even a shoe buffer. The car's exterior chrome - hubcaps, wheel covers and headlight rims - is all plated in 24-carat gold. Just like rock stars, they don't make cars the way they used to.

Of course, the finest collection of all is the one at Graceland - 21 of Elvis's cars, all immaculately kept. 'We keep them pretty spiffy,' they say, proudly. The collection includes the '55 Cadillac Fleetwood that Elvis gave to his mom. She couldn't drive, but it's the thought that counts.

There was an absurdity to Elvis's automania. However, for Rex Fowler, the legacy of Elvis's cars should be seen simply as evidence of the King's big-heartedness. He gave away far more cars than he ever owned. Painstakingly, Fowler tracked down several recipients of his gifts - including the two Denver policemen whom Elvis befriended and bestowed Cadillacs upon. 'They said that everything they'd done in their careers was eclipsed by becoming known as the guys Elvis had given cars to,' says Rex, awed.

'Elvis grew up poor and this was something he knew was a really special gift,' he says. 'If he really, really liked you and didn't think you were trying to get into his back pocket, he'd buy you a new Cadillac or a new Lincoln or whatever. It was something he got a great deal of pleasure from. Of course, as his addictions grew and he became more and more insecure, he tended to use gifts as a validation - in the last couple of years, he gave lot of things away - but mostly it was generosity.'

And the irony is that this chrome-plated dream of America's boomtime has never been so valuable as it is right now. 'Look,' says the sanguine Dick Messer, 'we had a 400-point drop in our stock market over here today. There's a lot of people thinking you're better off investing in hard assets like these.'