A Lawsuit, a Porn Mogul and a ‘Pawn Stars’ Cameo: The Bizarre Afterlife of O.J. Simpson’s White Bronco

Benjamin Svetkey
·4 min read
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It’s got less than 40,000 miles on the odometer, comes with luxurious leather interior and sports a V-8 engine packing a whopping 200 horsepower. But its biggest selling point is that its previous owner was a retired NFL star who only drove it around town for light errands — and one epic freeway police chase.

It’s no mystery what happened to the late O.J. Simpson after he was arrested for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman — there was a trial, the glove, an acquittal, another 2008 arrest (and this time a conviction) for the armed robbery and kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers in Las Vegas — but what about the white Ford Bronco? Back in June 1994, that vehicle captivated a nation, with 90 million viewers tuning in to watch the live news chopper coverage of it being pursued by scores of Los Angeles Police Department cars along the 405. It was two of the most riveting hours in TV history.

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But afterwards? Where did the car go then?

Turns out it took a long road trip, with pit stops involving a lawsuit, a porn mogul and an ex-agent and a reality show, until it ultimately ended up in place called Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

The Bronco in question, of course, didn’t actually belong to Simpson. Although O.J. had an identical white SUV of his own, the one being followed by police on TV belonged to Simpson’s friend and fellow NFL star Al Cowlings, who sat behind the wheel while Simpson, in the back with a loaded gun, told him where to drive. When the chase finally sputtered to a stop at Simpson’s Brentwood home, the car was confiscated by the cops and eventually returned to Cowlings.

Not surprisingly, Cowlings never wanted to sit in it again. He asked Don Kreiss, a friend who worked for a sports agent, to find a buyer. It didn’t take long to lure a prospect: Michael Kronick, a memorabilia collector, reportedly offered $75,000 for the car (although, for that price, he also wanted 250 autographed photos of Cowlings driving it). In November 1994 — just before jury selection in Simpson’s trial — Kronick was supposed to meet Kreiss and Cowlings and exchange a check for the keys. But Cowlings never showed up; he’d apparently changed his mind.

According to an impressively exhaustive 2014 investigation of the car’s history by USA Today, Kronick sued Cowlings over the scotched deal and an undisclosed settlement was reached between the two a few years later, in 1996. By then, though, Cowlings had changed his mind again and had sold the white Bronco — this time for real — for a reported $200,000 to a man named Michael Pulwer, also known as “The Porn King,” owner of Paradise Visuals, an adult film company that was big in the 1990s.

Pulwer kept the Bronco under wraps, parking it in the underground garage of his luxury condo in the Wilshire Corridor. For more than a decade it remained hidden in plain sight, like the ark of the covenant in that warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones. According to USA Today, it was so neglected, all the air in its tires had leaked out.

But then, around 2012, the Bronco resurfaced, making surprise appearances at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas (where it was used to promote the opening of a sports museum called SCORE!) and at an art exhibit in Greenwich, Connecticut (featuring the works of Nate Lowman, an artist who had used images of a topless Nicole Brown Simpson in some of his canvases).

Then it vanished again for another five years, until 2017, when it popped up on an episode of Pawn Stars, the History Channel reality show about a pawn shop in Las Vegas.  Simpson’s former agent, Mike Gilbert — now claiming ownership of the car, inexplicably saying he purchased it from Cowley, who obviously hadn’t owned it in years — appeared on the show and attempted to sell the car for a cool million dollars.

Gilbert did end up getting an offer but for only half his asking price. He turned it down and instead found the car another home, possibly, hopefully, its last.

Today, 30 years after leading police on that blockbuster car chase, the most infamous automobile of the 20th century is finally parked in a safe spot. It’s now part of an exhibit at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, sharing a showroom with John Dillinger’s 1933 Essex Terraplane and Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle.

“It’s one of our most popular attractions,” Ally Pennington, the museum’s artifacts and programs manager, tells The Hollywood Reporter.  “People come from all over.”

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