Bullet-Riddled B.I.G. Relic to Go on the Auction Block

What would somebody pay for the car door that was riddled with bullets when rap star Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in a drive-by shooting last month in the Mid-Wilshire District?

Corky Rice and Jerry Seimons, co-owners of a Budget Rent-a-Car franchise in Beverly Hills, will soon find out when they offer the door at auction.

“Everybody’s telling me the door must have some value,” Rice says. “We’d like to somehow find a way to sell the door to the highest bidder and then donate the money to charity.”

Proceeds from the sale, which has not yet been set, have already been earmarked for the Challenger Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Los Angeles, an educational and recreational youth agency, Rice says.

“I’m trying to figure out how to turn this terrible incident into something good,” Rice says. “If you put the money to good use, I don’t think it’s in bad taste.”

The vehicle, a green 1997 GMC Suburban with beige interior, was rented on Feb. 20 at the weekly rate of $676.55 to FM Rocks, a Los Angeles production company.

It was due back March 10.

But on March 9, the rapper was shot in front of hundreds of party-goers while sitting in the car’s passenger seat outside the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard near Fairfax. Other than a few bullet holes in the seat, Rice says, the passenger-side door was the only part of the vehicle that was damaged.

Six weeks later, with B.I.G.’s posthumous album, “Life After Death,” cemented at the top of the national sales chart for the last month, it occurred to Rice and Seimons that they had a rare collectible on their hands. (Police have completed their scientific investigation of the vehicle and no longer need it as evidence, according to an LAPD spokesman.)

What’s the door worth?

“Not a clue,” says Michael Schwartz, director of entertainment memorabilia for Butterfield & Butterfield, a California-based auction house. “I imagine there would be somebody out there interested, but what kind of a value to put on it?

“I guess if I were to auction something like that, I’d put it out there with a very reasonable-looking estimate--say $3,000 to $4,000--and let the fair market really decide what it was worth.”

Rice and Seimons are willing to sell the $35,000 Suburban as is (with the bullet-riddled door) but do not believe anyone would be interested.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Nevada resort that in 1988 paid $250,000 for the bullet-riddled car in which Bonnie and Clyde Barrow were killed in a 1934 shootout with federal authorities says his company has been approached by Death Row Records to buy the car in which rapper Tupac Shakur was slain last September in Las Vegas.

“We told them we weren’t interested,” says Aaron Cohen, public relations and promotions manager for Primadonna Resorts in Primm, Nev. “It’s not a piece of American history the way the Bonnie and Clyde car is. But maybe in 20 years. . . . “