Barack Obama sat here

Naperville woman's Jeep used to belong to presidential candidate

When Barack Obama drives, he grips the steering wheel with his left hand slightly to the left of 12 o'clock.

Or so it seems to Liz Murphy, 45, who owns the Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by the Democratic presidential candidate during his final four years as an Illinois state senator.

When Murphy slid into the driver's seat to test drive the Jeep four years ago, she immediately noticed a heavily worn area on the wheel. But it wasn't until she had made the purchase that she discovered the spot had been worn out by Obama, who bought the Jeep new in 2000 and sold it to Park Plaza Dodge in Forest Park.

The vehicle changed hands again when LaGrange resident Paul Gossett purchased the Jeep from Park Plaza for a dealership he owns in Michigan. That's how Murphy, who knew Gossett through a friend, came across the vehicle.

Murphy, who lives in Naperville with her 19-year-old son, Jim, was looking for a used car and said she "fell in love" with the Jeep from the moment she drove it. When she visited Gossett to sign the final papers, he showed her a copy of a title covered with Obama's name.

"It wasn't until I had signed the final purchasing agreement and then he said, by the way, I have another piece of paper you might be interested in hanging on to," Murphy said.

While she didn't initially recognize the name, she was impressed to learn the young politician was running for the U.S. Senate - so much so that she contacted Obama's office twice within the next year to ask if he would sign the dashboard.

"No one ever responded," she said. "I wanted his autograph on my car. ..."

The autograph would have set apart the Jeep, which has a black exterior and black leather seats. It had been driven 87,000 miles when Murphy purchased it for $15,000; since then she has increased the mileage to 119,000 miles.

Murphy, who owns no other car, drives the Jeep mainly around Naperville and takes it on the occasional jaunt to visit her sister in Indianapolis. She said her initial excitement about owning Obama's Jeep resurged last year, when she learned he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"All of a sudden, I've still got this guy's car when he could be president," she said.

Murphy plans to sell the Jeep on eBay after the November election. If Obama wins, she's hoping to get three to four times the current trade-in value of the Jeep. She estimated the value to be $8,000 to $10,000, but according to the Kelley Blue Book, it should be closer to $2,000 to $3,100.

"I don't collect cars, but would I like to collect a chunk off of this," Murphy says, fingering the title, which she's enclosed in a plastic cover.

But Murphy shouldn't expect to receive much more for the Jeep than she would otherwise, according to Jay Grams, who buys and sells collector cars for the Volvo Auto Museum in Volvo. He estimates she'll only receive about 10 percent more than the trade-in value.

"I don't want to sound negative, but I don't think it's that substantial," Grams said. "It has to be someone really famous like Elvis."

That's because the Jeep is neither a high-end vehicle, nor was it owned by a president during his time in office, Grams said. He said vehicles often must be recognizable from movies or have been owned by a major historical figure to bring in the huge bids.

"If you drive down the street with a batmobile, people's jaws are going to drop," Grams said. "You'll get a lot more attention if you're driving around with a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari. If you're at a car show, you can put up a sign (that says) this was Obama's, and people say, 'Oh, that's neat,' but it's not something that exciting."

Grams briefly acquired Lyndon Johnson's personalized limo a few years ago. The Lincoln Continental from the mid-1960s would have been worth about $7,000 without the celebrity status, but he sold it for $20,000.

Johnson's limo was purchased by Wayne Lensing, who owns nine presidential vehicles at Historic Auto Attractions in Rockford. His most expensive purchase, at $1 million, was the secret service car riding on the heels of JFK's limo the day the president was assassinated.

Lensing gave the Obama Jeep a higher estimated value than did Grams, saying it could bring Murphy as much as 25 to 50 percent more than its trade-in value if Obama won the presidency. But the value could swell even more decades from now, depending on the legacy Obama left as president.

"It all depends on how popular of a president he was," Lensing said. "JFK was a popular president, so his stuff is more demanding than a president like Jimmy Carter."

In the meantime, Murphy says it hits her from time to time that the leather on the top of her steering wheel may have been worn out by the next U.S. president.

"Every once in a while I'll run my hands over the top of the steering wheel and say, 'Wow, this guy had a grip,'" she said.