Popemobile Seller Sues eBay: Price not enough

Benjamin Halbe, the jobless German who sold the the VW Golf once owned by Pope Benedict XVI (now known as the PopeMobile) for £130,000 GoldenPalace.com is suing eBay because he says it's not enough.

Halbe, 21, from Olpe near Cologne, bought the car from a private dealer for over £6,000 just six months before Pope Benedict took the helm in Vatican.

Halbe asked lawyers in the Munich legal firm Ulsenheimer and Friedrich to investigate claims that dozens of people had been unable to log on to eBay to register a bid in the closing stages of the sale.

They would be investigating the last few hours where there were "proven bidders who wanted to offer more but whose bids for higher amounts for unknown reasons were not registered on the eBay site".

Lawyer Juergen Langer from the firm has called on eBay to explain the problems. eBay in Germany admitted the car had been the most popular item ever to have been sold on its pages.