Fact check: Did Myrtle Beach just get a new, fancy version of the red Jeep meme?

If you’ve been monitoring Tropical Storm Debby’s impact around Myrtle Beach, you might have seen a picture of a Rolls Royce stuck on a beach.

For some locals, the luxury car seemed a bougie reminder of Hurricane Dorian’s infamous red Jeep that got caught in Myrtle Beach’s surf.

According to the Jeep owners, a relative was trying to capture video of the ocean when the car became disabled. As the tide came in around the Jeep, a meme was born.

Its local stardom may have peaked when one musically-inclined fan mourned the car with a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace,” but the red Jeep is fondly remembered in Myrtle Beach every year during hurricane season.

So, is the Rolls Royce a 2024 descendant of the red Jeep? Unlike Myrtle Beach’s red Jeep, photos of the Rolls Royce actually originated in Florida.

Danielle LeClair, co-owner of the oceanfront The Beachcomber Restaurant in St. Augustine Beach, captured pictures of the Rolls Royce stuck in the sand during Tropical Storm Debby and the restaurant shared it on its Facebook page.

According to LeClair’s brother, co-owner Don Samora, the beach next to the restaurant is “notoriously soft.”

“There are trucks that are stuck out there all the time, if they’re not four-wheel drive,” Samora said. “So they really don’t allow cars out there. But there was no one monitoring the access point yesterday, so that car just decided to drive right out there and, yes, they did get stuck.”

While the St. Augustine Beach Police Department permits some beach driving, only sport utility vehicles can drive during soft sand conditions. The beach access point the Rolls Royce used has signs posted stipulating “10 mile speed limit” and “4x4 only.” The car didn’t make it far.

The Rolls Royce also fared better than the red Jeep. Fire rescue services got the luxury car and its occupants off the beach before the tide came in.

While the car avoided the ocean, it’s making waves on social media. Samora’s original post garnered more than 1,300 likes and nearly 800 shares on Facebook as of Tuesday afternoon. Some comments joked about car payments getting out-of-hand while others lampooned the driver for seemingly having more money than sense.

Although the Rolls Royce got a happier ending, one Myrtle Beach local shared one of Samora’s pictures in a popular Facebook post of her own, dubbing the car the new red Jeep.

This story was originally published August 6, 2024 at 3:28 PM.