The economic downtown of 2008 took a hammer to classic car auctions, from which some companies
— including Kruse International
— didn’t recover. But while no one is partying like it’s the boom times of 1999, some of the top auction houses were pleased to see bidders laying out top dollar last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. The fabled winter gathering saw more than 2,000 cars cross the block at events held by companies such as Gooding & Company and Barrett-Jackson, for a total haul of nearly $160 million.
Interestingly, though European sports coupes drew the lion’s share of bidder attention, it was actually a rather homely grey 1963 Pontiac ambulance that stole the weekend’s spotlight. Described by Barrett-Jackson as the machine that ferried a mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy to the hospital, the vehicle quickly came under scrutiny by various experts, with officials from the Kennedy library saying that the actual ambulance used that fateful day was destroyed with the family’s consent in 1986. Auction officials acknowledged the mystery, then sold the car as-is to an Arizona collector for $120,000.
Among the weekend’s bona fide stars:
2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible Indy 500 pace car
- Barrett-Jackson offered its bidders a chance to make history when it auctioned off a new Chevrolet Camaro SS convertible that carried with it the right to kick off the ownership experience by driving the parade lap at the Indianapolis 500 on May 29. Addison Brown of Arizona made the winning bid of $225,000; proceeds go to the David Foster Foundation, an organization started by the songwriter to help families in search of organ transplants. Foster joined Indy-winner Arie Luyendyk for the event, but real star was the rouge-and-white striped Camaro with its echoes of the 1969 Chevy pace car revered by Camaro collectors. Only 500 of these Indy-version Camaros will be built, but only Brown gets to lap the most famous track in America. There's evidence she'll be up to the task: she told local reporters that she was SCCA certified and a veteran of Bob Bondurant's driving school
Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing
- RM set a world record for a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing at just under $1.4 million, beating its pre-auction estimate of $700,000 by miles thanks to a bidding war between parties in Europe and the Middle East. The completely restored graphite-grey 1955 sports car was a 215-hp road-gobbling titan of its day, though this particular example had been sitting in a collector’s climate-controlled garage for a few years. Topping RM’s slate for the weekend was a 1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta, which sold for nearly $1.9 million. The open-topped coupe had run in the famed Mille Miglia road race and was the tenth of 25 examples built
2006 Ferrari FXX
- High-performance sporting machines from different eras captured big bucks at Gooding & Company. The modern era was represented by a low-mileage 2006 Ferrari FXX Evoluzione (winning bid: $2.09 million), arguably one of the most savage beasts ever unleashed from Maranello’s cages. The car is a race-worthy version of the already-fast Enzo, and was sold only to well-known Ferraristi many of whom tracked them at factory-organized events. On the other end of the spectrum was a sleek and rare 1964 Porsche 904 Carrera GTS (price: $1.045 million), a successor to the 550 Spyder and precursor to the German factory’s iconic 917s.
1965 Shelby Cobra CSX 1001
- Russo and Steele simply could not have done worse than last year’s auction, which was marred by its tent collapsing on cars to the tune of $1.5 million in damages and lawsuits that are still pending. The preferable drama this year happened when a 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible nabbed a winning bid of $1.7 million, a flashback to the heady times when almost anything from the American muscle car era sold for surreal prices. And staying in that same Detroit-made vein, the auction company also sold a 1965 Shelby Cobra CSX 1001 for $335,500, notable for being just one of a dozen competition cars built that year. Of course, it also didn’t hurt that at one point its owner was none other than Ol’ Shel himsel
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Shelby,
New cars,
Audi,
Nissan,
Toyota
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