By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

In my experience around classics, there hasn’t been much I haven’t done to myself. I’ve had fingers pinched by a Packard Patrician, knuckles annihilated by a Triumph TR-250, and knee incised during Healey Hundred ingress. If I were to rate the injuries, though, my best has been nearly knocking myself out cold from hitting my head on the corner of a Ferrari 308 GT4 engine lid water runoff tray.

That was until yesterday, when I managed to hurt myself in a way most auto fanatics could only dream of: I ran over my big toe with a 105-year-old car! Continue reading after the jump.

Continue reading "What’s Your Best Car Injury Story?" »

First Budweiser, now this. The Wall Street Journal reports that the weak dollar is allowing Europeans to come over and buy all their cool classic cars back. The auctions in Monterey this weekend are expected to be dominated by European buyers, and many cars are likely to be shipped back overseas. These things do come in cycles, though. For example, "Japanese collectors also bought cars during the local economic boom of the 1980s, but many were sold back to U.S. collectors during Japan’s recession in the 1990s."

But according to the New York Times, American muscle is largely being left alone. "Ahead of the Monterey auctions, dealers are speculating that less expensive American cars will be a tougher sell than European sports cars simply because there is not an international market flush with euros for big, thirsty American cars of the 1950s and 1960s." Hey, that’s fine with me.

The exercise is simple – there are 26 spaces in your dream garage. Each one is marked with a letter of the alphabet. The job is to fill each space with your favorite automotive representation of the specific letter.

In actuality, it’s tougher than it seems. All too frequently one must pass on a more valuable car for a vehicle that is infinitely more fun to drive, prettier, historically significant, or usable on modern public roads. Most letters also present the challenge of choosing something classic versus a newer exotic ride.

So after you see my picks below, I want to hear what yours are!

Continue reading "Dream Cars A-to-Z" »

It’s the same old story. Crazy old man hoards cars on his property, then dies. Weird family doesn’t want to deal with all the circling gearheads and sells off the lot to the scrap guys. If you look at the pics there are some rare and desirable cars here–Road Runners, Super Bees, Camaros, Impalas, Fairlanes, etc. This is especially upsetting to me cause a puke green Road Runner like the one below is pretty much my dream car, and this one is probably gonna be turned into five econoboxes.

Supposedly the family has owned a Chevy dealership since the 50s, and these are cars that came in as trades or which were deemed not worth repairing by their prior owners. I imagine a lot of the paperwork is missing on most of these cars. The guy who started the thread over on Camaros.net last week claims to have tried to work a deal with the scrap guys, but was coming up empty handed. He actually watched many of the cars being hauled away–"most of the cars had sat so long that when the front end loaders were picking them up the seats would fall through the floor boards." Sad… Still, there is something a bit fishy about the guy’s post. The actual location is never mentioned. Is this just a publicity stunt? Will we be seeing many of these cars on eBay soon? Time will tell. A bunch more pics after the jump.

Continue reading "900 Classic Cars Headed for the Crusher" »

I saw this ‘Cuda on eBay last week. Bidding was at $300k with reserve not met (the auction has since ended). I e-mailed my buddy Scott, who is a true expert when it comes to Mopar values (he also happens to own a 440-6 ‘Cuda) and asked him what he thought the car was worth in the current market. Here’s what he wrote back:

Keeping in mind that it’s a buyer’s market……

Negatives:
Engine #’s don’t  match
No broadcast sheet
Color is only middle-of-the-road popular
HEAVILY overshadowed by Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles in popularity and value
Overshadowed in desirability and price by other numbers-matching examples

Positives:
Real car based on what’s described, one of 29 total built, one of 17 4-speeds
Real Shaker Hood car (rare)
It’s NOT army green!
Not many in any condition for sale right now
Next to a Hemi ‘Cuda convertible it’s the rarest/baddest ‘Cuda convertible you could own, and for a lot less money
My selling price guess: $175-$200K
Insurance value estimate: $250-$275K

BTW, the current bid of 300K is most likely fake/wishful thinking

More pics after the jump!

Continue reading "WIW? 4 Speed 440-6 'Cuda Convertible on eBay" »

I blogged about this ’68 GTX with just 5,831 miles on the clock two weeks ago. Well, it just sold today at a private estate auction for $203,000!!! I guess the muscle car market hasn’t softened that much after all…

Continue reading "Rip Van Winkle's Hemi GTX Sells For $203,000" »

These aluminum nose Mopars are quite rare and don’t come out of the woodwork very often. This ’64 Dodge 440 Super Stock car was on eBay last week and didn’t meet the reserve. However, it sold for $59,500 in an auction this weekend. Not chump change for a car that basically needs a full resto. Hmmm, maybe the Mopar market isn’t cooling down after all… More pics after the jump.

Continue reading "Aluminum Nose Max Wedge Project Car Sells For $59k" »

I met Joni Gray, Sr. Auto Editor for the LA Times, at NYIAS and she’s cool. And I liked this article she just wrote, Ten Still-Attainable 1970s Muscle Cars, though I hesitate to call many of these cars "muscle cars." The list was selected by Phil Skinner, editor of Kelley Blue Book’s Early Model Values Guide. Obviously, I’ve heard of KBB (value guide basically created to support dealerships) but had never heard of this classic car value guide–maybe cause it’s $60!!!??? Hey, the NADA guide is free and, after comparing the prices listed for a few of these cars, it seems to be pretty close. Anyway, I still thought it was a pretty good list, so here goes:

1973-76 Chevrolet Nova SS
1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 fastback
1977-78 Pontiac Trans Am coupe
1970-71 Plymouth Duster 340 coupe
1971-73 De Tomaso Pantera coupe
1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442/W30 coupe
1975-76 Chevrolet Vega Cosworth ed
1973 Mercury Cougar XR7 convertible
1971-73 Datsun 240Z coupe
1977-79 Chevrolet Corvette T-top coupe

Sign me up for a Duster, a Pantera and maybe even the ’79 442. Click through to Joni’s article to read more about each car and see the pics, and then let us know what you link of the list.

While I was in Florida for last weekend’s Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach auction, I decided to check out Russo and Steele’s inaugural Hollywood collector car auction and then head up to Daytona Beach for the spring swap meet. Coincidentally, I found a Chevrolet-based Ferrari knock-off at each event.

First, at Russo and Steele, what the seller was calling the Camarossa, “a one of a kind hand built, steel exotic car” based on a 1986 Camaro. While the auction description went into lengthy detail about how the new body panels were applied, it simply appears the builder stuck most of them on over the top of the stock Camaro sheetmetal. Granted, the builder did indeed go the distance with the interior–including the gated five-speed shifter–and with an alleged 500hp small-block under the hood. But it appears his efforts to sell the car at Russo and Steele went for naught and his reserve sat a little too high.

Next, while cruising the car corral in the infield at Daytona Beach, I came across a fourth-gen Corvette-based “Testarossa.” The seller claimed it came from California, where it was assembled from a kit and a 1985 Corvette donor, which included the Tuned Port Injection small-block V-8, the four-speed automatic transmission and the removeable targa-style top. “Very fast car,” he said, before revealing his $25,000 asking price.

I really hope seeing these two cars in the span of two days was some sort of coincidence rather than an indication of an overall lack of taste and sophistication in that little corner of the country. You can see the rest of the pics after the jump.

NADA recently published a study showing that collector car values have surged in recent years, increasing in value by an average of 36% between February  2004 and February 2008 (go here for a summary of the study). However, from what I’ve seen and heard over the past twelve to eighteen months, collector car values have started to fall. The values of the more desirable Mopar muscle cars, for example, have fallen off quite a bit since their market high roughly two years ago. I’ll be publishing an interview with Dan Kruse of Dan Kruse Classics next week, and Dan said that he had noticed the same thing in his auctions held around the country. And I’m sure the current mortgage crisis and economic slowdown isn’t helping.

Still, I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. Some of the prices were getting kind of silly, and a lot of the real car enthusiasts were getting priced out by people who all of a sudden started seeing our old cars as "good investments." Now, there is nothing wrong with getting most or even all of your money back when you sell a car, but going into it expecting major appreciation just seems wrong somehow. What do you think?