MONTEREY, Calif. Aug 17 The 1962 Ferrari 250GTO that sold for $38.1 million last Thursday got the headlines.But there's another side to the week of automobile auctions thatprecede Sunday's 64th annual Concours d'Elegance classic-carshow at the Pebble Beach golf resort.
Like the vintage 1959 Riley that sold for $5,500. Or theclassic 1951 "bullet-nose" Studebaker that went for even less -just $4,000. By comparison, the 1962 Chrysler Imperial equippedwith "triple cigarette lighters" cost a fortune: all of $9,500.
There's a pecking order to the Monterey Car Week auctionsthat culminate in the Concours. At the high end are the Bonhamsauction at the posh Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley (aka "theQuail" wink and the Gooding auction at Pebble Beach, where thesuggested bidding range for a 1959 Ferrari 250 GT Series 1 (a"poor" cousin of the $38 million prize) was $4.5 million to $6million.
Then there's Mecum. You can spend a lot of money at auctionsconducted by this Midwestern auction house with headquarters insoutheast Wisconsin. A 1969 Corvette L88 coupe, with a430-horsepower engine, sold this week for $450,000.
But you can also spend a whole lot less. The Mecum "DNA," asits auction hands proudly explain, is "something for everybody." Its Monterey auction is held at the Hyatt, not at the Quail. Inthe Gooding tent at Pebble Beach you see guys wearing shortswith blazers. In the Mecum tent they wear shorts and tee shirts. Untucked, of course.
The 1959 Riley was a natural fit here. Riley is anow-obscure British brand that was launched in the late 1890s,then bankrupted and merged in the 1930s and 1940s before meetingits demise in 1969. The 1959 1.5 four-door Saloon model (namedfor its 1.5-liter, 68 horsepower engine) has chrome-laden frontface that gives the car lots of personality, if not a highprice.
"It was so cute I had to take a second look at it, andbefore I knew it I was bidding on it," said the buyer, JohnYosgott of Sacramento, Calif. The 65-year-old Yosgott, a retiredregistered nurse, doesn't have a car collection. He bought theRiley for his wife. "As soon as I told her about it she wantedit," he said.
Less-expensive still was the 1951 Studebaker Champion sedan,with a pointed protrusion mounted in the front grille that'sknown as the "bullet nose." The Champion was introduced in themonths following World War Two; a few years later it got the bullet-nose design that was distinct but polarizing.
The Champion got a nose job in 1952, so the 1951 model wasthe last Champion bullet nose. Studebaker itself, which washeadquartered in South Bend, Ind., collapsed in 1966.
The most distinctive styling feature on the 1962 ChryslerImperial was on the back end instead of the front grille. Thegarish tail fins of the late 1950s were quickly disappearing,but the Imperial sported "gunsight" tail lamps that looked like,well, a truncated rifle sight. The car also had a push-buttonautomatic transmission and a triple-socket cigarette lighter,both of which seem like jokes today but were deemed modernconveniences back then.
Mecum's Monterey auction featured other cheap thrills too.
A 1963 Ford Falcon in pristine condition went for $9,500. A1976 Porsche 914 Targa fetched $14,500. Another Porsche sold foreven less, just $14,000. It was a 1960 108L, one of Porsche'slesser-known models. That's because it belonged to a line ofvehicles that Porsche has long-since discontinued: farmtractors.
For video on the auctions, see http://reut.rs/1rgrXnJ
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