The SPEED Channel coverage of this great auction starts tonight @ 7:00 PM EST! Tune-in to see some great rides up for sale.

 

gee...it's five miles up the road...hmmmn...maybe I should stop by....

 

Yeah, I've got some customers with cars out there. Always fun to watch. Some amazing cars that you don't see anywhere else. Plus its fun to watch rich people compete with their wallets and egos.

 

Tuls, see you there on Saturday. How will I recognize you?

Regards,
Will
MCS 2004

 

speed channel just started the coverage. makes me miss home!!! this is literally a stone's throw from my front porch! i'm sitting in a freezing as shitty detroit suburb glued to the tv

 

First night out of 24 hours of coverage...terrific motorhead TV fun...on Speed Channel.

 

Well dunno if I am accually going...I'll be at a Dyno day right down the street....

Dyno Comp if you feel like getting away...

 

Always cool to see the wonderful vehicles and all that money being spent. Auction announcers are cool

 

Do they still have that baby-faced dude working the crowd who screams like a little girl when he gets a bid?

 

I just wish they had better announcers. Mike Joy is O.K. but the British dude knows squat about American cars. Hes fine with the foreign stuff so that is what he should comment on. Surely Speed Channel has the resources to get announcers who specialize in various markets.

 

My favorite segment is when the tv announcers shut up for the sounds of the Barrett auction just so I can get a feel for the excitement going on :smile:

 

Alain de Cadenet aka Allan the Cad is such a ******, I die laughing whenever he's describing one of the historic Euro-racers.

1951 Ferrari Formula 1:

This nearly original beauty was raced during Formula One's second season by none other than the great Argentine racer Froilan Gonzalez. And look here at the front of the well worn seat, see those two indents? Yes they are from Froilan's *****, I tell you those drivers had tremendous ***** in 1951, you had to in order to hustle one of these beasts around Silverstone. And look at this patina on the left side of the cockpit. It's from where Froilan vomited coming out of a second gear switchback at the old Reims circuit in France. If memory serves correctly, it was on the third lap and apparently Froilan had overindulged the previous night on some of the local champagne, rumored to have been sent to his room by the Gordini team manager in hopes of making him too drunk to participate in Sunday's race. Obviously it didn't work, and it may have had the opposite effect, as Froilan drove one of his most memorable races in France in 1951. By the time he'd finished the race, the poor grade recycled aluminium that carroceria Touring got by digging up the remains of downed allied B-17 bombers to make the body on Enzo's racing machine had been etched clear down to metal. How's that for a fine vintage? Back to you Bob.....

 

ROFL!!!

I can almost hear Alain saying those exact words!

 

Holy cow that's hilarious!!

 

I can tell you what is really hilarious is watching these people get drunk and then bid on cars. I talked to a woman who told me the total line of credit approved for this auction is 550 MILLION DOLLARS!! (I think they could have actually paid the national debts of some small countries!) To use an old adage to describe some of the people there, "Those people have more money than sense (cents)." My brother and I went for the first time this year and we almost choked to see someone actually pay 87,000 dollars for a '56 Ford Crown Victoria!!! (There will definitely be some wallet hangovers today! There were some beautiful cars there, but you can only see so many 70 thousand dollar big block Camaros! Another suprise were the two Oldsmobile 442 with rare options that fetched around 100,000 each! It seemed that if you found a late sixties body and stuffed some sort of big block motor in it you could make some huge money! (Most were NOT numbers matching cars, in fact, most were clones) We realized very quickly we were very small fish in a huge pond. One final note, Scottsdale is a beautiful city.

 

Was anyone watching lately to see what car went for like $3Million?? I wasn't able to glue myself to the set long enough. Heard it was some prototype or something where there were only 3 made or something of the sort. Didn't catch it. Just heard that highlight.
Cheers,

 

1954 OLDSMOBILE F-88 GM CONCEPT CAR

OPTIONS
COLOR - GOLD
TRANS - HYDRO
CYLINDERS - 8
ENGINE SIZE - 324
HORSEPOWER - 250


The XP-20 project, commonly known as F-88 was a pet project of Harley Earl (working with him was Bill Mitchell, Ken Pickering, Zora Duntov etc.). Four cars came out of the project, but only styling order #2265 (this car) survived. It was sold or given to E.L. Cord (Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg owner) in 1955. Hundreds of internal GM documents and original blue prints are still with this sole survivor.

here's some pics...it's....well...never mind....

 

Apparently good taste was in short supply in 1954 Detroit. This abomination looks like an early Corvette crossed with a coal furnace. At today's selling price, it looks like good taste is still in short supply. Ugh! as in UGLY!

 

Damn, and what a steal at $3million. Guess it's like every style of car out there. There'll always be someone that likes a certain style that most everyone else hates. Take for instance the Aztek. That thing looks like Pontiac's bowel movement. Which seems to be the opinion of the majority of people. But there's still other people that are driving them.
But 3Mill for that? That couldn't have been the starting bid. So how many others were bidding on it as well? I would have rather looked for an Enzo for sale, if there's one up for grabs. Or a McLaren F1. And still had money to burn on a small fleet of other exotics to snag up.
I remember this one sweet black GT500 with white stripes that was restored and done up nice, that was at Barretts, and it went for some good coin. Seen other ones go for around $200K. And that's out there. But 3Mill for that thing. It's got a older roadster Vette look with some T-Bird qualities as well. But I guess that owner isn't going to come across too many time that someone else will have the same car out there.
Cheers,

 

It's an original Autorama car, from GMs styling studio. Very few of these concept cars exist today. It's really about preserving history, not being seen IN the car. Bidding started at $100,000 and rose dramatically with several bidders. It came down to two and the winner just HAD to have it.

 

I worked out there at the auction as a driver and got to drive it the day before the auction started. I had no idea it would go for that much. That guy actually got a bargain when you think of all of the PR he got for his museum that the car is going to go in.

They had a Mini pickup out there too. I wanted to drive it but didn't get a chance.