I had the opportunity to make it up to Indy for the Mecum auction on Thrusday and Friday - here are the O'Mobiles we saw: http://imgur.com/a/KZm0d

I highly recommend checking out an auction if you have the chance - you'll not find as many cool cars anywhere else!

 

I agree nice cars!

 

Very Nice cars, amazing!

 

Couple of questions. Did you meet any of the owners ? Did you exchange
random small talk to see if the consignors were pleased with their results ?
I'm only a lowly 67 442 owner , and the 66 + 67 442's just seemed to be lightly treated and soft on bidding.
I also observed that several of the holy grail 70 - 72 W-30 , air cars were not finding the love , or testing the waters just to see what connected with buyers on color or freshness. Very similar to the LS6 Chevelle vehicles.
It did seem like a great auction to perhaps be a buyer ?
Did you observe that there were too many trailer queens , or were some of the nicer ones drivers ?
Again , great job , thanks for the live shots.. Jimi .

 

I spent the entire day there on Thursday...
Great pics, Ray ! Thanks for sharing !

Not Ray ! But I'll chime in!

There did seem to be some great buys. My friend & I were surprised at some of the low prices for seemingly very nice cars. However, we only saw the Thursday cars sell. These are typically not at the level of the later days' cars.

I did check out most of the cars in Ray's pics. There were a few cars that seemed totally legit, but most left me with questions. I know several of the really nice looking ones had issues. Non-orig or incorrect engines, odd little underhood issues (like an auto battery cable tubes on MT cars), driver side alternator on non-A/C car, obviously added/non-orig options, and other stuff.

There's also the level of restoration. Some looked fantastic from 10-20 feet (& on TV) & may have had a great back story, but up close were a bit flawed.

Take the Safron '68 442 W-30 'vert for example (~22nd Ray pic). I looked this car over. Had a great 1 owner, very doc'd history, but I suspect it was really beat/ratty prior to resto. It had repop parts everywhere and some of the orig parts were rough (right headlight assy broken/missing chunks, wavy rear bumper, etc..)... Not to be confused with the other Safron '68 442 'vert that was just a dolled up Cutlass with a non 344 VIN.

I only found & talked to one owner (not for the '68's described above) and he was pretty vague on what his car was, but instead kept telling me how much was spent on the resto.

(Bonus chat ! Met & talked with Ken Lingenfelter for a while.)

If you didn't care about absoulte originality/correctness, there were some very nice high-driver quality cars...

 

Jimi -

The nice part about the auctions is that they allow whoever to come in and browse all the cars - I went up with my father, uncle and cousin so it was good trip. The do charge $20 bucks to get in but I certainly thought it was worth it.

While there are certainly lots of nice cars to look at - it's no car show. I didn't catch any olds owners but we did talk to a few other owners and of course they are there to sell their cars.

I'm still working on educating myself so I can't even begin to explain why some of the cars sell for what they do - I'm also certainly no expert on what a proper restoration looks like. We are planning to hit up Springfield for the Oldsmobile nationals later this year.

I was surprised at how much the 71-72s were going for. There were 12 W-30s in the auction and only 7 of them hit high enough bids to sell.

The one I found most curious was this one: http://www.mecum.com/auctions/lot_de...&entryRow=1369

I believe it had the wrong seat covers and it had a copy of a broadcast card, but the broadcast card didn't say it was a w-30. Just seemed fishy to me. Bid got up to 85K on it but it didn't sell.

My favorite was this one:http://www.mecum.com/auctions/lot_de...&entryRow=1369

Matador red is sharp and it looked sharp. I took the most pictures of that one. It went for 102.5K.

 

The 66 Track Pac W-30 car brought $55K and I think the seller made a bad mistake by making it a race car theme. I think they should have left it as original and just show the racing history background. When he got it from my buddy,it was all original,an older restoration but nice. I don't think muscle cars made into race cars do well unless it was a famous race car.

http://www.mecum.com/auctions/lot_de...=&startRow=261

 

That car wasn't a one owner. John Ebbs owned it for years. He may have bought it from the original owner. I heard that the current owner tracked the original owner down and he had original paperwork. I'm always skeptical of such claims.

The guy that bought the red 68 W30 posted on facebook that it was documented. All I thought it had was a Protectoplate which I don't believe would have documented it as a W30. That was VERY strong money if that wasn't a truly documented car.

 

he 54 convertible sold cheep unless it had problems I couldn't see.$35,000 is what I remember and I've never seen one go for that price in the last 6 or 8 years......Tedd

 

Tedd, that looks like the same 54 convertible that was on ebay a couple times this year. The first time it had a Buy It Now price of a little over $50k and the second time it seems like it was around $47-$48k. It did not appear to have any issues. There are not a lot of 54 Super 88 convertibles and this one is an unusual color.

 

Cool pics. Thanks for sharing!

 

Some really nice cars and alot of them!!!

 

Those are correct seat covers for a 70 convertible. Looks like a very decent restoration but certainly not a top of the line - lots of little things could have been done to make it even better, but.... great car overall. Interestingly I look at this as a prime example of a perfect car to buy as a great great driver but for 150k+ who would want to drive it - and that's when you would start expecting perfection.

 

On that yellow convertible W30 there was alot not right with that car in particular paint overpray on the frame the lack of data stickers under the hood and it looked like alot of repop parts. In my mind if your asking 150k+ it should look like the day it rolled off the assembly line in Lansing, with the correct NOS parts and correct paint. The showroom queens that are so over restored with super high gloss paint jobs and flawless everything are not what the cars came or looked like. But it seems some people have forgotten what the cars were like. I worked for 5 different car magazines and we used to have alot of discussions on the "Showcar trailer queens" I like to see unrestored original cars especially with low mileage and documented proof, those are the cars worth the money. Not these restroration queens. just my opinion.

 

I thought I had seen this car previously .
Mecum @ Indy Fri. May 17 . Lot # . F 228 . Discussed in the above thread .
One of the previous owners being John Ebbs. Several comments on the specifics to detail , recently found paperwork , fit and finish . Anyway , it became a " Bid Goes On " car @ 70,000.00

Last Saturday night . Mecum Kissimmee Lot # . S 166 . Exact same car right down to description and pictures , sells for 100,000.00 .
It appears if you are a Mecum marketer , Florida in Jan , beats Indy in May .To the tune of 30,000.00 . Plus cost of shipping 3 times and 2 detail jobs.
I have never seen this car , and visually , I'm sure the car pop's on the stage . However , if the new owner would have utilized say a specialist in evaluating the notes from above ... This owner COULD have potentially saved some cash . Rare example of a beautiful 442 , and that is exactly what I think it is .. JT