The view from a "Skybox" at...
The view from a "Skybox" at Barrett-Jackson is inspiring to say the least.
Boy oh boy did I miss the boat this year. I had a sneaking feeling I should have paid the 500 smackers for a bidder's pass. Instead, I was there strictly as a journalist. But, I enjoyed the trip to sunny Arizona in the heart of the winter to check out the GM Heritage collection on the block.
It's just that I feel bad. I coulda bid on the '89 Corvette "Splash." That was GM's Challenge car that was also a show car. Or, another Vette I woulda bought that went for cheap was a C5R "show car." Okay, there was no real race to it, but the C5 chassis had the racing body kit. The car sold for a little over 50 G's. What can you get for that much money in a new Vette?
This Corvette "DR1" sold for...
This Corvette "DR1" sold for $286,000, a surprising figure for a narrow-body ZR1. The big deal was the body style was a convertible in a ZR1. Of course, the ZR1 production car was strictly a closed body style. This one was a GM custom built for engineering executive Don Runkle, and thus the DR label.
The auction started on Tuesday, January 6th. I flew down Thursday the 8th from Las Vegas with four of my friends from Texas. We nicknamed ourselves the Texas Riff Raff Wild Bunch. Two years ago, we crashed the CNN Skybox and hobnobbed with Wolf Blitzer.
One of the first persons I ran into Thursday at Barrett-Jackson was our good buddy Kevin Mackay, the famous Corvette restorer from "Corvette Repair" in Valley Stream, New York. I wanted his take on GM selling cars from their Heritage Collection. He shared "They've got so many cars. Even if they sold those cars, they're still not getting out of the hole. They're in the hole for billions. I mean billions." So, you think they should just keep them?" "Well, they have so many- four of one kind. You know, four 1989 ZR-1s? Keep the best one and get rid of the others." Kevin's opinion was GM didn't need the cars, but the money wouldn't make much difference, either.
"Snake Skinner" sold for $176,000....
"Snake Skinner" sold for $176,000. This experimental Corvette's advantage came from its lightweight (less than 2500 pounds?) and the hot ZR1 "Black Widow" engine.
Lance had mixed emotions about GM selling off their heritage. He said, "I was like a kid in a candy store when I walked into the GM tent. Then, I looked at the cars and could see the dust and it kind of made me feel sick inside." "You hate to see the cars disseminated?" "Exactly. You don't know where any of this stuff is going. For instance, I'm a guy that loved the Snake Skinner. I grew up reading the magazines and loving the cars. I tried to step up to the plate, but it goes somewhere else. Who knows what he's going to do with it. It might be gone forever. So yeah, mixed emotions."
A good buy was car #1599 in...
A good buy was car #1599 in the brochure, the Splash Challenge Corvette. This racing car is basically brand new, always owned by GM. Lance Miller thought he was still bidding on this Corvette when the gavel went down at $71,500. So, was he short-hammered?
Early on, my Texas Riff Raff Wild Bunch met at the press tent to put together our plan to see all the GM Heritage cars we could. I leafed through the huge Barrett-Jackson catalog with pictures and descriptions of the cars to cross the auction block. BJ also published a separate full-color catalog for the GM Heritage Collection. Finding the cars on the grounds wasn't so easy. Many of the cars were close together in two different tents. Mixed among the regular production Corvettes offered for sale, I had to read signs to nail down which car was which.