Early this year, I found a ’65 Roadster for my customer and friend Shaun Saunders in Scottsdale, AZ. He is always looking for good restoration candidates, which will eventually be sent to the RM Auctions in Scottsdale, AZ and Monterey, CA.
This car was a GREAT example – straight and solid and entirely complete and original, so I purchased the car for him, did some minimal metalwork on some minr rust problems on the bonnet, and then shipped him the car the first week of June. The plan was for this to be his Scottsdale car for January, 2016…
Then in the Fall, he got a call from RM asking if he could finish the car sooner – in time for the special auction in December at the Sotheby’s building in New York. This is the same auction two years ago where the record price for a Series 1 E-Type roadster was set. This seemed like a special opportunity, and so he agreed – and then while I was killing myself in September building the new shop, he was on the other side of the country at the same time, building this car!
Whenn he told me that the car was coming back to New York for this special event, I just blurted out, “I’m Going!”
And so I went – with a date this time!
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- As soon as we got the kids onto the school bus, we headed out of MD for the three hour trip up to New York City. Here we are passing from the state of New Jersey into New York – underwater! This is inside the Lincoln Tunnel.
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- And once you are out the other side, it turns into absolute automotive pandemonium! It’s like playing a video game – a total free-for-all!
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- And a distraction like this was the LAST thing I needed!
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- Driving by Carnegie Hall on the way to the hotel.
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- After we checked into the hotel, we headed out for a walk around 5th Avenue before heading to the auction later. This is Radio City Music Hall.
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- And this is the back door sort of – and the way you get up to the Late Show I think…
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- The big Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center!
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- 30 Rock!
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- This Cathedral really stood out right in the middle of the city!
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- Tiffany’s!
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- The Plaza Hotel at the southern end of Central Park.
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- My date for lunch at the Plaza!
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- The view from the top of our hotel looking north into central park…
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- …and down onto 56th street at The Russian Tea Room.
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- We made it over to the auction on the 10th floor of the Sotheby’s building at about 4:30 – just in time for a quick run-through of the cars before the exhibit closed and the cocktail hour started. The auction was titled “Driven By Disruption” – with a collection of 30 cars that “disrupted” automotive design…
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- We headed straight for the Jag as time was running short and we didn’t want to miss it if they DID in fact run everyone out at 5:00 sharp (buut they left this pen until at least 6:00…
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- Here I am! It was great to see a car that I personally, LITERALLY pulled out of a barn earlier this year – and that I had worked on and supplied parts for – looking this good, and representing the E-Type at this event!
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- This car semed a little out of place at the auction, but it was “wild” for sure, and this is a shot of Janie taking a closer look.
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- This is a 1963 Pontiac Bonneville once owned by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
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- 1959 BMW 507 – this car had great lines!
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- 1954 Pegaso Z-102 – I’m afraid I must admit that I have never even heard of it!
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- It was pretty cool though!
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- 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial
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- This was my favorite car – probaboy because it’s condition made me feel right at home and I am turing into an originality guy… Plus this car just looked like a time machine – like it would draw you right into the old movies – and it especially reminded me of Fred Astair’s ferrari racer in “On The Beach”
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- I just LOVE this – I don’t know why… Maybe it’s becuase it looks like something I could actually afford, looks like the cars I am constantly surrounded by, and looks like something I don’t have to be afraid of screwing up and can just jump in and have fun!
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- And with a cockpit with patina like this, jumping in was tough to resist!
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- 1956 Ferrari 290MM by Scaglietti
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- This car was the star of the show…
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- …custom built for Juan Miguel Fangio to drive in the 1956 Mille Miglia, where he placed 4th, it then went on to be driven by ALL of these men that same year and in competition in the years that followed – almost a perfect lineup of the best racing drivers of the era!
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- The car’s history was well documented and VERY impressive. The photo in the lower left corner of the drivers is amazing – blow it up and read the caption…
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- What a car… They are predictiing BIG numbers for this car…
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- 1953 ferrari 212 Inter Coupe
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- 1962 Aston Martin DB4/GT Zagato – the 14th of only 18 Zagato-bodied DB4s built, the body lines BLEW AWAY the standard, and very chunky in my opinion, DB4…
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- 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Sportabteilung”
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- This car was campaigned by the factory, and also expected to post some BIG numbers. Janie liked the interior – which she jokingly said was “burberry”…
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- 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet
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- 1934 Delage D8S Cabriolet
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- “Driven By Fashion”… There were beautiful things everywhere…
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- This was another key piece of the auction – though ALL of the cars were truly the cream of the crop… It had it’s own room complete with a beaded entry-way.
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- This is Janis Joplin’s 1964 Porsche 356SC Cabriolet – which she had painted up like this and apparently drove all over the place, seen often by her fans.
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- The car was found parked in the hotel parking lot on the day of her death, and was inherited by her siblings, who had it on loan and on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 20 years.
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- 2006 Lamborghini Concept S
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- I had to go out and buy all new clothes for the auction – I basically just own jeans and T-shirts, all of which are COVERED with little holes from weld spatter. But I looked pretty good in my new duds – especially when flanked by the two most beautiful things in New York City that night!
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- Finally it was time to start – this is a “selfie” of Shaun and I seated, ready, and both nervous! I must admit that I had also had ALOT of champagne during the cocktail hour!
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- One of the earlier cars to come across the block was Janis’s Porsche. I don’t know who pegs the value on these cars, but I said before the auction started that the $400-$600k estimate was WAY off, and predicted at least a million, so I was not surprised when it blew past that to finally settle on $1.6 million. Cars that are icons like this with this level of provenance are once in a lifetime buys, and the bidders who wanted it came prepared to PAY!
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- Right after Janis, the E-Type was up! We were all hoping for BIG things, and the auction started off quickly with an opening bid of $50k.
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- Then something CRAZY happend – the second bid was an attempted “knock-out punch” of $200k!
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- That freaked out everyone – including the other bidders, which I’m sure was the intent. The car finally settled in and hammered down for $270k – right in line with Shaun’s last 3 cars – all 1965-1967 roadsters. Oh Well – that’s good money, we don’t have to worry anymore (hey it was NO RESERVE!), and we can enjoy the rest of the auction!
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- The DB4 Zagato was a big hit, and was sold for the big bucks – $14-something million. I did not know it at the time, but we had just witnessed the most expensive British car ever sold!
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- It was soon time for the start of the show – which also did not dissapoint – $25.5 million BEFORE the buyer’s 10% premium – this was the second highest-priced car ever sold – bested only by last year’s 1962 Ferrari GTO…
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- The last car we watched was the blue Ferrari 500, but by this time I we were all hungry, so we headed back to Shaun’s hotel and enjoyed a steak dinner on the top floor overlooking the NEw york skyline, and boring our wives with stories of over 60 combined years of E-Type adventures!
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- Headed out the next morning, we drove right through Times Square. We had a BLAST in 24 short hours, and it was great fun to see the car and be a part of the whole experience on the “inside” sort of, but let me tell you, New York is EXPENSIVE! Janie and I had a drink in our hotel lobby bar before heading up for the night – and our bill for ONE beer and ONE glass of red wine was $37.00 – plus tip!!!
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- But just so you don’t think I’m leaving the garage and jeans behind and turning into a high-brow “afficianado”, I want to be completely truthful about the whole experience and show you this… I took this photo the next morning in the hotel room – YES – I spent the entire evening with this tag on my shirt – real high-class, huh?… By the way – the deformed thumbnail is where we are after 6-months since a littel shop “accident” – I put a razor sharp drill bit right through it while drilling out a spot-weld when the drill slipped, working on the front wing of a ’68 OTS. As a guy once told me, “You can take the boy out of the garage, but you can’t take the garage out of the boy…”
