Nine vehicles and the trademarks to the Cord automotive marque sold for six figures at Leake Auction Company’s Dallas Fall sale in late November.
“This was an extraordinary auction,” Richard Sevenoaks, Leake president, said in a news release after the sale. “We were very successful with the debut of our Platinum Series in Dallas, which included nine unique cars, like the Glenn Pray Duesenberg. The response to this series was incredible, and we are excited about its future growth.”
The Glenn Pray Duesenberg, a 1978 dual-cowl sport phaeton known as the “last Duesenberg,” sold for $310,750 (prices include buyer’s premium).
Pray, an Oklahoma high school teacher, bought the remains of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg companies in the 1960s. In 1978, he pulled molds from a Duesenberg Model J Durham Tourister, added a sweep panel in the Le Grande style, and used many period-accessories from his ACD inventory to build the sport phaeton around an Auburn V12 engine that had been used in a fire truck.
The Pray Duesenberg was the lead vehicle in Leake’s new Platinum Series, a group of higher-end classics.
Sevenoaks said he got the idea of offering a small but exclusive group of such vehicles after seeing the success Barrett-Jackson has had at Scottsdale in the last couple of years with its Salon / 5000 Series Collection of high-end collector cars.
The nine Platinum Series vehicles offered at the Dallas auction helped boost the sale to $10.5 million and a record 76-percent sell-through rate, Leake reported. In all, 502 vehicles crossed the two-lane auction block over the course of the three-day sale.
Also offered for sale were a pair of trademarks to the rights to the Cord Automobile company. Pray held those rights. He died in 2011 at the age of 85.
Earlier sales of the rights to Duesenberg produced a $1 million transaction and the Auburn name sold for $500,000. The Cord trademarks brought $242,000 at the Dallas auction.
Other top sales at the event were:
- 1965 Shelby Cobra, $162,250
- 1963 Chevrolet Corvette, $146,300
- 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton, $143,000
- 1956 Chevrolet Nomad, $134,200
- 1970 Plymouth Superbird, $110,000
- 1963 Chevrolet Corvette “fuelie,” $108,900
- 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, $106,700
- 1985 Ferrari Testarossa, $104,500
Leake launches its 2015 sales calendar with an auction February 20-21 at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds, where another Platinum Series of vehicles will be offered.
