1966 Lamborghini 350GT brings $742,500 at Russo and Steele | Photos by Larry Edsall
Russo and Steele Arizona 2014 at a glance
Total sales
$19 million
Catalog
751 automobiles
Sell-through rate
61 percent
High sale
$742,500
1966 Lamborghini 350GT
Next 9 price range
$187,000 to $335,500
Next auction
June 19-21, Newport Beach, CA
Drew Alcazar tries to put 2010 out of his mind. But he cannot.
“Rewind the tape to 2010, to the Wednesday night gala party that year, and you remember looking down those two 860-foot tents and they were filled with kick-ass car,” said the founder of the Russo and Steele classic car auction company. “That was our breakout year, our (10th) anniversary year. We had arrived. Russo and Steele was here!”
But suddenly it went from breakout to breakdown. A microburst struck the Russo and Steele auction site on Thursday, the opening day of the sale, toppling tents and damaging cars.
“That was heartbreaking,” Alcazar said, adding how proud he was of his team and how grateful he was to consigners and others who helped put together a two-day sale of what remained.
“The team and the customer loyalty,” Alcazar said. “They did that for (his wife) Josephine and me. That was astounding to see that level of support.”
Since then, he added, Russo and Steele has been working its way back. Last year, it doubled its schedule with new two new auctions and then this January “it all came full circle” with a Scottsdale sale that did $19-million in business, better than an 18-percent increase compared to the same 2013 event.
“Our revenues were up big time,” Alcazar said, adding. “if there was anybody who was due, it was our gang, and nothing could be more gratifying than to see them rewarded this year, to see them with the grin back on their faces.”
1966 Dodge Charger
And not only did total sales increase, but so did the sell-through rate, a credit, Alcazar said, to an improved quality of cars crossing the block.
Russo and Steele operates in what Alcazar calls the “sweet meat” mid-section of the classic car market, focusing on cars selling between $50,000 and $500,000.
“The mid-market stuff had been the most adversely affected by the financial ‘correction’ of 2007,” he said, “the home-builder buys, the mid-level executives who used to get nice bonuses.
“But that middle market is starting to show, demonstrating signs of recovery,” he added.
I may be a girl, I may be 19, but I have the most badass car a girl my age could own. I own a 1968 Chevy Chevelle Concours. It’s an automatic with a 307 cubic inch. It’s not a big motor but it’s estimated it has about 200 horsepower, which is better then any of my friends’ Toyotas or Hondas.
I got it from Quartz Hill by Palmdale, Calif., when it was a “junker.” On blocks, with more dents then you could count and a hole in the roof and animals living inside it and no engine. The guy was just selling it for some money for his son’s college education.
I saw it and I fell in love.
It was a fixer upper, but being my dad was a mechanic and I was 14 and ready to work.
Me, my dad and the whole neighborhood spent hours well into the nights and every weekend building it. I had a vision. It would be the Tigger Car Part II, a tribute to what my mom drove when I was younger, a 1972 orange Chevelle with black SS stripes dubbed the Tigger Car after the cartoon tiger in Winnie the Pooh.
Of course it didn’t turn out exactly like that, but it turned out great!
I was 15 1/2 when we took the car down to its first show. I was in young rodders category at a local show. While the car barely ran and had no paint or interior done on balding tires, I won first place.
Two years later I sent it off for paint, coming back a bright hugger orange and a vinyl top with no dents and beautiful.
We continued to fix it and when I turned 17 I drove it for the first time. It was amazing! I took that car around the block by myself and I saw how much work and effort everyone put into it and I loved it.
What really touches me is that I can drive my car anywhere now and be reminded that this may be my car, but honestly it’s everyone’s car. My dad and his friends and the whole neighborhood, we’re all one big family and almost every part came from one of them. I wouldn’t be anywhere if I didn’t have my “car family,” which is really what classic cars build, not a car but a memento and a tribute to the love and strength of a family.
Not just your own either, but anyone who got their hands dirty. It doesn’t matter how much drama happens in life, because I know that in the heart and soul of my car, I have a family.
Cars and more covered by structures stretching eight-tenths of a mile at Barrett-Jackson | Photos by Larry Edsall
Barrett-Jackson Arizona 2014 at a glance
Total sales
More than $113 million
Catalog
More than 1,400 vehicles
Sell-through rate
99.6 percent
High sale
$3.85 million
1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Coupe
Next 9 price range
$990,000 to $2.86 million
Next auction
April 11-13 in Palm Beach, FL
With a record $113-million in sales, with a new television package setting standards for high ratings, and with all of it happening in a spanking new arena, was there anything about the 43rd Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction that didn’t bring a big smile to Craig Jackson’s face?
“Everything went better than you could have hoped,” said Jackson, chief executive and chairman of the auction house co-founded by his father. “Sure, there were teething pains with the new building, but even that was better than you could have hoped for (and attendance also set a record, more than 300,000 people visiting the WestWorld complex during the auction).
“And we made magic (on the block and on television). The Fox broadcast pulled huge ratings; we were No. 3 for the weekend behind football and basketball games,” Jackson said, adding on each of the four Fox channels that carried parts of the auction, “on every network we exceeded their normal ratings.
“Here’s a great one,” he added, “I beat Fox Sports 1 when we were on Fox Sports 2. We pulled more viewers on a network half the size!”
‘The Rebel” Corvette
And yet, Jackson said, with viewers having to switch among four channels, there was some confusion. “I wish everybody could have found us,” he said, adding that, “We spent a lot of time on social media trying to direct people.”
Nearly 1,400 vehicles were sold during the auction. Of those cars, 14 were sold to benefit charities, which this year benefited to the tune of $4.4 million. The sale of a 2014 COPO Chevrolet Camaro sent $700,000 to the Achilles Freedome Team of Wounded Veterans, a 2014 Camaro Z/28 earned $650,000 for Cornerstone Schools, and a 1966 Ford F-100 Shelby custom added $450,000 to the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan Foundation. Other beneficiaries included the Armed Forced foundation ($750,000 for the sale of a car and an airplane), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation ($300,000 from the first public sale of a 2015 Ford Mustang GT), and the list goes on.
Eight vehicles sold for $1 million or more during the auction, led by a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 for $3.85 million and the 1969 Corvette Rebel race car for $2.86 million. Also exceeding $2 million was a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Gullwing” coupe presented on the block with famed auto racer Sir Stirling Moss in the passenger’s seat.
“Selling the two L88 (Corvettes) during the Fox broadcast and both setting records, and then during National Geographic (channel) coverage selling the Gullwing with Sir Stirling in it,” Jackson said. “It was an honor to have him there, and it was a spur of the moment thing, but it was shown on the big screen in Times Square in New York!”
But while those were great moments, Jackson said, what he likely will remember longest about the auction was the moment that Don “The Snake” Prudhomme drove a nitro-burning Hot Wheels funny car onto the auction block.
Jackson revealed that the magical moment had been rehearsed the night before so the Scottsdale fire department could give its approval to fire up such a car inside a building.
Speaking of that building — the massive new pavilion forming the cornerstone for an L-shaped unit of buildings and tents that stretched eight-tenths of a mile — it not only provided good air exchange but permanent bathrooms and an environment in which weather is not an issue.
The Hot Wheels cars — two racers and the trucks that hauled them during their historic series of races — didn’t sell on the block, but a deal was done immediately afterward for them to be purchased by NASCAR racing team owner, car collector and mega auto dealer Rick Hendrick.
“It was win-win at the end of the day,” Jackson said, who said Prudhomme was adamant that the set of four historic vehicles stay together.
“The Snake is happy where the cars are going. Rick’s happy to get them, but now, he said, he has to figure out where to put them.”
This FJ40 brought $71,500 at Bonhams Arizona auction |Photos by Larry Edsall
When we decided to launch a weekly series entitled “Future Classics,” one of the first vehicles on our list was the Toyota FJ40.
However, while wandering through the tents, buildings and parking lots of vehicles being offered up for bids during Arizona Auction Week, we wondered if the FJ might not be a future classic but already a classic.
We counted 14 of them in the Barrett-Jackson catalog. There also were a couple at Russo and Steele, one at Silver (plus an FJ45 pickup version), and even Bonhams, RM and Gooding & Company each had one FJ cross its block.
But we still feel justified in calling the FJ40 a future classic.
For one thing, they have yet to be included in the Hagerty Price Guide of collectible cars, which lists only Toyota’s 2000GT, 1980 Celica Supra and the various and ensuing Supras (which became a separate model line) as classics.
On the other hand, the Kelley Blue Book Official Guide for Early Model Cars does include 1963-83 FJ40s, and notes that you can expect as much as $53,900 for one in excellent condition.
Prices at the Arizona auctions ranged from the very high teens to $101,750 for a 1977 FJ40 Land Cruiser at RM. The 1978 model at Bonhams brought $71,500. Typically, however, prices were in the $25,000 to $50,000 range.
1966 FJ40 at Russo and Steele
Although they aren’t include in Hagerty’s price guide (something we figure will change with the next edition of that book), McKeel Hagerty will tell you that early SUVs and classic pickups are the up-and-coming collector vehicles, in part because they’re cool, in part because they’re versatile (you can still actually use them on a frequent basis), and in part because they’re still affordable.
OK, so they’re a little less affordable at classic car auctions, but you can find them at classic car dealerships, used car lots and being sold by private owners for less than $20,000.
The FJ40 traces its roots back to the original Jeeps that carried U.S. soldiers in World War II. When the U.S. military found itself fighting a few years later on the Korean peninsula, the Army hired Toyota to produce an updated version, one better suited to the rugged, hilly Korean topography.
That original BJ (B stood for the Toyota engine and J for Jeep) was succeeded by the FJ series, first an FJ20 and then the FJ40, which soon became the vehicle of choice for people around the world who had to deal with mountains, deserts, jungles and other extreme and unpaved environments.
Chevota? Toyota FJ40 with Chevy V8 engine at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2014
The first motorcars were steered by means of a tiller, just like motorboats. The driver held the end of a bar that, through a series of joints and gears, was attached to the front wheel — remember, the first car was a three-wheeler — and later to the front wheels, which changed direction when the driver pulled or pushed the tiller.
It is believed that it was in 1894 that one Alfred Vacheron first outfitted his car, a Panhard he was driving in the Paris-Rouen rally, with a steering wheel instead of a tiller atop the driver’s end of the steering column. We also know that by 1898 French automakers Panhard and Bollee were installing steering wheels rather than tillers on the cars they were producing.
Today, steering wheels are covered — even cluttered — with all sorts of switchgear designed to make it easy for the driver to adjust everything from a vehicle’s audio system to its HVAC, with paddles to change gears and buttons to make telephone calls.
But such things really are nothing new. Once upon a time, not only the direction in which a car traveled but such things as gear selection and fuel supply (and you thought cruise control was a new-fangled invention) were controlled from the steering wheel, or at least by levers or switches attached to the wheel or steering column rather than by pedals mounted on the vehicle’s floorboard.
Today’s Eye candy presents some vintage — and in some cases quite colorful — steering wheels we’ve seen in recent weeks.
What do we do when we erase patina, when we cover over the historic evidence of the object’s travel through time to the present day? What do we do when we eliminate the very finger prints of the past by restoring cars to “original,”or “improving”them to make them better drivers or more successful racers? Once the evidence of an object’s travel through time disappears, history disappears. For an historical object to lose its history is to lose its reality, the only thing of any great value in the first place.
—Miles Collier, The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles
If you’ve ever watched Antiques Roadshow on your local PBS television station, you no doubt have seen the reaction when one of the Keno brothers tells someone their family-heirloom, circa-1750 Queen Anne cherrywood bookcase on desk is worth $5,000 — its value would be $120,000 had grandpa not refinished it.
Can you imagine one of them saying the same thing to the owner of a classic car while it is displayed on the fairway at Pebble Beach, where the brothers — experts not only in old furniture but in old cars — serve as judges?
Don’t laugh. It could happen.
In fact, it already has, perhaps not at Pebble Beach but at the recent Arizona auctions.
We quote Miles Collier, automotive historian and passionate preservationist, and mention that cherry-wood case and desk in the aftermath of the recent classic car auctions in Arizona. At Gooding & Company’s Scottsdale auction someone paid nearly $1.9 million for a dirty, dusty 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL “gullwing” with ripped interior and torn headliner that had been found after being parked for several decades in a garage. At that very same auction, someone, presumably someone else, bought a seemingly identical, black-with-red interior ’56 gullwing, except this one had been completely restored with gleaming paint, gorgeous interior and was ready for the road — and yet it sold for a mere $1.4 million.Did someone really pay half a million dollars for dust and wear and tear?
Which car is with more: Unrestored “barn-find” or fully restored version?
“It was a very significant car in that it was an ‘unknown’ car to the collecting hobby and that’s certainly worth something,” said Garth Hammers, a car specialist at Gooding. “It had its original paint, and that probably should be in boldface print. They made 1,400 gullwings, and how many still have their original paint? Twenty, maybe 25.
“We have pretty stark and equal comparisons at this auction,” he added, noting the pair of black-and-red gullwings in the same catalog.
“The fact is, the original car is less replaceable than the restored car. I drove the restored car more than 100 miles and it is the best-driving Gullwing I’ve ever been in. Everything was perfectly attended to and dialed in.
“But the car originally was red with a plaid interior. There’s a premium for original black cars, just like there is for original Rudge cars. Black was not as rare a color as you might think, I think they made around 100 of them. But over the years, a number have been painted other colors. Now, more and more are going back to their original color combinations (which can add $100,000 to the vehicle’s price when it is sold).”
Combine originality and rarity with a car that had been forgotten in storage for several decades and collectors get excited.
“It was the market speaking on an iconic car that has not been restored,” Hammers said.
And that dusty gullwing wasn’t the only unrestored car that drew a lot of attention — and money — at Goodings’ Scottsdale auction. A dingy (can any Ferrari really be termed “dingy?”) 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS that had been parked in a garage in Pennsylvania since an engine fire in 1969 sold for more than $2 million.
The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles was published in 2012 by the Simeone Automotive Foundation and presented the case for preservation instead of restoration. Collier and the Keno brothers wrote chapters for the book. Last fall, Collier and Leslie Keno were part of a panel that spoke about the Art of the Automobile before the RM/Sotheby’s auction in New York City.
As Collier noted in New York, “The vast majority of restorations are not original restorations. They are re-restorations of cars already restored once, twice, three times.”
What Collier and others like is the growing trend in the classic car hobby to apply “archival standards” that preserve rather than recreate history.
At that same seminar, Peter Mullin, who in addition to his own collection and museum is chairman of the Petersen Automotive Museum, said that in the last few years, collectors in the United States have “awakened to the fact that you ought to preserve things if they’re still in their original state.
[pullquote]
You put your hands on the steering wheel that Rene Dryfus set a record with and you don’t want to change that.”
— Peter Mullin
[/pullquote]“You spend a quarter-of-a-milion or $350,000 restoring,” Mullin said, “and it’s worth less than if you hadn’t done anything to it.
“We’re very much in the mode of appreciating originality, provenance. Original leather smells different. You put your hands on the steering wheel that Rene Dryfus set a record with and you don’t want to change that.
“But,” he added, “(unlike collectors in Europe) the U.S. has come to the table slowly on this subject.”
Slowly, but surely. Hammers noted that judges at a major concours d’elegance, the Elegance at Hershey, last year awarded best-in-show honors to an unrestored car, Robert and Sandra Bahre’s 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300B Touring Spider. The car was repainted in 1950 but otherwise had been left as is.
It was only the third time such a car had won such honors. In 1989, another Bahre car, a 1934 Packard 1108 sport phaeton with LeBaron bodywork, was best American car at the Meadow Brook concours in Michigan. In 2010, yet another of the Bahres’ cars, a 1940 Duesenberg SJ with Rollson coachwork, was honored as the best “domestic” car at the Fairfield County (Conn.) concours, where Mullin’s 1931 Bugatti Type 54 got the other Grand Prix d’Honneur award as best “foreign” car.
Bob Bahre, said Jeff Orwig, curator of the Bahre Collection, “has a philosophy that a great car is a great car regardless of its condition, and if it’s an unrestored car, that makes it greater yet.
“He had the foresight to figure this out some 30 years ago. When he found cars, their lack of perfection didn’t phase him.”Orwig said Bahre had a group of cars that didn’t leave the building because the hosts of shows and concours didn’t find them pretty enough. “Anyone else would have restored or sold them,” Orwig said.
Instead, Orwig said, when others also began to see the beauty through the dust, “suddenly, he (Bahre) is a hero.
Orwig said the cars are cleaned and kept in good mechanical working condition and can be driven.
“You change fluids and belts, the normal mechanical maintenance,” he said. “If a component fails, you make it functional without impacting its outward appearance unless you absolutely have to.
“They’re only original once,” Orwig said of Bahre’s philosophy.
Or maybe not… The inaugural Arizona Concours d’Elegance was held on the eve of Arizona Auction Week. Among the cars arrayed on the lawns within the Arizona Biltmore was the world’s oldest remaining Alfa-Romeo, a 1921 Alfa-Romeo G1, that looked like it had just completed the Mille Miglia race (see photo).
In fact, the former racing car had been converted for regular road use after its racing career and later served as a farm implement in Australia. But when Tony Shooshani of Beverly Hills, Calif., bought the car in 2012, he thought its history should be preserved so he asked Craig Calder of FastCars Ltd. in Redondo Beach to do what Shooshani calls a “destoration” to return the car to its original look and operating capabilities.
The Alfa won an award last summer in the pre-war open-wheel racing class at Pebble Beach. Shooshani hopes to drive the car on the modern Mille in Italy, and to continue show it for several more years before letting it live out the rest of its life in an Italian car museum.
Each month, the Simeone exercises its historic racing cars | Photos by Larry Nutson
The inscription above the entrance to the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia reads: “The first race was conceived when the second car was built.”
Inside, the museum showcases one of the greatest collections of racing sports cars in the world. Assembled over a span of 50 years by renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Frederick Simeone, the museum contains more than 60 of the rarest racing cars ever built.
The quality of the collection is so outstanding that the Simeone recently was honored as museum of the year by the International Historic Motoring Awards.
The collection comprises sports cars with fenders and lights and bodywork that fully encloses the chassis. For the most part, the cars are two-seaters.
The cars are displayed in dioramas that represent the famous venues where these cars actually competed. The displays also illustrate the development of sports car road racing, here in the U.S. and internationally.
Displays include racing in the early 1900s, the pre-World War I era, Sebring, Watkins Glen, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Mille Miglia, Targo Florio, Brooklands, Nurburgring, NASCAR, and more.
A unique feature of the Simeone is that the cars get driven. Once each month, visitors are treated to a specific lecture program that includes cars being driven by Simeone and museum curator Kevin Kelly around a paved, three-acre parcel in the rear of the museum.
Demonstration Days take place on the fourth Saturday of each month and are specifically themed to present a selection of three or four different cars that perhaps competed against each other.
Because the Simeone has had enormous success with its monthly Demonstration Days, it has expanded its schedule for 2014, adding a “Racing Legends” series at noon on the second Saturday of each month.
These events will be more technical in nature and will feature a lecture on the designated topic for that day. Cars from the collection, and from other collections, will be used to illustrate the presentation. Afterward, one or more of the cars will be demonstrated, weather permitting.
It is noteworthy that these vintage racers don’t run on today’s low-octane unleaded fuel. Sunoco is the fuel sponsor for the museum and provides high-octane aviation fuel to allow proper operation of the racers.
The Simeone also has a mobile phone app featuring more than four hours of audio about the cars and exhibits in the collection. Fred Simeone narrates the tour, which includes fascinating details about the history and the significance of each car.
The mobile app includes 86 stops on the tour, each accompanied by a photo of the car or venue, and a brief text description. The audio length varies for each stop, but averages several minutes.
The mobile app is free and is available for either Andriod phones or iPhones). To find the app, search the appropriate store for “Simeone Museum.”
Among other recent events, three-time Le Mans winner Hurley Haywood received the 2013 Spirit of Competition Award last November at a gala fundraising dinner at the Simeone Museum. The award is given annually to a person who exemplifies the “spirit of competition.”
Most recently, the Library of Congress has launched a national registry of historically significant vehicles, each of them certified by The Department of the Interior through collaboration with the Historical Vehicle Association. The first vehicle to be entered onto the registry is a 1964 Shelby Daytona Coupe — CSX2287 — one of six such race cars produced by Carol Shelby to take on Ferrari in the global GT racing series. The honored Shelby Daytona Coupe (see photo) is owned by the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum.
To start planning your road trip to Philadelphia, visit www.simeonemuseum.org. The museum is located not far from I-95.
Mercedes-Benz display at 1955 Frankfurt auto show | Photos courtesy of Mercedes-BenzSLs introduced at 1954 NY moto sports show
Automakers spend millions of dollars on commercials that proclaim the joys of driving their newest vehicles. But one of them has gone out of its way to draw attention to a pair of cars it introduced 60 years ago, cars it now proclaims as the “value retention” champions.
The cars are the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL and 190 SL, which were introduced to the public — the 190 in prototype form — in February 1954 at the International Motor Sports Show in New York City. A few years later, a 300 SL roadster replaced the gullwing coupe.
“Experts and the public were equally enthralled,” Mercedes proclaims in its news release, adding that, “Today, the fascination with the first two production vehicles in the exquisite SL sports car linage is more alive than ever. No wonder then that both SL models are especially valuable classics.”
How valuable? The cars, Mercedes continues, “count among the most valuable historic vehicles in the world. This is underlined by the presence of all three at the top of the Mercedes-Benz Classic Index (MBCI) published by Historic Automobile Group International (HAGI). Originality and authenticity are particularly important here.”
The Historic Automobile Group International (www.historicautogroup.com) is a London-based investment research house that focuses on classic cars as investments. Its monthly index is published on the Financial Times website.
According to HAGI, Mercedes notes in its news release 60 years after the release of the original SLs, “the average increase in value of the 190 SL is around 10 per cent per year since 1980; however in the last 10 years it was even higher at over 11 per cent. For the 300 SL Coupé, the average since 1980 is 11 per cent, but for the last 10 years the figure is almost 18 per cent, which corresponds to a quadrupling of the value since 2004.
1955 300 SL brochure
“In the case of the 300 SL Roadster, the rise in value since 1980 is almost 13 per cent.
“For the 29 Gullwings that were built with aluminium bodywork, cars which are seen extremely rarely in the market, an average increase in value of more than 16 per cent can be demonstrated.
“A vehicle’s performance is predicated on it being maintained in first-rate condition or having been superbly restored, both of which are associated with substantial costs,” the automaker adds, and then continues:
“The main difference between the 190 SL and its larger cousins is its absolute price, which is not yet much different to that of a complete restoration. A perfect example is valued by the MBCI at just under the 200,000 euro ($271,694) mark.
“It’s a different story with the 300 SL: cars that are complete, but in poor overall condition, still trade for sums as high as 500,000 euros ($679,237). With one of the rare aluminium-bodied coupés, the price is always in the order of several million euros, regardless of condition.
“In the MBCI, the 190 SL ranks directly behind classics such as the 300 SL Coupé and Roadster, the S-Series of the 1920s and the legendary 500 K and 540 K. It is also worth noting that prices for the 230/250/280 SL “Pagoda” model series W 113 are increasing massively.”
The news release goes on to note that classic cars annually generate 14 billion euros ($19 billion) a year in business just in Germany.
It also reminds us that Mercedes built 1,400 300 SLs gullwings between 1954 and 1957, 1,858 roadsters from 1957-63. It also built 25,881 190 SLs from 1955-63, and 16,500 of them had removable hardtops.
Design drawings of 190 SL by chief body designer Walter Hacker
A crank and a cloud and the Blue Bird lives again | National Motor Museum
The famed “Blue Bird” Sunbeam that Sir Malcolm Campbell drove to several land speed records returned to life Wednesday at the National Motor Museum in England.
The car was the brainchild of Sunbeam chief engineer and racing team manager Louis Coatalen and was constructed at the company’s works in Wolverhampton in 1919 and early 1920.
After World War I, cars powered by aircraft engines vied for speed records. The Sunbeam was equipped with a modified 18.322-liter Manitou Arab aero engine, a type typically used on naval seaplanes.
Campbell bought the car from Kenelm Lee Guinness, who drove it to a record speed of 133.75 miles per hour at Brooklands in 1922.
Campell had the car painted and gave it its nickname. In 1924 he drove it 146.16 mph at the Pendine Sands in South Wales. He returned the following year and reached 150.76 mph.
The car moved into the then-new National Motor Museum in 1972. Its engine was tested in 1993 but a blocked oil line caused it to seize. It went back on display with a hole in its engine where the piston and connecting rod had exited the block.
In 2007 the ’93 damage was examined. The rod had gone through the side of the crankcase, scoring the crank shaft and damaging three pistons and valves. Volunteers did much of the manual work, which took 2,000 hours and donations from several suppliers.
“This project has been a long-running labor of love for the whole team,” said Doug Hill, the museum’s chief engineer. “There is huge satisfaction in seeing it finally completed.
“However, there is more that we still want to do and our next objective is to research the design of the original gearbox – all original drawings and records were lost when the Sunbeam factory was bombed during WWll — so that we can restore the car to the full 1920s specification, as driven to two world land speed records by Sir Malcolm Campbell at Pendine Sands in 1924 and 1925.”
The Sunbeam’s engine will be run again at the Retromobile classic car show in February in Paris. Afterward, the car returns to the museum as part of a new display, For Britain & For The Hell Of It – the story of British land speed records. That exhibition opens Easter weekend.
2014 and 1949 Beetles | Photos courtesy VW Group of AmericaAh, such simplicity
February 9 marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The ensuing British invasion certainly had an impact on American youth culture.
But it was the arrival of another type of Beetle that not only arrived first, but that had a larger impact, perhaps not on American youth culture but on American car culture and drivers of all ages.
It was in January 1949 that the first Volkswagen Type 1, the car that would be beloved by the nickname it gained from its beetle-like shape, arrived in the United States.
That first Beetle was shipped to New York City by Dutch businessman Ben Pon Sr., the first official Volkswagen importer. Believe it of not, only two such Beetles were purchased that year by American drivers,. Yet before the end of the year, Volkswagen of America had established its U.S. headquarters on the East Coast, and by the mid-1950s more than 35,000 Beetles were on American roads.
Inexpensive to buy and to operate, VW Beetles became popular with economy-minded drivers and by Americans who saw Detroit as part of the stifling Establishment. By the end of the ‘60s, more than 400,000 “bugs” were being sold each year in the U.S.
An anniversary news release from VW notes that, “from custom paint jobs to open-top Dune Buggy bodies, the Beetle fit perfectly into the counter-culture of the 1960s.”
“Since its arrival in the United States 65 years ago, the Volkswagen Beetle has preserved its reputation of being more than just a car, but a symbol of uniqueness and freedom,” Michael Horn, president of what now is known as Volkswagen Group of America, said in the anniversary announcement.
“The Beetle has become part of the cultural fabric in America and we are proud that its rich heritage continues to live with fans around the States,” he added.
The original Beetles with their air-cooled and rear-mounted engines continued to be offered in the U.S. marketplace through 1977. Other, more modern cars replaced the “Bug” as the mainstay of the VW lineup. But 21 years later, a New Beetle, a contemporary car with its engine in front and with five-star safety protection for those riding inside — but also with delightfully retro styling — relaunched the Beetle brand and presence in the U.S.
