Mopar Color Names

Mopars of the early 70's offered a line of special order colors with some of the most enjoyable, adventurous and creative names ever created. It's impossible not to be intrigued by colors like "Sassy Grass" and "Go-Mango". They had double entendres and spoke of the times.
The only trouble is that Plymouth and Dodge had different names and, even though they both used the same paint code, saying a Plymouth is "Plum Crazy" isn't correct. Plymouths are "In Violet".
I tend to obsess over such things (among others), so I've done a little research and created a page on my website with a table of Plymouth and Dodge color names for 1970 and 1971.

The page is at http://www.rickcarey.com/ColorNames.htm

The Best Coined-Word of the Year

Denise McCluggage tossed off absolutely the best coined-word of the year in her column titled "An Accidental Column" in the December 17, 2007 AutoWeek.
There is nothing "Accidental" about the following:

"If one could convert into fuel the miasma of self-satisfaction hovering over a smuggery of Prius drivers, any energy crisis would be averted."

"Smuggery". A marvelously evocative and descriptive term.

Thank you, Denise, for this addition to our lexicon.

No Wonder Christie's Axed Motorcars

Tonight Christie's capitalized on the interest in its Post-War and Contemporary art auction to make available a watch-only webcast of the sale, something it usually requires an active bidder number to do.
After watching Christopher Burge sell 62 of the 67 lots offered (92.5%) in just about two hours the business judgement which resulted in axing the Motorcars Department is apparent. The sale brought in $287,930,000 hammer and about $322,481,600 with a 12% buyer's premium. 22.6% of the lots sold under the low estimate, 48.4% sold over the high estimate, leaving only about 29% of the lots to sell within the pre-sale range.
Now, admittedly it takes a huge effort, massive amounts of capital and an immense overhead structure of specialists, managers, client services and other staff to pull off 67 consignments that are worth nearly a third of a billion dollars. To support it, on the other hand, Christie's earned something like $50 million from commissions and an unknown amount from profits and profit-sharing on guaranteed lots.
Some of the transactions were breathtaking, like Andy Warhol's "Muhammad Ali". Estimated at $2-3 million, the auction room was holding its collective breath when it sold for $8.8 million to a phone bidder. Warhol's "Liz", on the other hand, sold earlier in the sale for $21 million despite being estimated at $25-30 million.
What I know about the art market can be written on a small paper, but I do know enough to see that this market is very healthy, there are plenty of bidders and they have plenty of money, both collectively and individually.
Christie's made the decision to employ its resources and attention selling art rather than selling old motorcars.
On the strength of tonight's sale it's impossible to argue with that decision.

RM Does It In London

In its first auction in England, RM Auctions parlayed three exceptional collections (Bernie Ecclestone, Giuseppe Prevosti and Abba Kogan) into the top-grossing collector car sale ever held in the UK.
They did it not by a whisker, or even a step, but rather by nearly a factor of three more than the next highest-grossing sale held in the UK (Bonhams Goodwood Revival sale in 2004), with $37,857,923 in car lots sold, a 91.67% sale rate (77 sold of 84 offered). 29.9% of the lots sold were hammered down at a bid greater than RM's pre-sale high estimate.
Top lot of the sale was the 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster from Bernie Ecclestone's collection which hammered sold at an astounding £3,550,000, £3,905,000 with commission and $8,200,606 at the current exchange rate. In dollars (converted at the time of the sale) that is the third highest individual collector car transaction ever. The others were RM's recent sale of the Ferrari 330 TRI/LM in May for $9,277,126 and Christie's fabled sale of the Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe in 1987 for 5.5 million pounds sterling, $9,764,585 at the exchange rate at the time.
Exchange rates, and particularly the dollar's current swoon against the pound and Euro, complicate the comparison somewhat but nowhere near enough to change the qualitative conclusion that Rob Myers and the RM Auctions crew had a heck of a debut in London.

Barrett-Jackson Does Las Vegas

To the surprise of absolutely no one, yesterday Barrett-Jackson announced its third event, to be held in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Events Center Thursday through Saturday, October 16-18, 2008.

The similarity between the gratification action at a Barrett-Jackson auction and the gratification found in a high-roller weekend in Las Vegas has been widely used for years, so it's only natural to combine the two. Buyers who gamble away a portion of their bankroll before buying a car can explain that they just paid too much at the B-J auction for the car they finally buy with whatever's left. Everyone knows that people always pay too much at a B-J auction so it will be easy to accept the excuse.

Of course there is the problem with Las Vegas's motto, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Will auction buyers be able to get their cars home? Or will they have to leave them here in Vegas to be used next time they come to gamble, party and buy cars?

B-J's charity beneficiary for the Las Vegas show will be the Lili Claire Foundation, a charity founded to enhance the lives of childred living with Williams Syndrome, Down Syndrome and other neurogenetic disorders.

Gooding & Company Announces Scottsdale Auction

As if B-J, Russo and Steele, RM, Silver and Kruse (even a weekend later sweeping up any remaining no-sales) weren't enough last week Gooing & Company steppend into the January Arizona collector car auction fray with yet another sale.
They've tied up a site on Camelback adjacent to the Scottsdale Mall (just West of Scottsdale Road) but haven't committed to a date yet, preferring to say "during Scottsdale Auction Week".
Early consignments include:

• FCA Platinum-winning Ferrari Daytona Spyder;
• Packard Twelve with Custom Dietrich coachwork;
• Shelby Cobra 289;
• Ferrari 275 GTB/4;
• 1911 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp Silver Ghost Limousine;
• Maserati A6GCS Fantuzzi Spider.

Which, it must be said, beats heck out of more Hemi 'Cudas, Corvettes and Tupperware street rods.

Rick Carey

Barrett-Jackson's Las Vegas Invitation

Barrett-Jackson's invitation to its formal (finally) announcement of its 2008 Las Vegas auction at the Mandalay Bay arrived today. The date is October 29 ... of the announcement, that is.
The invitation came in a very neat package, albeit with a bordello-like black and red color scheme appropriate to Las Vegas, that folded up inside another folder. In the middle were two plastic-cased credentials.
The quality and creativity of the invitation, its presentation and delivery suggest that B-J's new management may also bring leadership and style.
It was a very classy presentation.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road
At Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale

Sometimes interesting information turns up in the oddest places.
For instance, while prowling around the Barrett-Jackson website at the "Sporsorship Opportunities" page the following figures turned up.

• B-J prints 10,000 folders to distribute "to event bidders, sponsors and consignors";
• They pre-print 60,000 General Admission event tickets [in addition to those that ticket buyers can print for themselves online];
• They print 25,000 credential lanyards for bidders, consignors, VIPs and sponsors (and media and staff and contractors.)

Those are informative numbers in the context of announced statistics.

Omega Subtly Responds

I got back from Hershey to discover that the Friday and Saturday editions of The Wall Street Journal had a subtle response by Omega watches to last week's article about auction finagling.
Friday had a full page color ad on the back of the front section; Saturday had a small color ad, but it was in the premier lower right corner position on the front page.
The ad? It featured an Omega "worn by John F. Kennedy at his inauguration ceremony on 20 January 1961." It concluded, "By courtesy of the OMEGA museum Bienne, Switzerland, who purchased this watch at the Guernsey's auction in December 2005 for USD 350,000."
In other words, in your face WSJ, we really are buying these watches at big money for our museum.
Very effective. Very subtle. Very refined and thoughtful. On the 1-5 scale, Omega gets a "1". They're concours perfect.

Rick Carey.

Hershey is Sweet for RM

RM Auctions held its first sale in Hershey during the AACA Fall Meet on Friday. Built around the amazing collection of Pat Swigart and his wife Helen, RM outdid itself, selling all but three of the 117 lots offered to a standing room only crowd in one of the Hershey Lodge ballrooms with the cars mostly displayed outside in tents.
The numbers speak for themselves: 97.4% sold, $12,323,320 changed hands, 47 sold under low estimate but another 25 sold over the high catalog estimate. The ballroom was full to the point where the fire marshall must have been having second thoughts.
When the 1911 Oldsmobile Limited sold (for $1,500,000 hammer, $1,650,000 with commission) a whole crowd of people left the ballroom but the remaining crowd was still SRO.
For those who have been predicting the demise of antique and classic car collecting, the median year (i.e., half older half newer) of the sold lots was 1931. A surprising number of the bidders who were there were (at least by the standards of the AACA) young, and they were as well informed as any group of collector car buyers in the world.
It was at least as impressive as RM's performance earlier this year in Maranello. Although Hershey is familiar territory the AACA and the Hershey crowd has been hostile to auctions for years and only slightly softened up by Don and Rob Williams' Hershey auction over the last few years.
High points other than the Limited were the DuPont Model G Le Mans Phaeton sold for $704,000; the Duesenberg Model J Murphy Dual Cowl Phaeton for $1,650,000, the 1912 Locomobile 6-48 Model M Sportsman Torpedo Tourer for $660,000, the Stutz DV32 Dual Cowl Phaeton for $797,500 and the 1911 Selden Model 40R Varsity Roadster for $220,000.

It was quite a show.

This is the Selden, one of very few built and only six known to survive but one of the most significant ... if infamous ... automobile marques in history.