Every year in mid-May, the giant Mecum Spring Classic muscle-car auction descends on the Indiana State Fairgrounds here in Indianapolis. It lasts for six days; easily 2,000 cars roll by the auctioneer in that time. The auction gets almost no publicity here. I would never have known about it had I not won tickets on a radio-station contest six years ago. But I’ve never missed it since.
The cars are overwhelmingly carefully restored (with the requisite drivetrain swaps and sometimes outright fakery – GTOs that started life as LeManses and such); some are resto-modded. There are so many Camaros, Mustangs, Hemi Cudas, Super Bees, 442s, GTOs, et al, that pretty quickly you quit even noticing them. “Oh,” you say to yourself, “another damned Boss Mustang. Moving on.” But ten or 15 percent of these cars aren’t muscle cars, such as this 1948 Oldsmobile. That’s where the auction begins to get interesting.
Where this year’s auction really got interesting was that there were a big handful of unrestored cars. I think I saw one or two last year, and none in any of the years before that. This ’48 Olds with Hydra-Matic is among the unrestored classics. It has just 2,148 miles on its clock, so some little old lady must have bought this car and hardly ever drove it, and then her kids and grandkids inherited it and didn’t know what to do with it.
Most of the unrestored cars at this year’s Mecum Spring Classic hadn’t racked up very many miles. I wouldn’t have guessed that this 1958 Impala convertible was all original, but I met the owner as he was wiping the dust off his new purchase and he filled me in on his car.
I looked harder, and the only sign I could see was that the car’s upholstery showed signs of repeated use. Otherwise, this car looks showroom new. Really, that’s a tipoff itself – most of the cars here are in better condition than when they rolled off the factory line.
This ’64 Chrysler 300K might be my favorite unrestored car from the day I spent at the auction this year. The owner cleaned it up well, and from a distance it looks as good as any other car on the floor here.
But get up close and you can see it: the paint is dull, and full of rock dings.
The hood has it worst, of course.
Even the interior looks well lived in. Everything’s there, though.
Ok, this is just a gratuitous shot of Chrysler’s great squarish steering wheel.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, here’s a burned out ’66 Charger. Not only did somebody buy this heap, but somebody else taped a note to the hood offering the buyer $2,800 to take it off his hands.
The charred remains of two service manuals lay in this Charger’s wayback.
I wouldn’t have guessed this ’67 Rambler Rebel was original if the info page in the window hadn’t said so.
Every year at the auction I see cars I’ve heard of, but had ever seen only in photos. This 1970 Chrysler VG Valiant was one of them this year. I spotted its rectangular headlights from across the room and knew exactly what I was looking at.
This Valiant came a long way to be in this auction. It could stand an industrial-strength cleaning. It would be very weird to this Yank to have to operate the radio with my left hand.
Yep, it’s got a Hemi.
This 1971 Dodge Demon is another of the more obviously used examples. It still looks pretty good from a distance.
When you get up close, though, you can really see the wear and tear. This one’s paint has been abraded in many places.
Most of the switchgear is missing inside this Demon.
In contrast, this ’76 Eldorado looks like it was barely ever touched. But that’s not surprising given it’s rolled for only 19,000 miles.
This one’s got “cream puff” written all over it. It’s a fuel-injected Eldo, which is apparently on the rare side.
I take hundreds of photos at each year’s Mecum Spring Classic. Over 2,000 of them are in a set in my Flickr space – if you want to kill the rest of your morning, click here to see them.
That Eldo dashboard would look at home in an Impala. Better yet, a Chevette. GM was crap then, too, but we just didn’t know any better at the time. Of course, we were young then, too. However, just knowing there’s probably a 500 under that football-field-long hood makes it all better. Got any stumps you need pulled? Do it in style!
I remember as a kid being disappointed by these dashes, too. They weren’t any higher quality or any more distinctive than the dash in my dad’s ’71 Impala.
These were ‘allegedly’ the Last Convertibles. A lot of people bought them as investments and just stored them thinking they’d be worth big bucks now 35+ years later. Unfortunately they cost approximately $12,000 new in 1976 (and some dealers charged big premiums over list) but at today’s inflation rate and dollar value it cost the equivalent of $47,739.48 then. High current sale price for these is only $32k in todays $$$. So in actuality these, cars lost their owners money. Not even taking into account storing and servicing a car like this for 25+ years…
They’d have made a killing if they had bough $12k in Gold in 1976 (then Two Hundred dollars an oz. now Thirteen Hundred Fifty Dollars an oz!) though it would be worth nearly $82k today so an almost 40% profit. Though my calculations could be a bit off…
Yes buying a new car for investment purposes was probably a bad deal. I think there are few if any cars from 1976 that could have appreciated in value so much that the cost of time would have made it a profit. So it’s really no point in valuing a car on that.
A 76 Cadillac Eldorado convertible is a pure representation od Cadillac as we knew it then and a totally distinctive vehicle. It may not be the kind of car for some people’s tastes but anonymous it is not, everyone knows what it is instantly.
That was the hallmark of domestic production in those days. When an American car looked like an American car and represented an owner’s personality whatever that may be.
Every time someone bags on the dash of these cars, and it happens here, almost every time one of these 70’s Cadillacs comes up on the site, like a broken tired old record. I imagine that they either don’t like Cadillacs or GM cars in general and are just looking to take a dig, or they really don’t know anything about cars in general.
Keeping one of these stored was a problem, if it wasn’t done right the car was still ruined, the fillers would still rot, the interior didn’t like humidity, I’ve seen low mileage cars that were still ruined from bad storage.
It’s a “Chrysler” VG Valiant, sorry for being picky. Really surprising to see one at a US Auction. Still has its original 1970’s Victorian Registration plates.
I fixed it! Thanks. I was surprised but happy to see this car here — always wanted to experience an Aussie Valiant.
What did the Valiant go for. In the late seventies and eighties they were not worth anything. Not many left and pulling big bucks here.
The front turn signal and parking lights on the Chrysler VG Valiant are built into the top of the fenders? Very unusual.
Unusual, and they were a bit hard to see in traffic.
Craig, can you tell me why all the Cadillacs of that era had loose, cockeyed headlights? Nearly every one I saw on the road at night had that flicker to it, and during the day you could see the cockeyed lights. This was a phenomenon of the small rectangular lights only. Why? I would see some even falling out, with the oblivious owner just durt-de-durring along.
Oh yes, I remember that problem now; thanks for mentioning it. It may have been cheap adjustment-screw fasteners.
I’ll tell you why, because I’ve had it happen to me, broken headlight adjustment screws.
cheap and easy fix that most people don’t care or don’t drive them at night to care.
The other reason why they don’t quite line up is just the aiming of them, my low beams have a slight tilt down, and the high beams are slightly aimed upwards. the quad round lights don’t look as odd because they have the curved surfaces but quad rectangles do.
There are only like 4 or so headlamp adjustment screw styles to fit almost all cars. And they all work the same.
So how does one break a headlight-adjustment screw? I presume they were metal.
BTW I like sealed-beams, as they’re commodity parts, & being glass, don’t yellow.
Make that ’58 Impala the hardtop coupe, remove the fender skirts and foglights, and it’s my father’s car for the year. Exactly. Boy, that was nice looking at the interior again.
It’s funny the cars you remember, and the one’s you can’t. I clearly remember the ’56 Bel Air 4-door hardtop (red and white), the ’58 Impala, mom’s ’59 Brookwood (? the Bel Air equivalent) 6-passenger station wagon, dad’s ’60 Impala convertible (the only one, black, white top, red interior), and his ’65 Impala SS 2-dr hardtop (silver blue). The rest draw a blank.
Did you get any sense of any of what these unrestored versions sold for relative to their fully restored versions? I would guess that some of these are unrestored because it just doesnt pencil out to restore them.
You can go to mecum.com, register there, and see the selling prices of all the cars.
For the most part it never pays to restore a car, the cost of having a true and proper restoration done almost always exceeds the after restored value let alone the initial cost of the vehicle. So to take a good original and restore it is a big money loosing proposition in most cases.
A good or bad example depending on how you look at it was a Scout II I know of. The guy took a nice survivor worth about $6-8K then spent around $40K having an excellent cosmetic (drive train was cleaned re-gasketed and painted but not rebuilt) restoration done (other than putting in an aftermarket radio, wheels and locking hubs all “fixable”) then immediately took it to auction where it sold for $18K.
Yes it was a Scout and Scout people in general are very cheap but it still gives you a good idea. Contrast that with some of the near showroom low mile originals that bring $12-14K.
Yes, but hobbies should never be considered profit making. It’s all about enjoying something within your means.
Well in the case of the Scout I mentioned it appears that the owner thought he could make money on the deal instead of loose his shirt. It was never even driven by him. The guy that restored it loaded it on a trailer that was headed directly for the auction.
I think that low mileage Oldsmobile was one of the GM Heritage Collection cars, it was kept in the lobby of an Oldsmobile plant in Lansing for years and years.
A friend had a maroon 2-door fastback version of that Olds as a first car. It had a lot more miles on it than the hardly-used sedan, and he dealt it more than its share of abuse, but it would still move itself when he traded it on the next car that he would use up, a pale blue 1951 Chrysler Windsor sedan with a perfect Highlander interior.
This unrestored/survivor thing is turning into a trend. Personally, its a look, that I’m really starting to like.
Love that Demon,and the 64 Chrysler. The 58 was never my favorite Chev. Sorry Syke. A close friend of mine always dreamed of owning a 58 ragtop. If he was still alive I’m sure he would have been down there making a bid.
I’ll admit, I’m funny. Tri-Fives barely register on my radar (I consider the ’55 gorgeous – possibly the best American car ever built, the ’56 a not-too-badly-screwed-up sequel, and the ’57 to me is the most overrated 50’s car out there), but I love the ’58’s. And, other than Cadillac, consider the rest of the GM 58’s styling disasters.
Interesting guess, Carmine, but here’s what the writeup at mecum.com says about it:
– Completely original 1948 Oldsmobile Futuramatic
– 2,345 miles in 1950 from a oil change tag on the door
– Today the mileage is believed to be 2,478
– Indianapolis car since new
– Purchased in Indianapolis at Tobey Oldsmobile on April 9, 1948 by Arley Cromley who passed away in December of 1948
– The car remained stored at his widow’s property until her estate was distributed in 1978
– Original tires on are included with the car but not on the car
– Power windows
– Power front seat
– Original title
Interesting coincidence.
This is the car I was thinking of.
http://www.autabuy.com/ViewPhoto/?I=/Photos/749766_3183930857777_Original.jpg&showAdsense=0&K=1949%20Oldsmobile%2076%20
That Olds is something of an odd duck – the 1948 98 was the only year for the straight-eight in the new postwar body, although a straight-six 62 would be offered alongside the V8 88 and 98 starting in ’49 so it wasn’t the end of flathead Oldsmobiles.
Check out the backwards shift quadrant on the Aussie Valiant – 12DNRP (the low gears are hidden, I’m assuming a TF727 with steps for all 3).
That’s something I had always wondered about.
Scarily some Valiants came with a borgwarner mush box and promptly grenaded, the torqueflite was fitted but you had to pick the right one great cars other than that.
Jim – Thanks for showing us these unrestored beauties. As the saying goes “they are only original once”. Do you have any interior shots of the ’48 Olds?
Yup:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilene/8752164908/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilene/8752163138/
Thank you! My Dad had a ’49 Olds 88 purchased new and kept until 1959. Great memories for me, like Syke has for the ’58 Chevy. It looks like the ’49 Olds was basically the ’48 with the straight 8 switched out to the Rocket V8.
Kev and Neil: Those cockeyed headlights were caused by the cheap little plastic sort of V-shaped clips that held them in place. I had a ’78 Coupe de Ville for a couple of years (to my everlasting chagrin), and those headlights were a constant problem. It would seem that they would break every time you hit a heavy dip in the road. I must have replaced them dozens of times. Huge design defect, IMO.
Jim, do you have any idea what the ’58 Impala convertible sold for? The brother of a friend of mine inherited his grandparents’ ’58 convertible, similar looking turquoise color, white top, practically a carbon copy of the featured car. He has it in a garage somewhere in San Diego, needs some resto work, but overall it’s in fairly original condition. I keep telling his sister it’s worth a lot, he should bring it back to life.
A really interesting writeup, btw.
Couldn’t tell you what any of these cars went for, but if you register for an account at mecum.com you can see the selling price of all the cars.
Looking back through the pictures I noticed that the Hemi in the Valiant it standing upright. I thought they were based on the Slant 6 including the fact that they were you know slanted. Learn something new every day here. The other thing is that the heater core has been disconnected, might be difficult to find a suitable replacement in the US. My favorite touch is the fact that it has a Ford Motorcraft oil filter, good to see someone else knows the best value in an oil filter.
It was a new engine, designed to replace the slant six, with seven bearings, especially for trucks. But it get sent to Australia instead. And it’s really not a true hemi, as is quite obvious from looking at it: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cohort-classic-1971-australian-valiant-charger-rt-hemi-six-pack-that-thing-got-a-hemi-um-not-quite/
It went fine in Dodge pickup trucks but yeah no lean. That was the first model featuring the new engine in 1971
It’s interesting that if I saw a Boss Mustang, Hemi anything, etc. on the street it would blow my mind. But at an auction where it’s common, it becomes fatiguing to see anything that’s a Camaro or Mustang. That’s when we start looking for the obscure.
Exxxxxxactly.
+1
The burned-out ’66 Charger was a true 426 Hemi car, if I do believe. That accounts for it’s presence at the sale. Guess its owner got the insurance payoff and then bought it back to sell. If it is a real Hemi car, someone will resurrect it.
The ’66 Charger should “buff right out”. 🙂
Sweet Olds.
There was an Olds straight-eight engine and Hydramatic for sale on Craigslist for a while here. It made me want to build a Model A hot rod around it.
Seeing the red Cadillac convertible made me wonder: Did any other GM convertibles of the seventies offer a body-colored top? It seems that I’ve never seen a Buick/Chevy/Olds/Ponti with a body-color top, unless of course the body was black or white. Was this strictly a Cadillac thing?
I sure was off a year on the 48 olds. Owned a 50 with the v8 and with the hood down they don’t look much different. The straight 8 got my attention.
That straight eight looked out of place in that body, for sure. Most people forget the body style changed in ’48 and the Rocket came in ’49.
However, people also forget just how quiet those flathead eights were. A guy locally had a ’52 Pontiac Eight and you could barely hear it when it passed by you.
People forget how quiet stock old cars can be.
One thing that people always comment about my car if they hear/see it running, is how quiet it is, stock exhaust and all the air cleaner assembly in place, well adjusted lifters. At car shows mine is barely audible over the general din of the place and if someones got a loud car running two rows over, you can’t hear it all. Someone once asked me if I needed jumper cables to start my car because it caught on the first turn of the starter with just a loud click, since the hood was closed they couldn’t hear it till I revved it up and they heard the fan make noise.
I think the A/C blower motor is louder than the engine is on my car.
What is your old car?
I did not know (or have forgotten) that you could get any 1964 Chrysler product with automatic transmission without pushbutton control. That floor shift blew me away. Without doing much more googling, was that the first year (prior to the 1965 abandonment of pushbutton control by Chrysler) that a floorshift automatic appeared in a Chrysler? Also, that brake pedal has to be one of the widest ever installed in an America car! Although they are a bit goofy in appearance, I’ve always rather liked the Chrysler of these years.
I’ve never read that tidbit about Cadillac headlight problems for those years. The biggest problem my Dad had with his 1978 Mark V was with the vacuum operated headlight doors. Funny how you spent that much money on a luxury car in 1978 and ended up with problems with something as mundane as headlights.
Good eye on that shifter. I recently saw one of these and had the very same revelation. I know that their first few years of lever controlled cars used a system where the lever operated the same cable control that had been used on pushbutton cars. Perhaps this was Chrysler’s way of beta testing the system in small numbers.
1965 was the only year that there was a column shift lever instead of pushbuttons but still used a cable shift linkage to the 727. In 1966 they had switched to solid rods and bellcrank linkage. For console-shifted Chryslers they also redesigned the shifter mechanism entirely between 1965 and 66.
Straight 8 Olds… cool. It is amazing how durable 8 cyl designs have been in various configurations over the decades the automobile has been in existence.
That 64 300K is off the charts gorgeous. I tried looking up the sale price but the Mecum site doesn’t give you access to results unless you are a subscriber. I wonder what it sold for.
The 1964 Chrysler 300K sold for $12,000, plus commission. Not bad for a letter car!
That was a total steal!
I love to watch the Mecum auctions, but I start to get bored with all the Corvettes. I like the more unusual cars like the 48 Olds much more.
I missed this one again due to a family wedding out of state that weekend.
That Olds is fabulous. I glanced at it quickly the first time, and went “Oh, just a six”. I missed the fact that it was the last straight 8 Olds.
The 300K is, of course, my favorite. Don’t think those wheels are original, however. I think someone has messed with the inside of the Demon just a bit, too – that shifter looks aftermarket. Also, that seat looks reupholstered. That looks like a modern fabric has replaced the Mopar Split-O-Seam (TM) vinyl upholstery.
The 63-64 Chryslers aren’t my favorite bodystyle, but that 300K looks good to me even with the later style road wheels, and would probably make a good “hobby car”.
I wouldn’t consider the Demon in the same level of originality as the other cars highlighted. I looked at the pics on flickr and that one has had some significant modifications under the hood.
From the “GR” (Grade Retard) inidcator on the transmission quandrant, looks like the ’58 Impala had the rare (and problematic) Turboglide. A great example though.
This Impala also had power brakes, from the ID on the brake pedal. All power brake equpped Chevy’s were so identified from 1954 through 1966. However, it seems that power steering equipped Chevy’s were only identified on the steering wheel hub in 1954. Is this correct? Hopefully a Chevy afficianado can shed some light.