CLASSICS TODAY: April 2014

Wednesday

FINLAND ON THE 3RD

CLASSIC CAR AUCTION

by Pinups and Kustoms

Lahti Fair Centre

Lahti, Finland

www.pinupsandkustoms.com

NO PHONE

GEORGIA ON THE 3RD

1933 CHRYSLER

PEACH CLASSIC COLLECTOR CAR AUCTION

by Peach

660 Peavy Road

Byron, Georgia

www.peachauctionsales.com

1-478-956-0910

TEXAS ON THE 3RD

THE HOUSTON CLASSIC

by Worldwide

La Torretta Lake Resort & Spa

Mongomery, Texas

www.worldwide-auctioneers.com

1-936-448-4400

Tuesday

MISSOURI ON THE 2ND

1957 STUDEBAKER

SPRINGFIELD COLLECTOR CAR AUCTION

by Smith's

Expo Center

Springfield, Missouri

www.smithsauctioncompany.com

1-800-200-6030

IOWA ON THE 2ND

CARPALOOZA 2014

by Auction Solutions

Mid America Motorplex

Pacific Junction, Iowa

www.carpalooza2014.com

1-402-682-2294

TEXAS ON THE 2ND

1931 CHRYSLER

MOTOSTALGIA

by Motostalgia

Lakewood Yacht Club

Seabrook, Texas

www.motostalgia.com

1-512-813-0636

photo credit: © 2014 Motostalgia

Monday

TEXAS ON THE 1ST OF MAY

1937 CHEVY

CRUSIN' NOCONA

by Vacari

411 Main Street

Nocona, Texas

www.vacariauction.com

1-504-875-3563

On this end of the world this race shows up at 3:00 AM and to have a 2 1/2 hour rain delay is hard on an old guy. There is at least one rain-delayed race during the season and lets hope this is it. Of the current tracks they are using this season this is one of my favorites. Ryan Hunter-Reay was able to hang on for the win. It is the second year in a row that he has won at this track. He must have it figured out. This also puts him in second place for the points bumping out Mike Conway. He was followed by one of his teammates, Marco Andretti, who I am sure was happy to have second place. He hasn't done well in the last couple of years. Third place went to Scott Dixon.

Tony Kanaan, who started off in last place, ended up in the ninth position. Takuma Sato takes 13th place followed by Mike Conway, who usually does so well on these types of courses.

Sunday

ENGLAND ON THE 28TH

1935 ALVIS

THE HENDON SALE

by Bonhams

RAF Museum

Hendon

United Kingdom

www.bonhams.com

+44 (0) 20 7447 7448

ENGLAND ON THE 28TH

1951 AC

SPRING CLASSIC

by Barons

Sandown Park

Esher, Surrey

United Kingdom

www.barons-auctions.com

+44 (0) 23 8066 8413

Saturday

SPECIAL OF THE WEEK

1976 PLYMOUTH GRAN FURY

Exceptional 1 owner 76 Plymouth Gran Fury 2 dr. 400, auto, cold air, 66K. Original paint,title,interior. Florida original kept inside, excellent interior. NO rust. Excellent runner. Cruiser, local shows or cross country.

Located in Florida.........1-813-610-1344

Friday

ENGLAND ON THE 27TH

THE STAFFORD MOTORCYCLE SALE

by Bonhams

Staffordshire County Showground

Stafford

United Kingdom

www.bonhams.com

+44 (0) 20 7447 7448

MICHIGAN ON THE 27TH

1970 BUICK

ANTIQUES & EQUIPMENT AUCTION

by Roberts

Roberts Auction Hall

3737 Britton Road

Perry, Michigan

www.robertsauctionservice.com

www.auctionzip.com

1-517-927-6355

Thursday

ENGLAND ON THE 26TH

1960 JAGUAR

COYS AT ASCOT

by COYS

Ascot Racecourse

United Kingdom

www.coys.co.uk

+44 (0) 2086 147 888

GEORGIA ON THE 26TH

FOUR SEASONS ROLLING STEEL CLASSIC CAR AUCTION

by FSA Gallery

Atlanta Motor Speedway

Hampton, Georgia

www.fsagallery.com

1-404-876-1048

Wednesday

ENGLAND ON THE 26TH

1963 NORTON 500

CAMBRIDGE VINTAGE SALE

by Cheffins

The Machinery Saleground

Sutton, Ely, Cambs

Cambridgeshire

United Kingdom

www.cheffins.co.uk

www.i-bidder.com

+44 (0) 1223 213 777

COLORADO ON THE 26TH

1971 MG MGB

SPRING 2014

by Specialty

Adams County Fairgrounds

Brighton, Colorado

www.saaasinc.com

1-970-266-9561

TENNESSEE ON THE 26TH

MEADOWS BIKES & TRIKES

by J.R. Cash

68 Trimble Highway

Rutherford, Tennessee

www.jamesrcash.com

1-270-623-8466

KENTUCKY ON THE 26TH

1972 CHEVY

RJ COLLECTOR CAR AUCTION

by Mills

Bowling Green, Kentucky

www.proxibid.com

ONLINE AUCTION

PENNSYLVANIA ON THE 26TH

COLLECTOR CAR & TRUCK AUCTION

by Shetron

103 Hammond Road

Shippensburg, Pennsylvania

www.shetronequiptment.com

1-717-226-1918

NEW HAMPSHIRE ON THE 26TH

1930 FORD

AMMONOOSUC RIVER AUCTION

by Michael Carver

3247 Route 302

Lisbon, New Hampshire

www.auctionzip.com

1-603-444-1136

MASSACHUSETTS ON THE 26TH

1953 CHEVY

ESTATE AUCTION

by Simond and Oakes

149 Glendale Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts

www.simondoakes.com

www.auctionzip.com

1-617-275-4393

Monday

PENNSYLVANIA ON THE 25TH

1969 SHELBY MUSTANG

THE LARRY BROWN ESTATE

by Richard Gilligan

107 West Ridge Street

Centre Hall, Pennsylvania

www.rgilliganauctions.com

1-814-237-0189

ENGLAND ON THE 25TH

1966 VOLVO P1800S

CLASSIC CAR AUCTIONS

by SWVA

South Western Vehicle Auction

Ringwood Road

Parkstone, Poole, Dorset

United Kingdom

www.swva.co.uk

+44 (0) 1202 745 466

TEXAS ON THE 25TH

1917 FORD

DALLAS

by Leake

Dallas Market Hall

Dallas, Texas

www.leakecar.com

1-800-722-9942

MISSOURI ON THE 24TH

1953 MG TD

KANSAS CITY SPRING 2014

by Mecum

Kansas City Convention Center

Bartle Hall

301 West 13th Street

Kansas City, Missouri

www.mecum.com

WATCH ONLINE AND ON TELEVISION

1-262-275-5050

ENGLAND ON THE 24TH

1936 FORD

THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM AUCTION

by H & H

The Imperial War Museum

United Kingdom

www.handh.co.uk

+44 (0) 8458 33 44 55

ENGLAND ON THE 23RD

1969 HARLEY-DAIVDSON

PUBLIC AUCTION

by T.L.H.

Unit C, Westwood Industrial Estate

Arkwright Street

Chadderton, Oldham

United Kingdom

www.tlhauctioneers.com

LIVE AND ONLINE

+44 (0) 1616 336 161

SPECIAL OF THE WEEK

1958 MERCEDES-BENZ 219

Inline six cylinder with 4 speed manual transmission. Green with burgundy interior. Interior is in excellent condition. Needs paint to be complete. I have owned this car for over ten years. It is in good shape and runs and drives great.

Located in Florida........1-954-260-9697

Sunday

FORMULA ONE IN CHINA

ROSBERG, 2ND - HAMILTON, 1ST - ALONSO, 3RD

Yawn! Wake me when its over! This was a follow-the-leader race. Hamilton jumped out in front, never to look back. The win gave him his first hat trick (winning three races in a row) in his Formula One series. His teammate, Nico Rosberg, came in second. Rosberg is still the points leader at this point, but that won't last long if Hamilton keeps winning. Alonso had to be a happy camper because this third finish was his first podium finish this year.

Friday

PENNSYLVANIA ON THE 19TH

1941 FORD

OLDE TYME AUCTION

by Olde Tyme Auctions

41 Lincoln Street

New Oxford, Pennsylvania

www.oldetymeauctions.com

www.auctionzip.com

1-717-487-6708

INDIANA ON THE 19TH

1941 LINCOLN

2014 SPRING "HOOLEY" CLASSIC CAR AUCTION

by Bartel and Company

Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds

Goshen, Indiana

www.bartelandcompany.com

1-574-825-2115

Saturday

INDYCAR IN CALIFORNIA

MIKE CONWAY

It is a small world, but not small enough to show this race in China. It was advertized in Mongolia, but not shown there either. Oh, well! Mike Conway went on to win after an accident on lap 55 that took out the leaders. Second went to Will Power and third to rookie Carlos Munoz.

Mike Conway and teammate/owner, Ed Carpenter, are going to have an interesting year. A one car team with drivers doing separate chores. Conway, who was injured at the Indy 500 a couple of years ago, had decided he could no longer race on oval tracks comfortably. Carpenter, always did very well on oval tracks, but not very well on road courses and street tracks. A match made in heaven.

Tony Kanaan and Takumo Sato were both taken out in the lap 55 pileup.

TEXAS ON THE 13TH

1949 INDIAN

HOUSTON 2014 MOTORCYCLE AUCTION

featuring The Mike Doyle Museum Collection

Reliant Center

Houston, Texas

www.mecum.com

1-262-275-5050

THE FIRST AVANTI COMES TO LIFE

NOTE: this is one of my favorite modern cars. Probably because I can fit in it.

As it rolled into the LeMay America’s Car Museum in 2001, the Avanti didn’t run, was painted metalflake green, and looked like it’d gone 10 rounds with Tyson. Renee Crist, the collections manager at the museum, said she probably could have made the argument to keep it green and refurbish or even preserve it, but that approach wouldn’t have done the car justice – it was the first production Studebaker Avanti, after all, and it deserved a full restoration, which is now entering its final stages. “It sparkled like a hot tub,” Renee said. “It was truly a piece of art, and we were really trying to find out why it was painted the way it was – was it for an art gallery, was it for some kind of show?” Investigating the car’s history produced plenty of dead ends. A Tacoma, Washington, collector had donated it and another Avanti – the latter claimed to be the last Studebaker-built Avanti – both in dilapidated condition, to the museum after realizing he would never get around to restoring them. While the other Avanti ultimately proved to be a late-production example, but not the very last, the green metalflake-painted Avanti indeed was serial number 1001 and still had its original engine (engine number 1002) and original seats to boot.

According to Studebaker Avanti historians, that meant that it was one of the first 10 production Avantis assigned with a so-called “born-on date” of April 26, 1962, the day that Studebaker introduced the fiberglass-bodied coupe to the public simultaneously in New York City and in South Bend. “They’re kind of like racehorses, which are all assigned a birthdate of January 1, regardless of when they were born,” said Dave Kinney, who recently made national news for commissioning the restoration of the second production Avanti, serial number 1002, which went on to win its class at this year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. “Studebaker obviously didn’t build all 10 of those Avantis in one day, and some people say they were built many months before then.” John Hull, author of Avanti: The Complete Story, said that all Avantis were essentially handbuilt cars – prototype, pre-production, and production alike – so there wasn’t an assembly line as we typically think of it. Instead, the earliest production Avantis were probably built in batches of three or four at a time in South Bend, much like how Nate Altman’s Avanti Motor Company built the first Avanti IIs. What Hull did discover was that in June of 1962 Studebaker designated the first five or six Avantis – all painted white and fitted with deluxe orange interiors – to the company’s regional technical training centers for use in developing shop manuals and in training the company’s mechanics on how to service the cars. Serial number 1001 – built with an R2 supercharged 289-cu.in. V-8, four-speed manual transmission, and Twin-Traction limited-slip differential – went to the South Bend training center, while the others went to training centers in New York, Atlanta, Kansas City, and San Francisco. What happened to 1001 after its time at the South Bend training center is anybody’s guess, but by January 1970 it had made its way to Boston, racked up nearly 40,000 miles, and become separated from its Paxton supercharger. It then bounced around New York and New Jersey until the collector who donated the Avanti to the museum bought it and took it out West. When he gave it to the museum, its odometer displayed almost 69,000 miles

Renee Crist said that while the museum does have modified vehicles in its collection and uses them to show the trends of specific eras, she and the museum’s directors decided that “it was much more important to tell the story of the Avanti,” of Raymond Loewy, and of what Studebaker was trying to do with the car than to have to explain why the car had been painted green. So in 2011, she – along with Studebaker collector James Bell – took on the role of project manager for the restoration of 1001 and began raising the funds to pay for a full mechanical restoration. Enough donations came in, both monetary and in the form of parts and promised labor (Renee has estimated the total so far at around $50,000 and growing), to allow the museum to begin the Avanti’s restoration in October 2011. Despite the fact that the Avanti had been used as a daily driver in the Northeast, she said that it had surprisingly little rust underneath. “We had to replace one crossmember on the frame, but the hog troughs were solid,” she said. Of more concern was some damage to the left front corner that had at one point been poorly fixed and that would need to be addressed. And then the museum staff had to sort out the actual damage to the car from the infamous poor build quality of the early Avantis. As both Kinney and Hull related, Studebaker initially contracted with the Molded Fiberglass Company of Ashtabula, Ohio – the same company that had supplied Chevrolet with fiberglass parts for the early Corvette bodies – to build complete bodies for the Avanti, but kept running into production issues. “MFC built parts, but they weren’t really an assembler,” Hull said. “Avantis had about 110 fiberglass parts to put together, so they were like a giant jigsaw puzzle, so parts wouldn’t line up, the back windows wouldn’t fit, and the doors wouldn’t seal.” The poor build quality eventually led Studebaker to bring Avanti body production in-house.

Renee said the museum decided to restore the Avanti back to the way it was when it left the showroom, relying on Ron Hochhalter at Advanced Collision Repair in Sunnyside, Washington, to repair the damaged bodywork and to strip off the bass boat green paint before repainting it in Avanti White. Restoration has progressed since then, as documented on the LeMay’s website: The original (and once again supercharged) R2 engine has been rebuilt, body and paint work is now done as is the chrome, and the car is currently at the upholstery shop.

While Renee said she anticipates the Avanti’s restoration – the museum’s first complete restoration – wrapping up this fall, she said she’s still trying to track down some important parts to complete the restoration, including the Avanti-specific tuxedo orange and black carpet, a pair of glass headlamp lenses in good condition and a windshield in good shape.

“Once it’s done, it’ll be one of our crown jewels here,” she said. “It’ll be one of our star cars.”

Kinney even said he’d like to show it together with his 1002 and possibly even a few of the other early Avantis, most of which are still around. “I’m really excited for the museum,” he said. “I think we’re about to see a renaissance with these cars.”