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Location: Valley Forge, Pa. | She wasn't alone there, someone else had to bid against her to get it that high but maybe that person was only willing to go to $164,000? Maybe the old guy next to her is her rich husband? |
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Location: Nawth Kerolinuh | 60crossram - 2016-04-28 8:58 AM
She look happy. I think she will enjoy it, you can see it in her face that she wants to show it off and drive it. She will be BLOWN AWAY at the reaction she gets from everyone. Sometimes when driving around you just want to be incognito, but not in this thing. ALL eyes will be looking at the car and who is driving it. What an amazing car for sure. DeSoto lives !!!
Crossram - you're absolutely right. There seems to be a lot of angst over how much people love these cars. I think it's great - and while it's driven up prices, it has also driven up interest. I was in a DeSoto in 1976 - it wasn't too cool then. Now people are fascinated by fins and it's always great to show them why these cars are better when it comes to design and engineering than the endless Chevys and Caddys. Congrats to the new owners of the Adventurer and I hope they get to wind it out down a back road. |
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Location: Ramona, CA | udoittwo - 2016-04-28 6:15 AM
She wasn't alone there, someone else had to bid against her to get it that high but maybe that person was only willing to go to $164,000? Maybe the old guy next to her is her rich husband?
Hopefully the other bidder wasn't a real enthusiast who was taking their one shot to get their dream car. I've been on that end of a deal on a 300F. I bid as much as I could and it sold for $2000 more at the last second. It was online so I don't know what kind of buyer outbid me, but I bid all I could. |
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Location: NY & VT | "focus on the outliers for the sake of complaining"? No I focus on only the cars I like and want to own and drive, period.
I have no interest in '60s or other cars, if I wanted a 300L I'd buy one.
"I'm sure your house is worth considerably more than 45k over it's value in 85."
But its the % appreciation that's at issue.
A 5000 #3 '58 NYer convert or '59 Adv in 1985 is worth at LEAST 75k now - that's 70k more, not 45 ie: 15 TIMES the 1985 value, 1500%!!
I don't think it's out of place to bemoan that fact.
Edited by firedome 2016-04-28 3:58 PM
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Location: Parts Unknown | There are numerous takes on car people, but I see myself as a super picky bastaad, who
is unwilling to own "just anything", or some "close". Others are what I call "car whores",
who will do anything and everything and hold no real commitment toward anything. They
often change cars like babies go through diapers.
But a 300L or a 60 Plymouth, or even a 58 DeSoto coupe is not the car I want and every
time I looked at my other cars, I was smoldering with a cross between lust and resentment
that it was not the car I wanted. I guess some people have it easy this way and any/many
cars will fit the bill for them.
The real kicker for me about "big money" getting into MY hobby is that these top shelf cars
become paperweights for the rich, and will never again be seen in the drug store parking lot
or angle parked in front of the theatre downtown, because the owners are invested so deep
and also see these more as dollars to be hidden away from threat of damage than as rolling
Americana.
I just want to see them in their natural setting, on the street, just doing normal grocery-
gittin'. Values, for whatever reason we might debate, have produced the same end result,
in that few, if any, will ever just use them as cars again. 
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Posts: 1288
| Lads --
Thomas Wolfe, in his novel "You Can't Go Home Again,"said, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." (Ellipses in original.)
The Forward Looks will NEVER, nor can they ever, again be used as guys like me (who is a product of that age) actually did use them way back when. Might as well face it, they're too bloody expensive to drive, they take up too much room to park, are rather uncomfortable, and generally are just plain dinosaurs -- especially to the distaff side. Plus, in this very discourteous age they draw envy from some characters who love the idea of vandalizing anything distinctive. From the earliest times, noteworthy examples of ANY form of transportation have gravitated to shrines or museums world-wide, beginning with the chariots buried with the Pharohs or the Viking longships, progressing through history to such places as the carriage museum at Francois I's Chambord (France) or Spenser Penrose's similar museum at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. A very, very few ordinary carts and wagons have found themselves displayed among the artifacts belonging to the common folk in spite of the fact that only God knows how many millions more were built only to became kindling or just spare parts. I foolishly like to think I'm returning to the days of my misspent youth with my fun cars, but I don't really think I want to go back to when I was digging ditches for $1.96 an hour (I wouldn't mind the college days though -- if they were as simple as they were then). In reality, the best I can do is a cruise on a nice Sunday afternoon or a day at a show just talking cars with other car guys.
Another quote, "We cannot escape history" (Lincoln) so it is just as inevitable as was the escalation of the value of the Duesenburgs and the Cords in contrast to the junking of the Maxwells and Model T's that some of the more glamorous FLKs will become the playthings of the wealthy or museum exhibits and the more mundane sets of wheels will become the mid-21st Century's equivalent of paperclips.
A last quote, by Sgt. Maj. Quincannon in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon": "The old days are gone forever." I'll drink to that.
Joe |
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| thats why you all need to see Sweden in the Summer-time.. We ride them from ``rustbuckets to showcars ``on the streets and to shows ,, and the youngsters have a ball ,(been there ,done that) ``all the time`` |
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Location: Nawth Kerolinuh | Sonoramic - I would go back, as long as I knew which cars to stick in a garage for the future. Now there's a solid retirement plan! |
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Location: NY & VT | Finding & owning the EXACT car that you want & love, it's perzacktly what Doc said.
Put another way, "how do you keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Paree?"
Or as Gottlieb Daimler famously said: "Das beste oder nichts".
Life is too short to compromise. But the "paperweight" trophy hunters have all but taken that option off the table.
The Swedes have it right, drive 'em, regardless. Why own a Purdy shotgun only to hang it on the wall?
Edited by firedome 2016-04-29 10:17 AM
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| Lads --
I've been very fortunate in finding and owning, if not the "EXACT" car that I want and love, three that are pretty doggone close. I attribute my good fortune to the fact that I had an interest in cars beginning in the mid-1950s. Even in those days, I thought it rather significant that the old cars that had already become classics were the "high-performance" cars of the 19-teens, such as the Stutz Bearcat and the Mercer Raceabout, and the Auburns, Cords, and Duesenburgs of the 1930s. As far as guys of my generation were concerned, the grocery-getters of the past were good only for making into hot rods (a la "Little Deuce Coupe") and even a near classic as the LaSalle was only valued for its tough transmission. This was also the time when organizations such as NASCAR were developing into legitimate racing organizations rather than a collection of bootleggers and the NHRA wasn't really just a bunch of guys in dirty T-shirts. Plus, Semon "Bunky" Knudson was taking over the reins of GM with the maxims of "Win on Sunday. Sell on Monday" and "You can sell a young man's car to an old man, but you'll never sell an old man's car to a young man." Except for the Corvette, I never had much interest in any GM or Ford product, primarily because my dad was a died-in-the-wool Chrysler and Plymouth fan, so I got hooked on MoPars, the '60 Fury SonoRamic 2-dr H/T being my first automotive love affair. I didn't regret at the time trading it for a '65 Sport Fury since it was pretty well worn by then and by-passed by progress, but I did get an early appreciation of a high-powered Plymouth. So, when in about 1999, one came on the market here, I jumped at the chance, but not very hard as I fooled around with the heir of the original owner for about nine months before I got it for a relatively low figure (in view of its appraised value). The lesson: not one (repeat, not one) other potential buyer paid any attention to a "cross-ram '60 Plymouth Fury" on the web, but I sure remembered those cars and I love watching SonoRamic Commando clones go for big bucks at Barrett-Jackson.
I wanted a '65 fuel-injected Vette when I graduated from college but couldn't afford one then (had to settle for that '65 Sport Fury with the 426-S and 4-speed), but I kept an interest in them well into the '80s and was quite aware that they were starting to appreciate as the gas crunch was moderating, performance models were disappearing from dealer showrooms, and insurance costs for "responsible" drivers were going down. So in 1985 I spotted one on the market and was able to pick it up for about 14 Grand. I did put a few bucks into it, but if you know anything about Corvettes, you will also know that it's now worth a wee bit more than 14K.
As I said earlier, my dad was also a Chrysler guy and in the mid- and late-50s the Letter cars dominated the Speed Weeks at Daytona. A 300 was also in my search and I was able to grab a 300C fairly reasonably. However, I made a mistake with it as I could have gone with a '57 Adventurer for about the same number of pesos, but I opted for the C because of its performance reputation. Plus, my dad used to say that the DeSoto was a "trade-up" car and I thought the C had more panache. But even my dad could be wrong as I think the black with gold and the white with gold Adventures beat my C all hollow. I also stayed away from the 300F and G because I wanted the legendary 392 Hemi rather than the 413 B-Series engine and instead got the cheapo Plymmer with the SonoRamic Commando which I could relate to.
I must say that I was looking for particular cars that I knew about yesterday and can enjoy today. But I'm not about to drive them on a daily basis as they use too much gas (all three get about 7 in town and 11 on the highway), they're too big for most parking lots unless I want a block or two hike, and none have A/C (the Vette doesn't even have power steering). Nonetheless they're great to show off on the street, on the highway, and at a show or cruise-in, though even at that they present a hazard -- twice another car ran into the car in its front while the driver gawked at mine and once a spectator cracked a rib when he felled into the big fin of the Fury. I must admit that I control my speed better with each -- I don't have to prove they have muscle, if OLD muscle.
Joe
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Location: Parts Unknown | My story is similar, but with it's own twists ....
My Grandad liked Buicks, and kept a garage full of them going back to the early 50's.
His garage remains a vivid memory for me of glinting chrome and that wonderful smell
of old cars sitting in quiet repose. The rest of the garage was filled with old stuff to match
the cars. It was wonderful.
I got my old car interest early, and at the age of 5 was going into dealerships while Mom
shopped next door, asking for brochures and oogling the racier models. It was in doing
this that the 66 Coronet became a favorite and when I had the chance to buy a nice one,
I jumped on it.
The DeSoto story grew out of collecting up a bunch of 58-60 Buicks and then stumbling
on to a 57 NY'er coupe that turned me away from GM and ultimately going past the Chryslers
to land on the arguably better looking cars with the name that made people give you that
"deer in the headlights" look ... a DeSoto ???
Originally, it had to be a 57, and it had to be an Adventurer, but with my interest in design
and a bent for efficiency/practicality, I came to favor the 58 for its finer trim details, mechanics,
and the Fireflite for it's colors and fabrics. I had a lot of distractions along the way, but a day
came where I had to whittle down a large herd and all things considered, the 58 Fireflite won
out over all others as the one to keep.
The Plaza came as a passing vision while pulling the interior out of a 60 Invicta in a wrecking
yard. Beside it was this darling 58 Plaza in Buzzard Puke Green. A little "Grandma-mobile"
that was striking in its period monotone simplicity. That was 1981 (?). Thirty years later I
got serious, and on a tip from a member on this forum, finally bagged that fleeting vision of
so many years ago.
My other car obsession isn't a car at all. It's trucks .... Ford Model TT trucks. I loved those
teens and twenties cars when I was little, but never had the exposure to other crazies into them
to have it rub off on me. When I came back from AFG, I had picked up an acute sense of my own
mortality and decided to focus on things most important to me and divest of other things that
were never going to get done. I picked up a pair of TT trucks and find they are even more fun
than the newer stuff. Nobody gets all puffed up when you are talking about a 20hp vehicle !
Just drive them and have fun. 
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Location: NY & VT | Love Ts and TTs... gonna have one someday I hope. It's all about the drive and the look, whether fast or slow, you can't have fun when they're parked. |
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Location: The Mile High City | I bet most of us caught the car bug from our dads. I know I did. My dad was always wheeling and dealing in a rapid succession of old and new cars. He always liked to have a vintage car around. Among the vintage cars I can remember were a '49 Plymouth woodie, a '34 Ford roadster, a '41 Packard 120 convertible, a '41 Lincoln Continental, a '59 Thunderbird convertible, a '67 Mustang convertible, a '73 Eldorado convertible, a '50 Ford convertible...just to name a few.
His real forte was his daily driver. In the late '70s and mid '80s, he was a Cadillac man. He always had to have the first one sold of the new model. One of my favorites was the bustle-back '83 DeVille 4-6-8 in pink and purple. He definitely likes performance and in the '80s he started getting into Porches. He had the first 944 in Denver and had a triple-black Carrera that was a beast. Then he found Jaguars and he's never looked back.
People continue to joke around with him about his car trading days. He said to me "having many cars is much better than having many wives." |
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Location: So. Cal | My father hated cars & all things mechanical. His idea of a good car was a rusty '62 GMC suburban (pic is not my father's, but one similar). I wasn't real impressed except that we often carried 17 adults & kids in that thing without a single seatbelt in sight. 
I caught the bug when my 2 older brothers bought a '69 Road Runner and a '70 Road Runner. So I bought a '68 Barracuda a proceeded to install a 392 hemi into it. Looking into the hemi motor introduced me to '57 Chryslers which were instantly neat, but I was too broke to purchase multiple cars at the time. Now, many years later, I still have my Barracuda, but none of my 4 brothers still have their cars or any classic car. I guess they outgrew it, but I never did. I just got worse!
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| Lads --
After all those years (until I was 21) of telling me what great cars Plymouths and Chryslers were, my dad turned traitor in late 1963 and bought a '64 Goat. He followed that one with a '67 (which he had a bit of a difugalty with), and then a '68 Stang. The Stang was replaced by a 71 Poncho Grand Prix SJ, after which he went back to Mustangs in 1976 until he passed away in 1984. Interestingly, he and I actually encountered one another for some family competion and it always bugged him that my (formerly his) '60 Fury was quicker than that '64 GTO, though I never pressed the point that having Hedman Hedders and 4.10 gears certainly didn't slow that Big-Tailed Beast. But without any modifications at all, my '65 Sport Fury (365 pony/426-S, 4-speed) loved smoked Goat (the smoke was from exhausts and burning tires). It was even worse for him with his '67 as it had only the 335 HP/400 CID engine while my '67 R/T had the 375 horse 440 mill. After that one meeting with our respective '67s, we never did tangle again. But it sure did bug him when I kidded him about his "slow" GTOs and, to this day I believe those old Goats to be just that: the most overrated muscle cars of all time.
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Location: Parts Unknown | Nathan, ... where are those old pix taken, Alaska ?
My old man was the antithesis of old car guy. Hell, he took me along to trade in Mom's
66 Mustang for a $#@! Pinto wagon ! The guy could turn gold bars into turds with the
wave of his hand. His ultimate stupid came before my time, when he traded a nice original
1931 Auburn speedster for #@! Model A coupe. He said the Fords made better hotrods.
Yeah, Dad, and 31 Auburn speedsters are about the zenith of high dollar classic American
cars. But nevermind THAT !
One time I towed home a 31 Model A woody. When I came home from school a few days
later it was gone. Where'd it go, Dad ? He had it towed off to a junk yard ...
My old car bug came from finding them around in nearby barns and just noticing the old
timers around who still drove them. Not sure why I thought they were cool when most
everyone else didn't, but it was closely related to my interest in all things old .... be that
an old fence, barn, light fixture, or tractor.
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Location: So. Cal | No, not Alaska, just the haze from a crappy quality camera. But it sure wasn't So. California either. |
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Location: Northen Virginia | Doc, I'm going to have to borrow theses for my personal funny sayings...They are just too good...
"The guy could turn gold bars into turds with the wave of his hand. His ultimate stupid came before my time, when he traded a nice original
1931 Auburn speedster for #@! Model A coupe."
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Posts: 1288
| Doc --
Too bad. I still think my dad was the finest man I've ever known and I've walked with giants.
Joe |
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Location: Parts Unknown | Strangely, both Widdo Bwudder and I had a strong awareness of self and didn't
just accept stuff because it was there. Pretty early on we knew Dad was a half
bubble off and pursued what we thought was cool disirregardlessly of his rantings.
Denis, I too enjoy those who have a colorful way of saying things and am always
"antennas up" for good descriptors. The Marine Corps was a bountiful source of
great stuff.
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Posts: 1288
| Lads --
Two old truisms:
"You can always tell a marine.
You just can't tell him much."
And a very old one from the days of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars:
"Tell it to the marines,
The sailors won't believe it."
Loved to tell my cousin, a Marine general officer (and a Navy Cross winner), those.
Joe |
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New Owner of Barret Jackson $165,000.00 1957 ADVENTURER CONVERTIBLE
