The green Mustang Steve McQueen drove in the 1968 crime thriller Bullitt sold last Friday night for a record $US3.7m ($5.4m) with buyer’s premium at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction. Wearing a black Stetson and standing on top of the auction desk, Mecum’s Matt Moraves took only seven minutes to take bidders from $US3500 to $US3.4m.
Before the thousands of petrolheads packed into the Silver Spurs Arena saw the owner, Tennessee farmer Sean Kiernan, drive the car into the stadium, they could hear the unmistakeable thunderous throaty roar of the heavily modified 6.4 litre V8 engine burbling out of a straight-through exhaust. Everyone stood up and cheered. This car is US automotive and movie royalty. When he parked in front of the podium, Sean took the microphone and told the crowd that he wanted bidding to start at $US3500, which was what the two previous owners (New Jersey detective Frank Marranca and Sean’s father Bob) had both paid.
The $US3.7m an unknown phone bidder paid is $US1.54m more than the previous price record holder, the 1967 Shelby GT500 Super Snake Mecum, sold for last year. The most expensive US auto sold at auction was Gary Cooper’s 1935 Dusenberg, which went for $US22m in 2016. While a high number for an American car, the top of the list is dominated by Ferraris, with the highest price ever paid at auction being $US48.4m for a 1962 Ferrari GTO at RM Sotheby’s Monterey 2018 auction.
Matt Moraves got $1.2m for a 1967 Ford Mustang “Eleanor”, one of the original 11 cars built for the 2000 action heist classic, Gone in 60 Seconds, $700,000 for the 1966 Superformance Ford GT40 MKII from the Ford v Ferrari movie, and $812,000 for the 1968 Challenger 2 Streamliner, which is the fastest piston-powered vehicle in the world (722km/h). Friends and readers, this is the set of wheels you need to impress that special someone. Imagine you’ve booked the window table at Paul McGivern’s The Wolfe on Stanley Street there in Brissie and you and your plus-one pull up outside in the beautiful blue Challenger with twin Brad Anderson 500 cubic inch dry-block, A-fuel-type Hemi V-8 engines, each driving one set of wheels and running on a brew of 87 per cent nitromethane and 13 per cent methanol (Mick and I often try a brew like this as a chaser) through Accufab throttle bodies. Of course, you’ve need to put the parachutes out to stop the 3800kw machine before you run into the Chinese Kung Fu Academy building further down the road and completely destroy Sino-Australian relations.
My eldest son has just bought a Skoda Octavia. For reasons we will see later he has also just taken himself out of the will. Many of you still remember that the 125-year-old Czech automaker had a pretty crook reputation in the 70s. What do you call a Skoda with a sunroof? A skip. What do you call a Skoda with 200,000km on it? A: A lie. What do you call a Skoda at the top of a hill? A miracle. What do you call two Skodas at the top of a hill? A mirage. Anyway, VW bought the state-owned company and has turned the brand into an international bestseller. In Australia Skoda still suffers some resale issues but it is a great car. Basically, the Skoda Octavia ($30k) is built on VW Golf platform but it’s bigger inside and faster. In fact, the son who was once in the will also has a BMW X1 ($44k) and will be trading it in for another Skoda. “It’s a much better car,” he says and at least one UK motoring writer says it’s better value than a Beemer 3 series ($65k).
So when I asked for a test drive he refused, using the sort of language I would never have taught him, suggesting I would rev the seat out of it, wear out the tyres in one drift around the local car park and probably put it into a wall like I do with my race cars.
Talking of best cars for the job, longtime reader David Grinston is pretty upset about the government’s choice of vehicles to replace the federal Comcar fleet. As David points out, the press release telling we citizens about this “was issued during the holiday period (December 27), presumably to attract as little media attention as possible”. In the release, Matty Cormann, who is from WA but that’s not his fault although he did choose to move there from Eupen (population 77,000) when he was 24. Eupen was in Germany, then moved to Belgium, although all the fair burghers of this town, which is known far and wide for the convalescent and curative quality of its air (just like Perth) and the fact that both Matty and Plastic Bertrand were born there, speak German. I know many of you are Plastic Bertrand fans so you will be unhappy to learn that he is a bit loose with the truth. A few years back PB revealed that he is indeed not the singer of any of the songs in the first four albums released under his name. Men are so fickle aren’t they?
Back to Matty. Matty told us that the Government’s ageing Comcar fleet of Holden Caprice sedans will be replaced with a fleet of new vehicles that will save taxpayers $100,000 each year and are more environmentally friendly. Hold on a minute said Dave. He hopped straight on his IBM golf ball typewriter and did what every citizen should do and emailed the current Prime Minister and his local member, Trent Zimmerman.
In summary, Dave told Scomo and Zimmo that he was jumping for joy about the Toyota Camry Hybrid sedans but the diesel-powered BMW was a disgrace. In his missive to Scomo and Zimmo, Dave pointed out that: diesel is being rapidly phased out by all European car manufacturers, substantially because the toxic emissions generated by them fail to meet the latest EU pollution standards; that diesel cars that travel short distances require regular and expensive maintenance to clean their fuel injection and particle filter systems, putting in doubt Matty from Eupen’s claim that “the new fleet arrangement provides significant savings on fuel and maintenance costs”.
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