Everything starts today.
At Osceola Heritage Park, 1875 Silver Spur Lane, Kissimmee, Florida, Mecum Auctions will have sold the dark-green 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback hero car Steve McQueen piloted up and down the hills of San Francisco in the 1968 classic, Bullitt. In and around Scottsdale the first of five mega collectable car auctions gets going. No prizes for guessing there will be more Fezzers for auction than you've had problems in your old arithmetic book. RM Sotheby's have 21 up for grabs alone.
And today we report your choices for the worst cars ever.
Kissimmee (pop: 59,682) is famous for three things. Local person Kristina Janolo became Miss Florida 2011. The town has disproportionately large shopping centres, and it's home to The World's Largest Collector Car Auction. Apart from cars, Mecum sells tractors, buses, boats and, for some reason, guitars.
Anyway, over the nine-day auction the hottest item is Steve McQueen's Bullitt Mustang. Owned by Tennessee farmer Sean Kiernan, the Mustang should go for north of $7m, which is slightly more than the $5k his dad paid for it 46 years ago. Steve tried to buy the car back from Sean's dad, but Bob Kiernan didn't even reply to Steve's letter.
Bob Kiernan drove it for six years, then the clutch gave way and he put it in the barn. Bob died in 2014 and Sean started thinking about what to do with it. It's very original (ie: seen better days) and Sean is selling it with no reserve. Or you can buy the new Bullitt Mustang Ford is selling here for about $80k. There's a saving of close to $7m right there.
We're declaring Scottsdale a Fezzer-free zone today and instead focusing on metal like Jack Brabham's 1956 Cooper-Climax 1.5 Litre T-39 "Bobtail" Sports-Racing, Centre-Seater that should come back to Australia, particularly since it will go for about $200k.
So many emails, so many worst cars. Here's your choices. Graham Luke Mitchell says his stepmother experienced a wonderful trinity of Britain's very worst cars throughout the 70s. "My father steadfastly refused to consider buying foreign vehicles (particularly German ones, as he had served in WWII). When he met my stepmother she drove a Ford Anglia with that extraordinary inward sloping rear window but things quickly got worse when he bought her a new Morris Marina. The final insult came in the form of a Vauxhall Chevette in the middle years of that decade."
Jim Baxter has no qualms about revving up our own sub-editor, WART member and Moke owner (340,000km, still going) Mark Southcott. Jim succinctly writes: "My pick as the worst car ever made is the first Mini Moke. It had 10-inch wheels, Lucas electrics and the great reputation of BMC/Leyland reliability."
Robert Kroie sent in a 20,000-word essay on the attributes of the Triumph Stag, but how he bought a spare engine just in case. "The real lesson from the Stag and relevance to the business world is how corporate games and dishonesty destroyed the business."
