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. And tonight, out in western Sydney at Valvoline Raceway, its Ultimate Sydney Speedweek Grand Final with USC Sprintcars, USC Late Models, USC Speedcars and fireworks on and above the track. If you haven’t seen serious sprintcars compete then you’re missing little racing cars with no weight but 670kw of power, meaning a power-to-weigh ratio the same as Hamo’s F1 Merc except they race on dirt not tarmac. No wonder they have wings.
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. (Note to younger readers: a letter was an early version of email that required the sender to take it to the postbox, put it in and wait up to five days before it was delivered to the recipient. Strangely enough, business prospered under letters.)
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, Arizona (Why do Scottsdale people have TGIF on their shoes? Toes Go In First) 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. Owners include Bill Paterson and our own Peter Briggs. The car was damaged in 2015. Briggsy made a new body to exact specifications and it is eligible for vintage race meetings including the Goodwood Revival and Le Mans Classic. Bonhams have it at The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa on Thursday.
Take a look at the 1955 Lancia Aurelia B24S Spider America, which can be yours for slightly less than the price of Baked Eggs Shakshuka and a Matcha latte with lactose-free milk at Mr Mister cafe in Chapel Street, Windsor. Yes, around $1m should get you a car named after the old Roman road from Rome to Pisa. This was a very limited production car with exquisite coachwork by Pinin Farina and the first ever volume production V6 engine. If you haven’t got a lazy million, what about Lynden Hayes’ Ford GT40 replica. Fully roadworthy, maybe one of three in Australia and on Carsales.com with licence plate GT41 for $200k.
So many emails, so many worst cars. Here’s your choices (well at least the ones we have room for). 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 (already covered in your column). The final insult came in the form of a Vauxhall Chevette in the middle years of that decade. This bright red beauty had the small engine that struggled with the gentle hill sloping up out of town to our home; before you knew it, you had changed down to second to keep it going. The seams soon succumbed to rust and the gearbox was like stirring porridge; yes, this was in Scotland in a town called Linlithgow.”
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. The Triumph engineers in order to protect their own turf lied about fitting the Rover 3.5-litre V8 into the Stag, claiming it could not be done. The facts are many Stags have the Rover engine and indeed the larger Leyland version is testament to the deception by Triumph management which helped in the demise of the Rover Group.”
Warwick Costin believes: “As Australians we should hold our heads high. We are among the best of the worst. It’s hard to go past the Lightburn Zeta, made by concrete-mixers in South Australia. What inspired them to make them think they could make a car? Coopers?” And Andrew Bilge asks: “What about the Lada Niva? Surely our Soviet friends who make Vodka and fur hats have the required skill set to make cars? At highway speeds of about 60-65mph, you have all the baseline engine sounds, plus a new concert of gears all through the spine of the car, and the persistent hum and throb of wind fighting hard against the garden-shed-like aerodynamics.”
Richard Samwell tells me that in 1976 he bought a second-hand Leyland P76 V8 Executive model. “In the next few years every bit of glass fell out and I had to wire the windows in the closed position. This was all right until the air-conditioner stopped working. A bit of a bugger in north Queensland. It also had an aluminium engine that was forever overheating.
More next week.
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