Most Expensive Ride You Got to Drive

'57 Chevy, ragtop, continental kit, fuel injection in 1982 with 14,000 miles.

 

work.

and worked.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

Those full size Fords are quite rare....with that set up.....your around my age....thinking back to that time frame....we grew up with a smorgasbord of cars to choose from!

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I drive fire trucks for a living. The city paid a little under $900,000 G's for our ladder and most engines run around $400,000.

Hey CheaterRome, are you talking about the Benson roadster?
Great car with history.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

Great experience....can't say I ever heard of the cowboy....Caddy was the first to go with the electric starter.....

Impressive cars back then.....

the stories junk yards could tell you from the 1940s as cars got crushed for their metal value....

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kirban 2 cents worth

The ss/rs package is one Camaro people love....great combination to have both options.

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Viper and a Ferarri.....I had to go home and put on my cowboy boots because the Vipers pedals were so close together.Big feet.

 

come on, Kirban...tell us what the car was!

 

kirban 2 cents worth

I can fully appreciate what Canadians must pay to fuel their hobby since we sell to Canadians...between duty fees....and the money exchanges...although maybe about a year or so ago it was pretty much dead even...

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kirban 2 cents worth

Those 1971-72 had some super long hoods!!! Hard to believe car had manual steering in 1971...was not that expensive to have power steering...thos ecars rusted quickly...and the hood would kink!

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Not HAMB friendly but I drive a 2009 Cadillac hearse everyday....pricetag is 115k.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

I been to a Caddy National event and those V12 and V16 are impressive.....

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About 10 years ago I got running from storage and then tuned/drove a factory numbers matching 1966 426 Hemi Belevedere w 40K actual miles. It was untouched and still retained the numbers matching 2 4bbl Carburetors.
I made a short Video of us hotrodding and tire squeeling it around before we sold it. I should have bought it for myself as the asking price was only $20k.

 

i took a ferrari f430 on a test drive in 2008. posing as a rich american at the frankfurt international auto show works wonders.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

Quick funeral story....and its true...

As you probably know, most funeral businesses are family run pass down from generation to generation....usually has the nicest well kept lawn...

A friend of mine who is a little older than me was always a car nut growing up. The year was around 1962-63.....his father and his fathers father ran a funeral home which he now runs....in their lobby they have a miniature of the horse drawn carriage they used back before cars.

Anyrate back to 1962-63 they needed to replace one of their station wagons...somehow my friend convinced his father to buy a Chevy wagon...powered by the 409....Dad would not go for the 4-speed but 3 speed on the column (I think it was on the column).

Going by memory they may have had 2 different 409 engines this was the smaller one....

What a neat ride....got sold years ago as a regular wagon....be pretty darn rare today....

true story

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You gotta love wearing a suit & tie almost every day for a job like that.....

 

kirban 2 cents worth

I read about those bentleys the GT impressive for the weight of the car...great body lines....

I see a few in my area but not the GT models...

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kirban 2 cents worth

Sorry if I am vague...

so far no one has guessed the car.. My friend as far as I know still has the car but its in pieces....be one heck of a barn find...I have not seen him in probably 10 years.

The trivia part is to guess the car. Here are more clues.

It is a foreign car....this model was only made for a short period of time.

Even to this day it is considered by most to have great lines etc....

Yes I know exactly what the car is.

Making people guess....

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pantera,, Rolls Royce silver cloud,, fully restored jaguar XKE,, vetts,, 5 brand new limos,, Porsche targa,, duesenberg,, custom show bikes (around 15) 6 custom show cars,,,ariel square 4 ,,
vincent black shadow.
none were mine,, late 70's to 80's

 

in college 98-00 (yes I am a youngen), I worked at a high end hand car wash in RI. One of the main customers had a fleet of cars. He would drop them off one after another for detailing.
Red convert Viper
Viper GTS
Bentley sedan
Bentley GT coupe
BMW m5
A couple sl600 benz
and more.
This guy had more money that he could shake a stick at. But he was cool enough to let us drive them.

 

Rarest but not all that valuable then, 1969 Trans Am Convert. Several HO Trans Ams that how would be worth some change now. My buddies 69 Hemi Roadrunner that he pulled the Hemi out of to put in a race car. He had special ordered that car in 69. That is probably the case where someone I know took what would now be a very valuable car and made it into a little value car. Last time I saw it, it was running around Moody TX with a 413 in it.
l

 

I got a chance to drive a guy I worked with's Viper. I don't remember what year the car was. It was in the late 90s and I was traveling and in SoCal. I ran it on the 55 freeway starting in Newport Beach. I am almost 6'3" so it really wasn't very comfortable for me and my head stuck over the windshield but damn that thing could scoot.

 

I drove a Freind of Mine's 55 or 56 Gullwing Coupe
back when it first came out
I can't remember the Year but I think it was 1955 because I got out of the Service
in 54 and Bought me a 54 Corvette
and we Swaped Car to Test drive them
I liked the Gullwing Mercedes Benz
when I had My Shop I used to Service a 1964 AC Cobra 289
that was a Fast Car!
just my 3.5 cents

 

kirban 2 cents worth

Vipers at least the early to mid 1990s seem crude compared to the Corvette. My son had one drove it once....side pipes generate a lot of heat. Your rite being tall not a car for comfort!

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still no one has guessed the car I got to drive back in the mid 1960s nor has the car showed up under anyones "rides" ....

 

Does it realy matter what one drove that cost a shit tin? Like Flatford I drove a Leopard tank and a M198(?) self propelled gun.
Even further O/T I got to play pilot in a duel controll P51D Mustang and in a RNZAF TA4K Skyhawk.
Doc.

 

Hey kirban, was it a Jag "D" type?

 

We older guys like me at 59 had lots of opportunities to drive cars when they were new or just a few years old long before they took on any collectible value. Most were just "nice cars". I don't think any of us realized what an investment they were to become some day.

My dad bought a 1967 Shelby GT500, one of the few that had A/C in June of 1967, when I was 16. Here's the new car paperwork...


that was a lot of money, but it wasn't stupid crazy money, just a little more expensive than anything else at the time. I drove a Olds powered T-Bucket with a friend from L.A. to St. Louis that month and I didn't know that dad had taken delivery of the Shelby while I was gone, although we both had gone car shopping together before I left. I flew home and, from a pay phone (remember those?) I called home to get a ride home from LAX.
So, I'm waiting out in front of the terminal with my bag of dirty clothes and my trusty camera (photos of my t-bucket drive to St. Louis are in my albums on my Mazooma1 page)....and here pulls up my dad with a big grin on his face. He let me drive it home from the airport. Here it is:





This was, for a 16 year old, pretty cool. It had a C-6 auto trans, but when you kicked it on the freeway, it would drop to 2nd gear and when it would go into drive at about 75-80, it would chirp the tires.
Dad trusted me and never refuses any request to drive the Shelby. It was much more comfortable than my Model A panel delivery, so for a first date situation, he always let me drive to for the night.
All through my senior year in high school which started in September of 1967, he let me drive it to school when my Model A panel was apart.

My first girlfriend, when I was 17 liked the Shelby, but loved my Model A more (what a gal). We did take the Shelby to our senior prom in May of 1968. After the prom, we took it into L.A. to the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel (where Bobby Kennedy would be killed two weeks later). Playing at the Coconut Grove was the "Righteous Brothers". Cool night.

Dad's Shelby was parked in my garage in Sierra Madre long after I moved away from "home" and bought my own house. He had no interest in it anymore after my mom was killed in a traffic accident in 1972 while she and dad wear in her '67 428 Galaxie. Dad lost any interest in the Shelby, so I kept it in my garage. One day he called and said that one of he bodymen at Fernwood Autobody in Pasadena wanted to know if dad wanted to sell the Shelby. That night the guy and my dad came up and he bought the car from my dad for $2400. The Shelby was mint, just as it was the day he bought it.
But, now in 1975, $2400 seemed like a fair price. The gas crunch was on in America, so nobody wanted a 428, dual quad Holley Shelby anymore.
So, the deal was struck, and I never saw it again.
When dad died in 2002, I found in his paperwork a file of all his Shelby receipts, invoices, business cards from Mel Burns Ford in Long Beach where he purchased the car, etc., etc. Dad was a packrat when it came to documenting every oil change, air filter change, everything.
In the paperwork was the sales tag that is pictured above.
This is the first time that I had the cars VIN number.
I contacted to Shelby Owners Assn. and asked if the Shelby GT500 with this VIN number had survived all these years. The guy said, "yes, I'll give you the contact number of the current owner". I left the owner a phone message where he lived in Florida. He called back and said that the car just sold at Barrett-Jackson for $229,000. He had done a complete restoration on the car at Orlando Mustang. Everything was perfect, almost better than new. He said that my dad's name was still engraved on the inside of each wheel. This didn't surprise me, as dad was an ex-policeman, but I had no idea that he had done that.
The fella in Florida was kind enough to send be all the photos of the restoration and all the photos from the Barret-Jackson auction.
Nice man.

So, the short answer...my dad's 1967 Shelby GT500 which sold for $229,000.

You have to remember that in the 60's, there was lots of stuff floating around that was just sold off with no ideas about an "investment quality" in any of them
I worked at a gast station when I was 17 and one guy came in every week for gas in his silver Mercedes Gullwing. It was his only car, so it was alway full of grocerys or something. He even had some lumber tied to the roof one time.

Our next door neighbor was a local fireman and he drove a 289 (with Webers) Cobra. This was his only car, so it had to be his daily driver.
He even parked it outside and overnight at the fire station where he worked. No fence, no nothing.
He let me drive it once. It drove like a slot car. Wherever you wanted it to go, it went. I can only imagine what a handful a 427 Cobra would have been like to drive.

Here it is in 1969 with my Model A, SBC, behind it.

The Cobra was perfect, blue with white stripes. He paid $4,000 for it used.
Thats just what stuff was worth back then. He later bought a 427 Cobra for $7,000...now that was really stupid money back then.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

That Gullwing....had to be a neat experience....years ago I had a friend that was an old timer...owned 2 junk yards....which as you know was what they were called back then...

He owned a Gullwing his wife hated it it because of the way the doors opened so he got rid of it....

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May have been called junk yards, but one of the last businesses that was virtually strictly a cash business!

still no one has guessed my "ride" yet.

 

kirban 2 cents worth

Nope not a jag or part of the jag family....wrong country also...

keep trying....

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Heck judging from the response I think its safe to assume most of the readers were around in the late 1950s....

 

ive got to drive lots of neat cars through the years ...luckily ive grown up in a car family and a car oriented job ...here are a few...my dads steel full fendered 32 roadster..myformer bosses 70 hemi challenger my dads buddies pantera....lots of other neat stuff.... ive been lucky through the years.....

 

stop saying that.