Muscle Car Auction - Auction Fever

Cover Car
Not every musclecar built is going for ridiculous dollars. We used Charles Bailey's '67 GTO as our cover car this month as a typical musclecar. It runs a 335hp 400ci Pontiac with a TH400 automatic equipped with a stout hydraulic flat-tappet cam, but the rest of the car is very close to its origins. Featuring power steering, power drum brakes, A/C, and a 3.55-geared Pontiac 10-bolt, this is Charles' version of the perfect street machine.

Charles is the first to admit that his car is not a 100-point resto queen, which is fine with him because he enjoys driving it rather than polishing it in his garage. We did a little research into prices for a '66 or '67 GTO coupe just to see what these cars are commanding on both on the Internet and through major auction sales from earlier this year. Not surprisingly, we found a dramatic range of prices with a typical GTO hardtop going for between $14,000 and $33,000. If you get into the convertibles, these soar into the $25,000 to $75,000 arena--yikes.

If a real GTO isn't that important, we found a few examples of Tempest sedans and hardtops that would make excellent street machines at still-reasonable prices of $6,000 and less depending upon condition. Rust buckets obviously will be much cheaper but more expensive to restore.

Recent Sales History
The following chart illustrates some recent auction sales prices on both restored and modified musclecars as well as clones. Keep in mind that these numbers should be viewed as trends that could indicate what similar cars could sell for in the future. Because these values were accessed via the Internet, we did not actually see any of these cars, so there is no evaluation on the quality of the vehicles. You can get more information on these cars and other vehicle sales by accessing the auction company Web sites.