we're celebrating 50 years of the world's greatest collector car
auction with some of our defining moments and one of those was the f-88 selling it no reserve
steve will tell you what that was like but what was unbelievable on the auction block
was having a bidder sit in the car and on live tv tell everybody he's buying the car
that's never happened but the consignor was really nervous going into that wasn't he steve absolutely
craig and again we talk about the barrett-jackson experience all the time let me tell you that
was a barrett-jackson experience i remember gordon apple a good friend of barry jackson
we had many many discussions leading up to the consignment of that car
and you talk about a guy that was nervous about going no reserve craig he was so anxious on so
many levels the dream number was was nowhere near anyone's idea at the time 1 million dollars was
his dream number and i remember being up there with gordon when he was selling and once we went
over a million i'd go you happy i'd really like two then we hit two million i'd really like three
it was one of those moments where all of us together and everybody outside what people told me
was outside got dead quiet everybody was watching the jumbotron and the entire property erupted
when we dropped the hammer absolutely it was almost like
the entire universe exhaled at the same time they were holding their breath for so long and
when the hammer dropped to your point craig it literally blew the lid off of that place
and i really in many ways think that that was one of those defining moments to your point
that set the stage for so many more in the future because that took the collector car world by
surprise the energy in the room the excitement of barrett-jackson the fact that we're on live
television all of those forces collided and created what i would argue is one of the most
spectacular events of its kind in history it was such a great moment check it out on the stage
is an interesting video clip of our next lot number
1954 oldsmobile f-88 general motors concept car this may be the most historically significant car
at the auction i mean it's it's the only one left it was the project of the stylist harley earl with
bill mitchell there i mean this is this is a piece of history gm was not really about hanging on to
his concept car it isn't a shriners parade in 1954 it's it's extremely rare because in the early 50s
harley earl produced a whole bunch of these from all the buick wildcats and the cadillac
uh the saber all the stuff came out of the styling studios the general motors most of
them remained in the collection this is an awfully rare example of one of these things
it was given or sold as we understand to uh mr uh el cord which makes it a really bizarre
kind of handoff and it came into the public realm but most of these cars are not available for sale
and probably never will be brock think of this car as the cousin to the corvette oldsmobile jealous
of the corvette wanting a two-seater of their own commissioning prototypes like this they had an
overhead valve v8 engine at the time chevrolet did not and olsonville campaigned hard to get a car
like this into production unsuccessfully because the corvette wasn't selling very well at all
they didn't have any luck in putting something like this on the road absolutely right now
i was talking to a gentleman who's just up there with craig he's harley earl's grandson and he came
along here because he's involved with this car and of course there's a whole family connection
still attached to this vehicle and it's going to be really really interesting
to see what amount of money it catches i've asked them to open up the hood so we can have a look
underneath but that seems to be a bit tricky but i will get there now think about this if they had
approved an oldsmobile two-seater the oldsmobile corvette as it were do you wonder if oldsmobile
could have survived if they had had an image high-performance car to sustain them all this time
the all-time highest bid at barrett-jackson is two million dollars you know he walked over mr ferrari
walked over to the other guy and got in his face that guy just turned around and raised his bid i
there is the current record for a 1932 hispano squeeze at j12 binder in 1989. we are at 2
million dollars he gets two and then sits in the car
i don't know he's scratching that beauty jump in there
with him you know he looks determined to own this car doesn't he let's get
his name we have a new record give me your name what's your name my name
it doesn't is it's a priceless car it's one of one ever made i agree entirely
we have 2.7 looking for 3 million dollars
this will make the highlights on speed news sunday night harley earl smiling somewhere
3 million
i do the same thing
okay well
you