Best of Show Automotive Blog

As you’ve probably noticed, we have a fondness for Mopars at Best of Show Automotive.  OK, maybe more than a fondness.  We do love them all, but we’re rabid about Mopars.  And you can lay the blame squarely at my feet.  I am guilty as charged.

Strangely enough, my first car WASN’T a Mopar.  It was a 1972 Chevrolet Nova, that I “rescued” from a trip to the boneyard by waving 50 bucks in my uncle Jim’s face.  Quickly determing that the boneyard would only give him 35 bucks, and I was 5 miles closer, he parked the car in my dad’s driveway, carefully slinking away before my dad noticed what was going on.

Eighteen months later, with a new set of doors and transmission, the 72 Nova was ready for prime-time duty as a work/school/personal recreation duty vehicle.  God, I hated that car.  It seemed like something broke every time I drove it.  Having no money, I learned very quickly how to keep an unsafe vehicle on the road.  My greatest triumph was grafting the radiator out of a retired U.S. mail jeep (my dad was thrifty with his vehicle purchases) into the Nova to keep the 250 V6 from overheating.  Ever wonder what happens when the drive-shaft pops off at 55 on the freeway?  Wow, what an experience!  And it’s so impressive to the girl who just wanted a ride home from school!

A year later, when I realized that the Nova really should have gone to the bone-yard, and that keeping a zombie car alive was not only unnatural, but life-threatening, my fascination with Mopars began.  First, there was a 72 Dodge Dart with a slant six.  What a slug, but those 426 Hemi badges on the fenders sure looked cool!  Then, I graduated to a 1968 Dodge Coronet with a mighty (it seemed mighty at the time) 318 small block.  Next, onto a 70 AAR Cuda I owned for three days (that’s another story for another time), a 66 Satellite 318 car, and, finally, at the age of 21, a 1967 GTX with a 440 and a 4 speed.
The 67 GTX was my first “real” muscle car, and when I found it, I just knew I’d lucked into the greatest car ever built.  Of course, it needed body-work, paint, an engine rebuild, a new transmission and a new interior, but those were just minor details.  I finally had a REAL muscle car.  Of course, “restoring” a car with no garage would be difficult, so I rented one of those 25 bucks a month storage units, parked the car in it and disassembled it.  After 24 months and $25,000.00, my “restored” 1967 GTX was done.   God, I loved that car.  I loved to look at it … drive it … change the plugs … talk about it.  You could have pulled into my driveway with a brand new Ferrari and I wouldn’t have been impressed.  I had the greatest car in the world.

And then, fate intervened.  Newly married, my wife became pregnant and we had no medical insurance).  With no savings, and facing financial ruin at the age of 24, I had two choices: sell the Honda Accord that got me to work daily, or sell the garage queen 67 GTX.  After three months of advertising, I sold the GTX and a large stash of parts for $9,000.00, quickly learning a $16,000.00 lesson in the financial realities of siring babies with no health insurance and restoring cars and having to sell them.

Onto a life of responsibility, and kids, and mortgage payments, and medical bills and, well, you know the drill.  But I never fell out of love with that 67 GTX.  And every time I see one now, I just can’t resist it.  That’s why we’ve restored one here recently at Best of Show, which you may have seen on our web-site, or in the latest issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.  It’s also why we are restoring a black on red HEMI, 4 speed 67 GTX survivor.  Are 67 GTXs the most valuable cars in the world?  No.  Are they the fastest cars ever built?  No (although they are pretty darn fast).  Will a 67 GTX ever bring a million bucks at Barrett-Jackson?  I doubt it, although with the way they are printing money these days, it might take a million bucks to buy a Ford Taurus in a few years.

The reason we restored our 67 HEMI GTX automatic  and the reason we are restoring the 67 HEMI GTX 4 Speed is pretty simple: I love these cars.  And I will always love these cars, so I bet we will have a few more motor into our facility in the future.

Why is any of this important and why am I even writing this?  It’s pretty simple.  The number one question we get here at Best of Show when people come to visit is “how are you guys selling so many cars at top prices in a down economy”?  As visitors will tell you, one can’t walk around our 60,000 square foot display facility with literally tripping over 40 cars with sold signs on them.  And as the veterans will tell you, it changes weekly.  The answer is pretty simple: guys love these cars.  Right now, this hobby, exist a small, but vocal group of nattering naybobs who want everyone to believe that prices are down … or they are inches from collapsing.  They think they are going to short the collector car hobby the way a hedge fund shorts a stock that’s over-valued.  These guys think they know the collector car market, but, in fact, most of them don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about.  Playing on Ebay 3 hours a week does not make you a market expert on anything, let alone collector cars.  The same holds true for attending a few auctions.  Hate to break it to you guys, but the auctions are a tiny slice of the collector car hobby, and the numbers are distorted both up and down at these sales, for a long list of reasons we won’t get into today.

Here’s the long and the short of it: guys love these cars.  We have customers who love Corvettes and customers who love Mustangs and customers who love ‘Cudas.  The Buick GS guys love boasting about their HEMI killing 455 Stage 1s and the tri-five Chevy guys have cruising their Bel Airs to car shows 6 nights a week here in NE Ohio in the summer.   Guys love these cars.  They love driving them and talking about them and working on them and restoring them and it will ALWAYS be this way.   Sure, if the economy is on fire, you might see some drunken novice over-paying for a mediocre car at an auction, but he’s not the heart of the hobby.  The heart of the hobby are the guys from Switzerland who flew over here earlier this week and spent three days in awe of the Mopars of their dreams, taking home two cars, or the husband and wife that purchased the 55 Chevy yesterday.  I bet they will hit 500 cruises over the next ten years with that car and enjoy every minute of it.  These cars aren’t like stocks or bonds or real estate inflated by cheap money.  Most of these cars still sell well below their restoration costs and very, very few of them are purchased with borrowed money.

These cars represent our youth and the dreams we had when we were young.  They represent a time in our lives when anything was possible and we held the world in our hands.  Sorry, Chicken Little, but you’re never going to be able to short-sell that, no matter how hard you try.

If you ever get a chance to stop in here at the Mentor Museum of Speed and you see me walking around on the floor, ask me about the 1967 Plymouth GTX Hemi we have on display here.  I’d love to show it to you.