BARRETT-JACKSON LOT 694.2 1949 HUDSON SUPER SIX POLICE CAR
This car is a classic example of how Barrett-Jackson creates a market.
Last year somebody paid over 100K for an Andy Griffith replica Mayberry police car.
This whole exercise is about how nostalgia drives the sentimental buyer.
This year B-J has a fleet of replica and real vintage police cars for sale including another Andy of Mayberry car. That proves once again, how sellers follow trends in this world. But you have to admit-turning Granny’s 6-cylinder ’65 Chevy 4-door sedan into serious cash by painting it black and white and adding an old siren and lights makes sense.
Otherwise, plain Jane 4-door cars are doomed to be bridesmaids at every sale.
So our guy is no different-he hopes to double his retirement fund by reselling this car. In itself, this is an interesting car because it is a ’49 Hudson-that makes it an eye-catching car simply based on appearance.
Better yet-this a true ex-police car from the Johnson, Iowa Police Department. It was actually used until its retirement in the mid-60s. No word on what some guy with a brand new 1965 GTO thought about being chased by a 1949 6-cylinder Hudson, but you get the impression that most guys pulled over just out of curiosity.
Anyhow, our guy rationalizes that if a fake cop car hit 100K, imagine what a real police car driven by real life Barney Fifes would bring in resale.
That’s the kind of gutsy thinking that makes our guy a true hero in average car guy world.
PROJECTED BID-15, 000
ACTUAL BID-14,300
The actual bid is going to put our guy on a marital cliff, simply because women are very visual. This dusty old black and white Hudson, with the bad original paint, is going to put our boy’s marriage at the center of a very large explosion.
The reason is simple-car guys are visionary by nature.They are hard-wired that way, so they can envision a 55 Ford truck buried to the window sills in 45-year-old mud as a future show winner.
Very few females have that same vision-we call them freaks of nature.
Our guy’s wife is definitely not an exception to the rule. That’s why the next stage of the purchase makes no sense to her-the one where our guy tells her that the car is worth more by not being restored. That could drive the value down on this old bad guy taxi so it’s very possible that the old Hudson will always look like…a 61 year old car that spent its whole life in the real world.
15 K isn’t the biggest deal breaker on this car but the quick forced sale that nets 1000 bucks in a fire sale puts a big strain on our guy’s wedded bliss. Maybe not enough to kill it, but the long-term resentment on both sides could prove fatal to the marriage.
The impulse bid is more of an absolute-this is the scenario where our guy got to the hospitality room at dawn and never left. The only thing motivating him was his desire to make a killing in the vintage police car market. His last memory of the night is a jumbled, blurry rationalization that burning up every cent of equity in his house was sound business practice.
The 100K bid is close to the Andy Griffith bid from last year on a fake car so a real squad car, (even without the late Don Knott’s signature) should be worth twice as much in this guy’s world of the severely impaired bidder.
This scenario has relentlessly predictable results–the marriage earthquake is registering about 8 on the destruction scale. Our hero is done as a married guy, because even though the marriage didn’t die from the initial quake the world-class tsunami wave after the shock wiped his marital status off the map. As result, his beloved ’49 Hudson retirement car is sold at a local auction after the divorce as community property for the princely sum of 3200 bucks.
Really, there are no good guys or bad guys in this worst case B-J scenario-just victims.
This car could have been signed by Jack “Hawaii 5-0” Lord, Broderick “Highway Patrol” Crawford, and Andy “Sheriff Taylor” Griffith and it still would have seen the same tragic ending.
A newly single guy and a messy divorce.
