The Paddock Having Huge Liquidation Sale!

One of the great reproduction muscle car parts sources for the better part of the last two decades suddenly closed its doors last year and shocked all of us by their sudden departure. The Paddock was well-known in the hobby as one of the “go to” sources for just about everything from weatherstripping to chrome trim to sheet metal, and everything in between. While the dust over their closure has far from settled, there will be a mammoth auction on July 29, 2010, to sell off all the holdings of The Paddock, including all their parts, their property, the building, everything!
Key Auctioneers out of Avon, Indiana has been commissioned to sell off everything The Paddock owned, including over 60,000 car parts in stock. We’re told there will be bulk lots of small items for entire product lines as well. Everything from stripe kits to engines to interior components to fasteners and screws will go under the gavel. In addition to that, they’re selling off The Paddock’s 60,000 square foot building, all the office furnishings, warehouse equipment, their trucks, and even their traveling display trailers that were such common sights at the major Mopar shows. This is going to be a monumental event!
If you’re going to be anywhere near Knightstown, Indiana on July 29, this is definitely the place to be - and bring your check book! For more information, contact Key Auctioneers, 317-244-3728.

Mopar Photographer and Hobbyist Paul Wilson Passes Away

We have grim news out of Indiana this morning. Paul Wilson, longtime photographer and writer for Mopar Collector’s Guide passed away last night at his home in Crawfordsville. Paul had been battling cancer for the last several years, but through it all, our long-haired friend seldom missed an event or a show, and he was something of a fixture at Mopar races around the country - especially the Classic Events series races. Details are still forthcoming, but as we’re preparing to board airplanes for the Carlisle show, we wanted to let the Mopar faithful know and we wanted to express our sincere condolences to Paul’s family and his countless friends. He never met a stranger in this hobby, and we’ll seriously miss our old friend.

B5 Blue SRT8 Challenger on eBay Motors

Submitted by Hope McCorkle:

Thanks to several avid readers and the enthusiasts over at Challengertalk.com, we were alerted to a very bizarre bit of news every Mopar fanatic will likely find interesting. Glenn E. Thomas Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep in Long Beach, California decided to open an eBay store to sell some of their cars and trucks. In early March, they listed a brand-new B5 Blue SRT8 Challenger on eBay Motors and ran the auction with no reserve. The auction closed on March 12, 2010 with fifteen bidders and a winning bid of only $29,100! Obviously, that’s far below sticker price for any new SRT8 Challenger, let alone a very well equipped B5 Blue limited edition car. You might think somebody got the deal of a lifetime, but as of this writing, the dealership is refusing to sell the car for that price, despite having listed it for sale at no reserve.
The Challengertalk.com website has an on-going thread about this issue on their forum, which is receiving a lot of attention from enthusiasts world-wide. While this is a nightmare for the dealership, this event points up several interesting things. First, a new B5 SRT8 Challenger didn’t even fetch $30K in an open auction, so that tells us to watch for rapidly falling prices on these cars. Secondly, it tells us that Dodge dealerships need to be very familiar with how online auctions work before they start selling on them! “No reserve” means “no reserve” - you roll the dice and take your chances. Hopefully this matter will be settled amicably for both the dealership and the high bidder after it all shakes out.

Click Here for the whole thread.

Disaster at Russo and Steele!

The legendary Russo and Steele auction in Scottsdale, Arizona suffered an unprecedented catastrophe at just after 6:00 pm, January 22. Violent storms have been wreaking havoc at both Barrett-Jackson and Russo and Steele this year, with torrential rain and extremely fierce winds. The storms got the better of Russo and Steele Thursday night and chaos reigns at the moment.
With somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people inside the gates and the auction underway, rain and straight line winds in excess of fifty mph struck the sight, tearing apart two of the approximately 800 foot long exhibition tents that the collector cars are kept in prior to, and after, going across the auction block. The largest of the exhibition tents tore, then collapsed, across hundreds of valuable collector cars, followed by a second huge tent covering hundreds more cars. One of the tents actually ripped in two and most of it flew over a hundred feet away and landed on a nearby freeway, blocking traffic well into Friday morning. Meanwhile, hundreds of magnificent cars sat exposed to the raging storm, almost all of them with their windows down, and just about every convertible on site had its top down as well.
Due to the ferocity of the storm and flying debris, Scottsdale and Phoenix police evacuated the crowd right away, uncertain the main auction tent could withstand the storm. Thankfully, no injuries have been reported. As of this writing, the whole Russo and Steele complex is still under lock down by the police and fire departments, and car owners have not been allowed onto the grounds to assess the damage to their cars or even cover their cars in some way. Whether or not the auction will continue this year is still in doubt, as Russo and Steele themselves cannot allow people back in the compound until all the damage is cleared. It is unlikely the sale will continue this week.
Over the next few days the extent of the damage to the cars at Russo will be worked out, but what will be done about this is likely to be a long-term dilemma. To our knowledge, nothing like this has ever occurred at any major collector car auction, let alone the second largest car auction in the world. If you've been watching Barrett-Jackson on television, you might be wondering where all the Mopars are (and all the high dollar cars for that matter). Well, they're over at Russo and Steele in huge numbers, with their owners opting for that venue's rules of not allowing owner buy backs and allowing owners to place reserves on their cars. As such, a very large number of high-end Mopars are at Russo and Steele, including a significant number of Hemi cars, Max Wedges, Superbirds, E-body convertibles, and at least two factory '68 Hemi Super Stockers. Right now, we’re all waiting to see how many suffered damage, and to what extent. We'll keep you posted.

Click Here for video.

Beach Boys 'Cuda Seized at Barrett

There’s disturbing news out of Scottsdale, Arizona this morning. Our longtime friend and founding member of The Beach Boys, Al Jardine, brought his purple Hemicuda to the Barrett-Jackson auction to make room for another project. The ‘Cuda was featured back in our July, 2006 issue of MCG. After dropping the car off with Barrett-Jackson and turning over the title, as per the rules of the auction, a major problem arose.
It was reported to us this morning that the Scottsdale Police Department has seized Al Jardine’s ‘Cuda and placed it in their impound because the car’s VIN turns up on a stolen vehicle list dating back to the 1970's! Al has a title for the car and there was never any controversy around the car during its restoration/modification, but reportedly there may be an issue with the car having two different VIN numbers on it. Until things are sorted out, the Scottsdale Police have decided to keep the ‘Cuda in custody, which is not a good thing for Al, Barrett-Jackson, or the people who had already planned to bid on the car in hopes of bringing it home.
Al’s a great guy, and we hope all this shakes out well in the end, but the timing of this matter couldn’t seem to be any worse.

Click Here for pictures and the full story featured in Mopar Collector's Guide July of 2006 issue.

Congress Voted

Congress voted to approve their massive appropriations bill in the wee hours of the morning last Sunday, and by doing so, perhaps give GM and Chrysler dealers who were given closure notices a second chance. The bill mentioned in our previous breaking news article regarding dealership closures was rolled into the giant omnibus bill, so it appears that it will now be in the hands of an independent arbitrator, appointed by the feds, to designate which new car dealerships are closed down. It should be interested to see how this works out, but for now, at least the dealers who were shut out by the factories now have a glimmer of hope that they can keep their doors open. We’ll have more in the next MCG.

Congress May Give Cut Out Chrysler Dealers a Second Chance... Maybe...

Submitted by Rob Wolf:
Congress has tacked an amendment into their newest omnibus U.S. Funding Bill that would allow Chrysler and GM dealerships that were told they had to forfeit their dealerships a second chance. The program is part of a last-minute $447 billion dollar spending bill introduced December 7 by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Basically, this sidebar in the bill would allow dealerships to appeal the government and the auto manufacturers to reinstate them as dealers and keep their doors open. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are quoted as being very excited about it. However, this may be just more smoke and mirrors.
Last July, Republican Congressman Steven LaTourette of Ohio joined with ninety-nine other senators and sent a letter to Majority Leader Hoyer demanding that locked out auto dealerships be given a fair shake. He managed to get wording into House Bill 3170, which would’ve required automakers to rethink and reinstate soon-to-be-closed dealership in order to secure their government bailout money. This new revision in the current funding bill seems to do away with that as-yet unsettled bill and put the ultimate fate of the dealers in the hands of Congress. If we’re reading it correctly, dealerships would have to plead their case for existence to Congress, not to the auto makers themselves, and Congress would then decide who lives and who dies.
Bear in mind, this is a $447 billion “funding bill” that’s an “omnibus bill.” An omnibus bill is one that has a lot of different things stacked into it, so if one particular issue is important to a senator, they have to vote for the whole package to get their one item. In addition to possibly assisting Chrysler dealerships, this bill includes $10.5 billion for high speed rail projects, it eases long-standing federal abortion restrictions, it pays for drug abuse needle exchange programs, it legalizes medical marijuana in Washington D.C., and it would allow for terrorists held at Guantanamo to be brought to U.S. prisons and provide for them to stand trial in U.S. civil courts. For all of Congressman LaTourette’s efforts, and those of other like-minded conservatives, the effort to help dealerships has been saddled down with an awful lot of ridiculous baggage. A vote is expected in the next day or two.

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