From 0 - $6,000,000 In 40 Years Flat

Go to a collector car auction and you’ll hear astronomic numbers – seven-figure dollar amounts -- being bid on old race cars.

And to think, it wasn’t all that long ago that last year’s race cars were, well, junk. Once the season was over, what had been a state-of-the-art racing machine was obsolete, and therefore worthless. That had no value beyond the fact that maybe their chassis and perhaps some of their parts might be able to be reused next season.

With perhaps a very few exceptions, such as the museum at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, nobody collected old race cars, and vintage racing was something Steve Earle was yet to create.

Consider: At the end of the 1965 world sports car racing season, the Ford-powered Shelby Daytona Coupes that had just wrested the world manufacturers’ championship from Ferrari were nearly abandoned at sea.

After the season ended on the Continent, the cars were housed in Alan Mann’s race shop in England, and British tax officers came calling to collect duties on these “imported” cars. But the cars had no value, it was argued. They’re obsolete. The rules were changing for the 1966 season and despite the history the cars had made in 1965, they were worthless and unwanted.

Mann didn’t want to be stuck with the tax bill. Neither did Carroll Shelby and his Shelby American team which had built and campaigned the cars. Nor did Shelby American want to pay the freight costs to have the cars shipped back to the United States.

Mann finally found a solution: Someone he knew owned a barge was willing to take the cars and the British tax collectors out to sea so they could see the cars – all six of them -- being scuttled overboard. No cars, no taxes.

Imagine, the only American cars ever to win the world manufacturers championship, the cars that beat Ferrari, were of so little value that they were going to be sunk to the bottom of the ocean!

Rather than see its workmanship destroyed, Shelby American relented and agreed to pay the freight for the cars to come home. But still, they were considered worthless, and back in the U.S. they were sold for as little as $800 each.

Though no longer eligible for any racing categories, at least the cars could be licensed and driven on the street.

Take, for example, Shelby Daytona Coupe CSX2601, the car Bob Bondurant and co-drivers raced to the world championship. When it finally came home, it appeared in the movie Red Line 7000. Then, early in 1968, Bondurant bought the car from Shelby for $4,000. Within a year, Bondurant sold the car for $10,000 – “I thought I’d made a killing,” he said – and he used the money to start his school of high-performance driving.

Bondurant sold the car to a man in North Dakota who owned six gas stations that were spread over some 300 miles, miles the man drove daily, picking up each day’s gas station receipts – and now in his racer-turned-road car.

And whatever happened to CSX2601? Oh, it’s changed ownership a few times, most recently at north of $8 million!

-Larry Edsall

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Photo Credit: Larry Edsall