This is the tale of an 8-car Yenko collection, a ZL1 Camaro, and a Z16 Chevelle that crossed the auction block at a recent Mecum Musclecar Auction. Our wallets melted when we entered the room, but they all sold!
They’re everywhere, and they’re getting expensive, kids. We recently attended the Mecum Fall Premiere collector car auction to check out some of the hottest original musclecars and see what they fetched at auction. While it’s pretty cool to get star-struck standing next to a ZL-1 Camaro that’s worth more than 3 times the average price of a house in the United States, it also makes you think. Unless you’re selling one, it kinda sucks.
Just like real estate, when a house on the block takes top-dollar, it lifts the values of all the places around it, even if they are dumps. The same thing happens with musclecars… now every swinging Richard thinks his Camaro is worth a zillion dollars. If you’re a serious collector of perfect original cars and you have a lot of money to invest, the current market is a really good place to put your money. Blue chip musclecars have been outperforming the stock market for a couple of years now. Enough about that, though. While at the auction, we checked out some cool cars… take a look.
Sometimes celebrity cars bring big cash, even more so when they’re a rare high-performance car in perfect condition. Check out this 1965 Chevelle Z-16 owned new by Dan Blocker – he played “Hoss” on Bonanza. Story has it that Chevrolet sponsored Bonanza back in ’65, and they gave Mr. Blocker a Crucos Yellow Z-16 Chevelle.
The Z-16 is a lightweight Chevelle Malibu SS featuring a high-compression 375-horse 396 and a 4-speed transmission, special wheel covers, unique trim, bucket seats, and no air conditioning. They made 201 Z16s, and this car has an amazingly low 2700 miles on the odometer.
The Z16 option added about $1500.00 to the price of the car, bringing the list price to around $4300.00 new. This one crossed the auction block for $273,000.00. So much for me getting one of those. It was still super-cool to see it.
Next up, we drooled over the Dusk Blue 1969 Camaro with the all aluminum Zl-1 427 big block V8. This is the car in the lead photo above. Its low 17000 mile condition makes it even more desirable.
That’s one of the cool things about the Mecum Auction; poor slobs like me can get close to truly historic and amazing musclecars. When new, the ZL-1 Camaro stickered at over $7000… this weekend, this numbers-matching Dusk blue 17,000 mile ZL-1 went for $840 large.
And now the event we’ve all been waiting for – a collection of 5 Yenko Supercars is taking the stage. This lot of 5 pristine Yenkos – a ’67 Camaro, a ’68 Camaro, a ’69 Camaro, the ultra-rare ’69 Nova, and the ’69 Chevelle all feature the L-79 427 and low miles. They’re being auctioned off as a set, so we were bound to see some high numbers here.
The '68 Yenko Camaro featured the cool hood scoops, and the even more bizarre wheels... These are Pontiac Rally IIs, and they are correct for the Yenko car.
The 427 under the hood of the Yenko Nova... this is a big-block car, not like the Yenko Deuce small block version which came later.
Rumor has it there's only 6 of these big-block Yenko Novas left, 2 in each of the 3 available colors.
The final bid of 1.75 million dollars took em’ home. They’re going to make someone’s garage a lot more colorful… and someone’s bank account a lot less green!
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