Hot rod sells for $550,800
A Spokane Valley hot rod sold for more than $500,000 at an elite car sale in Scottsdale, Ariz., setting a record for auctioned street rods.
The car, a 1936 Chrysler Airflow sold by Jack and Susan White, fetched $550,800 at the Barrett-Jackson Auction on Saturday. It was the second year in a row that a custom-built street rod from Spokane Valley set a sales record at the nationally televised five-day auction.
“In my opinion, there are only four of five hot rods on the street that are like the Airflow,” Jack White said Monday. He was driving across the Nevada desert with a fixer-upper loaded onto the trailer that weeks ago hauled one of the winningest street rods in the country.
White said he had no idea the Airflow would sell for a half million, and said he couldn’t have made the record sale without the help of friends who did everything from cleaning the Airflow to hauling it cross-country. He and his wife spent more than $250,000 building the car, which collected 38 prestigious awards at car shows from California to Oklahoma.
Barrett-Jackson doesn’t identify its buyers by name. White would only identify the bidder as an East Coast man who almost immediately had buyer’s remorse and re-sold the car to the second-highest bidder, a Las Vegas real estate developer. That developer has a private collection of more than 150 rare automobiles, White said.
It was the second time the buyer left Barrett-Jackson with a Spokane Valley-built car. He purchased a 1938 Lincoln Zephyr last year that set the old record for a street rod, of $432,000.
Both the Zephyr and the Airflow were built by Tim’s Hot Rods and Extreme Customs of Spokane Valley. Shop owner Tim Stromberger, who sat out last year’s auction, made it to Scottsdale last weekend so he could lift the Airflow’s hood and show off his work.
“It was overwhelming,” Stromberger said. “Almost everything happened so fast, we were driving off the platform before we knew what was going on.”
Barrett-Jackson sells more than a thousand cars over five days in a stadium packed with bidders. The sales exceed $40 million and more than 200,000 spectators pass through the gates to view the buying frenzy.
At one point in the televised event, bidders were caught on camera shouting, “bring it on” and gesturing like prize fighters as they bid on a 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 concept car, which sold for $3 million.
The Airflow’s bidders were more reserved, but the auction seemed a blur to White, who sat in the Airflow’s driver’s seat, unable to see the price on a stadium video screen. The roar of the crowd as the bids raced above $300,000 made hearing the auctioneer impossible.