Tag Archives: bring a trailer

Duesenberg J-566

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1935 Duesenberg Model JN Convertible Sedan by Rollston

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | Online | June 2021

Photo – Bring a Trailer Auctions

It seems like it’s been a while since we’ve featured a Model J. This Duesenberg is a late one, and it’s one of 10 “JN” models built in 1935. All 10 were bodied by Rollston, and this car is one of three that was built as a convertible sedan. It was restored in the late 1990s and has spent the last two decades in the collection of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.

Power comes from a 420ci Lycoming straight-eight that made 265 horsepower when new. There were a number of four-door convertible body styles on Duesenbergs. The “convertible sedan” features folding B-pillars and a single front windshield. The top boot out back sticks up like a big spoiler in the air.

This is the fifth JN we’ve featured. I believe all still exist, meaning half of them have come up for public sale since 2012. This one has a week left to bid on, and you can find out more about it here.

Update: Sold $1,341,000.

BMW 502 by Baur

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1956 BMW 502 Cabriolet by Baur

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | April 2021

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The BMW 502 was the V8-powered version of BMW’s six-cylinder 501. The 501 went on sale in 1951 and the 502 in 1954. Confusingly, there was also a “501 V8” model sold, with a detuned version of the 502’s.

The 502 was also better appointed than the 501, which made it expensive. They only sold 190 in the first sales year. The standard body style was a sedan, but Baur-built coupes and cabriolets were also available. This car is one of 57 cabriolet examples.

This one is powered by a 3.2-liter V8 sourced from a later BMW 3200L. The 502 was Germany’s first post-war V8-powered car. With a single carburetor, this engine was rated at 140 horsepower when new. The removed factory 2.6-liter V8 is included with the car.

This car was restored between 2011 and 2013, and it looks pretty fantastic. It’s been at Pebble Beach and is being offered out of a museum. The bidding is already at $125,000 as of this writing, and it is scheduled to end two days from this posting. Click here for more info.

Update: Sold $275,000.

Canda Auto-Quadricycle

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1900 Canda Auto-Quadricycle

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | April 2021

Photo – Bring a Trailer Auctions

The Canda Manufacturing Company was based in Cartaret, New Jersey, and they produced railroad hand carts. In 1896 they acquired the rights to the Duryea Brothers gasoline engine. But Charles Duryea bailed on the partnership shortly thereafter, so Canda decided to go it alone.

Their first car was produced in 1900, and it looked like this. The Auto-Quadricycle was a four-wheeled forecar with a single-cylinder engine. Production continued through 1902, but they offered a more traditional “Spider” runabout in 1901, which probably meant that the Quadricycle was phased out before 1902, when Canda folded.

This car features a De Dion-Bouton single-cylinder engine rated at 1¾ horsepower when new. It’s been part of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum since 1957. You can read more about it here.

Update: Sold $56,000.

Edmunds Midget

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1975 Edmunds Midget Race Car

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | April 2021

Photo – Bring a Trailer Auctions

It’s not every day you get the chance to buy a race car directly from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. This USAC midget was raced Bev Griffis in 1986 to the first female USAC regional victory. Which is pretty awesome. Not sure about the sponsor she had to put up with while doing it though.

The car was built by Don Edumunds of Edmunds Autoresearch, a race car constructor based out of Anaheim, California. He built about 400 of these of various styles between 1963 and 1981. The car spent time in New Zealand back in the ’70s before returning stateside.

Power is from a 2.2-liter Volkswagen flat-four. The car does two things: it goes or it doesn’t. It has direct drive – no shifting here. Just fire it up and give it a push. It’s a compact little historic thing, but it’ll need a little work to get running. Bidding is underway, and the auction ends this weekend. Click here for more info.

Update: Sold $13,500.

Series 75 Town Car by Brunn

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1939 Cadillac Series 75 Town Car by Brunn

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | Online

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This series of the Cadillac Series 75 was produced in 1936 and 1937. Most of them were bodied by Fisher or Fleetwood, but a few escaped GM as bare chassis, including this car, which wears Town Car bodywork by Brunn. This means that the driver’s compartment can be “open” or closed, while the rear passenger compartment is always closed.

Two of these were built for the same guy, but the other one was lost in a fire in the 1950s. In 1966, this, the surviving example of the two, was purchased by its current owner… who was only 16 at the time. Imagine driving a used coachbuilt American classic as your first car.

Power is from a 5.7-liter V8 that was rated at 135 horsepower when new. The car was restored over a period of 50 years. I guess that makes it a “labor of love” because I couldn’t imagine tinkering on the same car for 50 years. At any rate, this one ends on Saturday. Click here for more info.

Update: Sold $130,000.

Cisitalia-Abarth 850 Scorpione

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1962 Cisitalia-Abarth 850 Scorpione Coupe

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | March/April 2021

Photo – Bring a Trailer Auctions

Piero Dusio got rich making uniforms during WWII and parlayed that cash into a small company he founded called Cisitalia. They built racing cars, and eventually road cars. But racing is expensive, and eventually, he ran out of money, forcing him to relocate to Argentina.

Cisitalia collaborated with Abarth (Carlo Abarth was Austrian by birth) here and there, and after the company moved to South America, the two got together for one last fling. Abarth had a car out there called the Fiat-Abarth 850 Allemano. This car is essentially a badge-engineered version of Carlo’s 850. It features an 847cc inline-four that was rated at 55 horsepower when new.

Fewer than 200 Fiat-Abarth models were produced, and about the same (or less) of these were also made. It is not really related to the similarly-named Abarth Scorpione. This one has obviously been restored and is up for bidding now. The auction ends tomorrow. Click here for more info.

Update: Not sold, high bid of $74,000.

1906 Haynes

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1906 Haynes Model O Runabout

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | Online | March 2021

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Elwood Haynes and the Apperson brothers (Elmer and Edgar) were American automotive pioneers. In 1894, they built one of the country’s first gasoline-powered automobiles. Four years later, they were selling cars to the public under the Haynes-Apperson brand. But it wouldn’t last long, as it appears Haynes wasn’t all that easy to get along with (he would later take credit for building America’s first car… by himself).

The Appersons started their own company, and Haynes soldiered on with the hyphenated marque for about two years until he dropped the Apperson name in 1904. Cars built thereafter were just known as Haynes, making this 1906 Model O a very early example of the marque, which lasted through 1925.

The Model O was only sold in 1906 and was offered as a touring car or a runabout. It’s powered by a 4.6-liter inline-four rated at 30 horsepower. This particular car has been in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum collection since 1968, having been restored about a decade earlier. It comes with its “winter body” – a closed coupe sort of thing to keep the weather out when it was cold. The bidding is off to a strong start, and the auction is slated to end tomorrow. Click here for more info.

Update: Sold $85,584.

Crown Supercoach School Bus

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1961 Crown Supercoach A779-11

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | Online

Photo – Bring a Trailer Auctions

This is a school bus. That is probably obvious. But it is from 1961. I’m guessing they built a lot of these, but there are probably very few left. And based on the records shared in the auction listing, there are probably even fewer that have had this kind of money lavished upon them.

The Crown Coach Corporation produced buses (and some fire trucks) in Los Angeles between 1904 and 1991. The final few months were under the control of GE before the brand was phased out. The Supercoach was a product they introduced in 1948 and continued to iterate on until the end of the line in 1991.

This one has a replacement drivetrain. The 7.0-liter Detroit Diesel inline-six is located in the middle of the bus (underneath it). It also has a more modern five-speed automatic transmission instead of the old school five-speed manual with a two-speed rear axle. Remember your bus driver constantly shifting gears? Yeah, this one is easier to drive.

I always love an old bus, and this one is pretty great. The seats have been stripped out of the interior, which is a shame, but it’s still a winner. It was in service with a school district from new until 1999, which is insane. It makes me wonder just how old the back-up buses I rode on as a kid actually were. Click here for more info about this bus.

Update: Sold $27,250.

Falls-Eight

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1920 Falls-Eight Race Car

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | December 2020

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The Falls Machine Company of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, was founded in 1901. They made milling machines, and in 1908 expanded into single-cylinder agricultural engines. Their engine program spread, and soon they were supplying engines for automobile manufacturers, like Dort and Elgin.

They built three of their own cars in 1921, and in 1923, they introduced an inline-eight engine. They only built eight of those engines, and three of them were destined for Elgin, who ended up going out of business before using them. Falls ended up building a single car using one of their eight-cylinder engines in 1924. It was thought to be a sedan or a touring car.

That car does not exist. But its engine does. In this car. So this car is said to be a 1920, but it is thought that the race car using the Falls engine was built sometime between 1924 and WWII. It sure has a 1920s race car look to it. It is claimed to have attempted to qualify for the 1923 Indy 500, though no record seems to exist.

The interesting part is that this car was gifted to a young Bruce Mohs in 1944. And from here the story is more well known. Mohs was a big personality, so who knows how much of the story that pre-dates his ownership is actually true or just his story. At any rate, this car has been known for quite some time and was even once owned by Phil Hill.

The engine is a 5.0-liter inline-eight. The whole package sure looks to be the real deal, there just isn’t much of anything known about it between 1924-ish and 1944. Oh well, it’s still cool and eligible for many historic events. Click here for more info.

Update: Not sold, high bid of $39,013.

Kellison J6

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1968 Kellison J6 Panther

Offered by Bring a Trailer Auctions | Online | December 2020

Photo – Bring a Trailer

Jim Kellison’s Kellison Manufacturing Company was established circa 1957 in California. Their specialty was fiberglass kit cars. Beefy, mean-looking fiberglass kit cars. We’ve featured J4R and J5R models before, and this is a J6, which was the final model introduced.

The J6 was designed for use around a Corvette frame, although this particular car uses a custom-fabricated steel frame. Power is from a 5.0-liter Chevrolet V8. Apart from the body, the car is made up of bits and pieces of other production cars. It’s got a GM transmission, a Ford rear end, a Studebaker windshield, Buick suspension components, etc.

At least 500 J6s were built, presumably all as kits (some earlier cars could’ve been had as turn-key examples). They’re a rare sight today – and they are still good looking. This one is currently up on BaT. Click here for more info.

Update: Sold $64,928.