One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.AUBURN – Auburn’s smallest car-auction company began the weekend by canceling its Saturday sale because of a lack of bidders.
Sunday, it sold a Duesenberg for a million dollars.
“It does make up for the slow start,” said Ayron Reeves, Classical Event Auctions’ marketing director.
The 1932 Model J Duesenberg Derham Tourster went to an undisclosed bidder and will head to Toledo, Reeves said.
After months of uncertainty and a sometimes sputtering start, Auburn got back to the business of celebrating and selling cars Labor Day weekend.
Jack Randinelli has been involved in Auburn’s car culture for nearly 50 years and is chairman of the ACD Festival board.
He uses Saturday’s parade as a barometer for the community’s enthusiasm; this year, the route was full of spectators. The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club drew a record number of Duesenbergs for the parade and a speed exhibition, which helped bring in the crowds, he said.
Randinelli saw other signs of a reinvigorated ACD Festival. The Hoosier Tour, a group of 50 Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs that travel to promote the festival, sold out three weeks ahead of its deadline, and a downtown cruise-in and street festival Friday night was “wall-to-wall cars and wall-to-wall people.”
Classical Event Auctions conducted its inaugural sale near DeKalb High School, while Auctions America by RM had its first Auburn auction at the former Kruse Auction Park.
Canada-based RM Auctions bought the auction park in June and invested seven figures in sprucing it up in the two months before the auction. Its first day was hampered by wind, rain and slow sales.
But Thursday through Sunday, more than 25,000 people visited the park, a number the company had hoped for, and unofficial sales exceed $13 million, spokeswoman Kerrey Kerr-Enskat said Sunday.
“We’ve continued to gain momentum with each day,” she said.
Auctions America’s top sale as of Sunday afternoon was a 1934 Duesenberg Model JN Rollston convertible sedan for $962,500.
Longtime food vendors filled food alley with the smell of pork tenderloin and elephant ears.
And while there may not have been as many cars as in years past, there were enough to keep annual pilgrims like the Stechschulte family happy.
Phil Stechschulte of Columbus Grove, Ohio, brought his sons, 25-year-old Alex and 21-year-old Dylan.
Father and sons had spent nearly two hours Sunday afternoon poring over muscle cars at the Auburn Auction Park and figured they had a few more hours of the same ahead.
“It’s enough to keep you occupied,” Phil Stechchulte said.
A third auction company, Worldwide Auctioneers, was the only one to have held a Labor Day sale in Auburn before. This year, it expanded its sale at the DeKalb-Allen county line.
Worldwide Auctioneers tallied sales of just under $10 million over the weekend, spokeswoman Jo Snyder said, and had the potential to beat Classical Event Auctions’ Duesenberg sale with one of its own.
A post-auction block deal to sell a Duesenberg for $1.75 million was pending as of early Sunday evening, Snyder said.
As of Sunday, Worldwide’s highest sale was a 1935 Auburn boattail speedster that changed hands for $400,000, Snyder said. The company also set a sales record for a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz at $365,000.
“It was probably the best Auburn auction we’ve ever had,” she said. “Auburn was traditionally where the great cars traded hands and that really was the objective.”
