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The 4-door Barracuda at Mecum

mmissile said:
Like it or not....incredible amount of work and detail. I talked with Dave at Carlisle, for quite awhile. He told me about a bunch of the properly-done one-off parts to build it so well. He also gave me an approximate investment, after talking for quite some time.
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I can agree with this,
it was his money and his time to do as he wished. And I can appreciate the effort and determination it took to create and see it to fruition.

But its one ugly car .
 
kiwigtx said:
You might be onto something there. Generate enough hype with false sales going under the hammer in the hopes that more big-dollar players will actually spend their money and a real sale will take place. Plausible theory.
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There’s a lot of strategies including sketchy behavior going on at auctions and I’m familiar with some that happens with Mecum.
Firstly, Mecum owns a ton of cars and buys cars, sometimes they give sellers the option of an outright buy instead of listing their car or collection at an auction. Other times they buy cars at the auction that are not bidding anywhere near value. I was talking to a guy who works at Mecum and he said he‘s aware that there is some sort of signal at auctions for the auctioneer and bidding assistants to know when the house is interested in buying the car being run. That makes me suspicious of “short hammering” bidding, which if so cheats both the seller and potential bidders.
So many cars you see running at multiple subsequent auctions actually belong to the house. Some high end cars I think they bring out just to draw attention and get publicity, not actually to sell. Afterall, buyers and sellers commissions are just part of their income, they sell thousands of tickets to spectators, make a bunch on TV coverage and merch sales.
The 4 door Barracuda along with a couple other cars of Dave Walden’s had been sold to a collector in Georgia who mainly collected wing cars and you may recall he sold most of his collection at last years Kissimmee Mecum. It showed sold there, but was back again in May for the Indy auction. I suspect it got bought by Mecum last year and they run it repeatedly.
Auctions sometimes do what’s called chandelier bidding, which is what shilling by the house is. They show bidding that will run up near reserve but often stalls. If it doesn’t stall, the “real money“ bidder or maybe you would say “sucker” bids, hits the reserve, and ends up buying the car.
So if you are looking at results and see cars with fairly high ending bid, “the bid goes on” that figure you see might not be “real money”.
Another tactic that is really sketchy that appears to happen is with phone bidding and an in house bidder. The phone bidder wins, but later I’ve heard of the in person bidder who lost getting called by a auction sales rep and told the phone bidder alleged winner got flaky and gee can we cut a deal for your last bid?
Last year they had the remains of an Elvis personal business jet up for auction. You may recall if you watched, that they had Pricilla up on stage, I think it even ran on January 8 Elvis’s birthday.
A Hoovie type goof with an aviation YouTube channel was bidding and got outbid by a phone bidder. He posted a video later of him getting called by a Mecum rep and getting the hard sell by the sales rep with a story about the phone bidder flaking out. When the YouTuber didn’t immediately jump at it, the rep started in with some story about the phone bidder was a jerk and he’d rather sell it to you rather than him. The YouTuber did eventually cut a deal but it might have been less than his last in person bid.
That showed me the rumors I’d heard of unethical auction behavior had some merit!
edit: the YouTuber is Jimmy’s world and here is his coverage of buying the Elvis jet. The call from the Mecum rep starts around the 16 minute point:
 
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Exactly and they should be all reeled in for fraud for doing it. Why I haven't attended a car auction since 1989. Same **** went on back then with RM and probably still does.
 
It's all about attention. The man's dead and people are still talking about that car. No one talks about the 4 door Valiant or the 440+4 Challenger.
 
Outlawd said:
Damn. Waste of a nice car, do that crap to a gremlin or a pacer....jmo
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Waste of a nice car? It started out as a Coronet shell.
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Dennis H said:
Fugly. Not by execution. Just Fugly.
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The execution was wrong! He used a 71 to 74 B body 4 door for the center platform, which wasn't necessarily wrong, but the roof line and post framed doors don't jive with the Barracuda roof line. In order to pull it off correctly, he should have cut the b body roof off, and cut the B body door window frames off. He should have sectioned the Cuda roof, and added a section from another Cuda roof to complete the roof structure at regular Cuda roof height and form. The guy owned a glass company, he should have made windows that fit the Cuda roof line. The whole execution was wrong from the start. The A pillars are effing terrible and the roofline is worse!
 
Lou’s vid from 6 years ago at Carlisle. Even the backlight looks weird with the too high roof. I don’t know what they were thinking looking at it during the build. If the top and side glass was 3” lower it might have been more believable. But those A pillars with the curved trim don’t look factory at all.

 
chargervert said:
The execution was wrong! He used a 71 to 74 B body 4 door for the center platform, which wasn't necessarily wrong, but the roof line and post framed doors don't jive with the Barracuda roof line. In order to pull it off correctly, he should have cut the b body roof off, and cut the B body door window frames off. He should have sectioned the Cuda roof, and added a section from another Cuda roof to complete the roof structure at regular Cuda roof height and form. The guy owned a glass company, he should have made windows that fit the Cuda roof line. The whole execution was wrong from the start. The A pillars are effing terrible and the roofline is worse!
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Wrong. It was a perfect execution of a bad design plan. Execution being the quality of the build of a Fugly.
 
dadsbee said:
I'd be interested to hear about this glass company he owned!
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Maybe he didn't own the company that made the glass,but he offered the most accurate glass available for our cars,so he clearly had access to having proper fitting glass made for this project! When my friend built the 71 GTX convertible known as X con,he had a foundry make the rear quarter glass to fit the car and the roof perfectly. They looked like factory pieces!

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Interesting, as I was fairly certain they weren't doing much more than etching date codes on AMD glass. I tried to get Justin to take a good shot of his X's "ECS" back glass when I found that mine was formed totally wrong. He contended his was correct. I was at the Gilmore to see it in person and it was the same wrong as the one that I sent back.
 
1 Wild R/T said:
Yeah, Greg needs to check his color bias.... Gonna start thinking he's not really a Mopar guy.... :poke: :poke:

Oh well, I don't really like red... Even though I own two red cars...:lol:
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Maybe Greg is colour blind? :lol:
 
If I had that level of talent and $$$, it would not have been a red/black car. Somehow, it looks like what a fire chief's car would've been. It would've been a four-door hardtop, and the exterior would've been one of three colors - black, orange, or Burnt Orange Metallic, without the vinyl top.

People rag the builder for what he built. I wished I had 1/1000 the talent and vision he did. The car would likely be viewed different, minus the ridiculous backstory that accompanies it. It's not everyone's cup-'o-tea, I get it.
 
dadsbee said:
Interesting, as I was fairly certain they weren't doing much more than etching date codes on AMD glass. I tried to get Justin to take a good shot of his X's "ECS" back glass when I found that mine was formed totally wrong. He contended his was correct. I was at the Gilmore to see it in person and it was the same wrong as the one that I sent back.
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My AMD rear Daytona glass came with the Date code already on it. I don't think that the glass his company sells is from AMD. My friend bought the whole set for his 70 GTXand it was considerably more expensive than AMD glass,and the fitment was much better according to the guy who installed the glass in the car.
 
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Oh no, someone thought waaay of the box! They didn’t build a gen 3 hemi 68-70 b body or e body, they didn’t build a convertible wing car, or convertible charger! He came up with an original idea that nobody has done, and probably won’t ever do again. Burn the man!:mob:
 
Part of the appeal of the E-bodies I think is the 3/4 View from the rear. The cars look like they have a chopped top from the factory, even more so on the convertibles. It is brought about by the high trunklid height. Take that POS Satellite sideview and whack 2 inches out of the roof, then the car would look a bit cooler. North Americans wouldn't be able to ride in the thing but it would look better. In this current world North Americans aren't important anyway so maybe someone in Europe or China could bring this POS to market in modified form, might as well put a Typhoon or whatever engine in it too.
 
Jesus Chrysler. Nothing personal about the builder. That’s why the designer, John Herlitz didn’t put this in clay. Cause it looks like hell.
 
This concept drawing that has floated around the internet for awhile doesn't look terrible. The rear roofline and quarter panels look good, whereas what Dave came up with just looks like a standard utilitarian taxi/police car Fury.
And gunmetal looks better than red, and it even has "dork dish" hubcabs for Chargervert!

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