HUGE Car Auction in Nebraska field (Peter Salter, via New York Times)

 

September 30, 2013, 3:21 pm 
Big Bids and Bigger Crowds at Long-Awaited Lambrecht Auction
By PETER SALTER
PIERCE, Neb. - It was early in the bidding, and the auctioneer was still warming her pitch, trying to stir up the crowd of thousands pressed against her mobile stage, a flatbed trailer in a soybean field.

Bidding on a 1964 Impala, a two-door hardtop with just four miles on the odometer, had stalled at $75,000.

The auctioneer, Yvette VanDerBrink, tried to nudge it higher.

"Where are you guys going to find another one?" she asked.

A bidder laughed and said, "Uh, how about right next to it?"

Indeed, the next car was a 1963 Impala, a two-door hardtop that had been driven just 11 miles. Ms. VanDerBrink sold it for $97,500.

And after that, two more Impalas, a pair of Bel Airs, three Corvairs. There were some 500 cars in all, most of them old, most of them American, many of them beloved by collectors and all of them part of the collection of a small-town Chevy dealer who refused, for decades, to sell his hundreds of trade-ins or the dozens of new models he liked to set aside.

That is, until last weekend, when the highly publicized (and nationally televised) Lambrecht Chevrolet auction brought this town of 1,700 to a standstill.

Though there were no official counts, the sheriff's office estimated that 13,000 people attended Friday's preview and 15,000 made it to Ray Lambrecht's farm on Saturday for the first of two days of bidding (after enduring a four-mile traffic jam through this no-stoplight town).

That's 30 people for every Lambrecht car, and it meant long lines at the bid registration tent, portable toilets and funnel-cake trailer. In the afternoon, a family at the American Legion was comparing far-flung license plates ("I saw New York." "I saw Maine.") After most sales, Ms. VanDerBrink would announce the car's destination: New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Arizona, Texas or Australia.

Ms. VanDerBrink sold the most cherished Chevys first: A 1958 Cameo pickup with just over a mile on the odometer for $140,000; the '78 Corvette for $80,000. The bids would drop as the percentage of rust rose: to four digits - then three - but the first 10 cars went for a total of $676,500. The auction house did not release a figure for total sales, but the number appeared to be about $3 million. Prices do not include the buyer's premium.

The cars were far too expensive for Jorn Urberg Tveten, who flew from Norway as a 50th birthday present to himself.

He said that at his home south of Oslo he had a 1941 Buick and a '57 Dodge. Here, he had his eye on the new-old '63 Impala. But it sold for $97,500, and he was happy he had bought a handful of Lambrecht Chevrolet giveaway yardsticks for $50 apiece.

He was going to buy a Lambrecht pencil, but these, he said, were even bigger and better. "Just to have a memory," he said.


 HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

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