Small Town Auction Gets Big Bucks for Resto-Mod Pickup
A 1949 Chevrolet Resto-Mod pickup with a $145,000 professional build by Limeworks Speed Shop of Carson City, California, sold for the top price of $65,000 at a Wisconsin auction in the small town of Wautoma.
The glossy black truck had a fuel-injected crate engine, five-speed electronic transmission, power windows, Currie 9-inch rear end, four-link coil over rear suspension, boxed chassis, Mustang II style front suspension, Wilwood disc brakes, 18- and 20-inch Billet Specialties wheels and a custom leather interior.
W. Yoder Auctions organizes Memorabilia, Petroliana & Automobilia Auctions each spring and fall at its Wautoma, Wisconsin headquarters. The Spring 2018 sale came one week after a major snowstorm, but that didn’t hurt business. A full 90 percent of the 505 lots consigned to the auction found new owners.
The 63 vehicles offered for sale included motorcycles, sports cars, hot rods, pickups, Suburbans, muscle cars, 1950s cruisers, fire trucks and convertibles. Chevrolets were the models seen most and ranged from a Rip Van Winkle 1931 hot rod coupe tucked away in the 1970s to a rusty 1993 Blazer.
One of the rarest auction cars was a nep-classic roadster-”one of just 87 built by the Phillips Motor Car Corp. of Pompano Beach, Florida. Phillips designed the car and Byron R. Cooper of Cooper’s Corvette Center marketed it from 1980 to 1983. It had a 350-cid Corvette V-8, a Corvette frame, automatic transmission and 19,000 original miles.
There were eight Fords entered. Six of them were pickup trucks and two were later-model Mustangs. The auction started with the sale of about 300 collectibles from license plates to gas pumps. The rest of the five top highest-priced cars included a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner that went off for $50,000, a 1961 Corvette that brought $47,500, a 1967 Ford F100 Flareside short box that netted $20,000 and the Phillips roadster, which also drew a top bid of $20,000.
In addition to the vehicles, Yoder sold at least 505 collectibles such as signs and oil cans.
