Mecum flexes its muscle

Kissimmee sale proves Yankee-doodle-dandy for the American auction house

BIG, BRASH, and awash with bulging American muscle, Mecum’s ten-day jamboree (15-24 January) in Kissimmee, Florida, knuckled down to the business of selling cars – lots and lots of ’em – while many people’s attention was focused on Paris and Scottsdale.

While Mecum isn’t shy of handling European and Japanese metal, its speciality is Americana, and the overwhelming majority of the nearly 3000 cars on the 2016 docket hailed from Detroit. They included practically every variant of 1960s and 1970s muscle car, from the

comparatively commonplace to the exceptionally rare.

A"er a dip a few years ago in the values of the very rarest muscle cars, the revived popularity of the genre in the US has led to some extreme prices – top dog at the Mecum sale was a 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda Convertible which fetched $2.675m, followed closely by a similar car from 1971 that made $2.3m, and a Dodge Hemi Challenger R/T Convertible knocked down for $1.65m.

In fact, American muscle cars made a clean sweep of Mecum’s top ten at Kissimmee, but further down

the list you could still pick up something rumbling and rapid at a far more affordable price.

By some standards Mecum’s 78% sell-through rate at the sale might not seem so remarkable, but bear in mind the sheer number of cars on offer – and that the sale made nearly $93 million. That represents a 30% increase over last year’s Kissimmee outing, while sale prices were up on average 20% over 2015. There can be few other auction houses anywhere in the world that wouldn’t be overjoyed with statistics of such magnitude.