Mecum Auction sees Chevys rule the top 10 sales
An 11-year-old race car and a 1958 Chevrolet Corvette fetched the highest prices among the hundreds of vehicles sold at the recent Mecum Chattanooga auction at the Chattanooga Convention Center.
About 600 cars went across the auction blocks, according to a news release from Mecum, including a 2012 Riley Daytona Prototype IMSA Racer, which sold here for $203,500. A custom 1958 Corvette sold for an identical price. Total sales for the two-day auction, which was part of the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival, topped $13.2 million. The race car, which was previously owned by Michael Shank Racing, has a BMW V-8 engine and a six-speed manual transmission. Meanwhile, the 1958 Corvette has an array of modern upgrades.
All of the top 10 cars sold here by Mecum hammered for more than $100,000 each.
Five of the top 10 highestpriced vehicles sold during the festival were Chevrolets: three Chevy Corvettes, a 1958 Chevy Bel Air convertible and a 1969 Camaro SS.
Mecum, based in Walworth, Wisconsin, is billed as the world’s largest collector car auction series, averaging more than one auction a month in cities across the United States. Many of the auctions — but not the Chattanooga sale — are televised on the MotorTrend cable channel.
The $13.2 million in sales at the auction here Oct. 13-14 was down from about $20 million at the
2022 sale. Dave Magers, CEO of Mecum, said in an interview last month that collector car prices spiked during and shortly after the pandemic, reaching peaks that might be hard to sustain in the short run.
Magers said in an interview during this year’s auction at the Convention Center that Mecum is pleased with the Chattanooga event and hopes to grow it along with the Motorcar Festival.