Hi Ya All
Butch here on our 61 Fleetmaster:
My wife came across a discussion on our ole 409 and the price. I'd like to explain. Around 2012 we had it appraised by a well known and very well respected appraiser of these vintage 409 cars and it came in at " $205,000 plus ". The car was studied for several weeks and in the end had a quite a few pages on how he came up with those numbers, He also said he came up with the value because he had no other car to compare it to. The Fleetmaster was a 1936 to a 1938 build with only one more time that was in 1961. I don't believe there is even a mention of one in collector car books The two door car style number 1- 1411 with only 138 built and was number 41 off the assembly line and none mentioned with the 409 engine.. So it is a very rare and documented car and now with another 3 month study on it they think it is the rarest 409 built of all 409's.. Maybe someone of you can come up with another. It's just us searching and with a couple studies on the car we have not found a one. We ourselves could find no one that knew about them even Grumpy Jenkins before he passed when I called him one day about the time he was doing a clone of his old racer he had no idea what one was..We would call parts houses one right after the other looking for parts and they all said the same.. We list the Biscayne but not a Fleetmaster. We had no idea at the time if the parts we were looking for was the same as a regular Biscayne or a Fleetmaster but we wanted to make sure it was for a Fleetmaster. .. Steel Rubber had no idea as well and the window rubbers are a lot different. They were not able to build me any after working on that for a couple weeks. The first person who we found first ( 2 years later) that knew about them was a fellow at SMS Fabrics in Portland Ore when were were looking at rebuilding the seats which is totally different fabric than is in a regular Biscayne plus seeing if they could replicate the card board door panels.
With all this being said and at the time 9 years ago we had no reason to doubt the appraiser and I think he was right by the all the paper work, rarity, and time he put into it looking and searching but now days maybe it isn't worth the appraised price but it is 9 years later now and with what all going on in the world., I am saying it is not and am willing to listen to offers.
I don't know if anyone has had any dealings with Gateway Classic. Little lady would call about once a month wanting us to take it to Vegas and they would sell it NO PROBLEM RIGHT??? A 12% selling fee.. We decided to take it there and I lowered the price way down to I think $145,000 and with the 12% commission someone might look at it and offer and I was willing to deal. Well guess what Gateway did???? They put a 50 to $60,000.00 commission on it. I asked them I thought it was 12% They said we need wiggle room I thought let me have the wiggle room just lower the price. Well I left there after talking to them about the commission and finally I thought well hell these guys will be up all night and day trying to sell it with that much on it, I called them back in a month and said " let's lower the price," They told me well if you want the price lower you"ll have to do it on your end our end is fixed.. Well I think they hurt me more than helping me. Long story short we went back down and picked it up... It is now sitting in the our shop and it is still for sale
Tony Thacker called me one day at the end of 2020 and was wanting to write about in his on line Torque Talk.. On there you will find many cars with in depth knowledge and history. A fellow can stay on that sight for hours. Anyway Tony did do a story on our car and it just went on his Torque Talk website just now, if anyone cares to read it it is listed below and if anyone wants to talk about the buying the 9 Iron I"m all ears. I am 72 and we raced it for many years even winning a world class award and since then won 3 ISCA awards and we just want to start a new chapter and let someone else have it We bought it is 1976 we have had it now for 45 years.
Tony did a great story on www.torquetalk.com on the car. I hope you all visit his sight from time to time Tony does a great job putting names and faces and history to these cars. Thanks for listening, Butch
https://na01.safelinks.protection.o...u66whPvlEHejWeih7LK8oJTYL27BDKB2c=&reserved=0
Butch here on our 61 Fleetmaster:
My wife came across a discussion on our ole 409 and the price. I'd like to explain. Around 2012 we had it appraised by a well known and very well respected appraiser of these vintage 409 cars and it came in at " $205,000 plus ". The car was studied for several weeks and in the end had a quite a few pages on how he came up with those numbers, He also said he came up with the value because he had no other car to compare it to. The Fleetmaster was a 1936 to a 1938 build with only one more time that was in 1961. I don't believe there is even a mention of one in collector car books The two door car style number 1- 1411 with only 138 built and was number 41 off the assembly line and none mentioned with the 409 engine.. So it is a very rare and documented car and now with another 3 month study on it they think it is the rarest 409 built of all 409's.. Maybe someone of you can come up with another. It's just us searching and with a couple studies on the car we have not found a one. We ourselves could find no one that knew about them even Grumpy Jenkins before he passed when I called him one day about the time he was doing a clone of his old racer he had no idea what one was..We would call parts houses one right after the other looking for parts and they all said the same.. We list the Biscayne but not a Fleetmaster. We had no idea at the time if the parts we were looking for was the same as a regular Biscayne or a Fleetmaster but we wanted to make sure it was for a Fleetmaster. .. Steel Rubber had no idea as well and the window rubbers are a lot different. They were not able to build me any after working on that for a couple weeks. The first person who we found first ( 2 years later) that knew about them was a fellow at SMS Fabrics in Portland Ore when were were looking at rebuilding the seats which is totally different fabric than is in a regular Biscayne plus seeing if they could replicate the card board door panels.
With all this being said and at the time 9 years ago we had no reason to doubt the appraiser and I think he was right by the all the paper work, rarity, and time he put into it looking and searching but now days maybe it isn't worth the appraised price but it is 9 years later now and with what all going on in the world., I am saying it is not and am willing to listen to offers.
I don't know if anyone has had any dealings with Gateway Classic. Little lady would call about once a month wanting us to take it to Vegas and they would sell it NO PROBLEM RIGHT??? A 12% selling fee.. We decided to take it there and I lowered the price way down to I think $145,000 and with the 12% commission someone might look at it and offer and I was willing to deal. Well guess what Gateway did???? They put a 50 to $60,000.00 commission on it. I asked them I thought it was 12% They said we need wiggle room I thought let me have the wiggle room just lower the price. Well I left there after talking to them about the commission and finally I thought well hell these guys will be up all night and day trying to sell it with that much on it, I called them back in a month and said " let's lower the price," They told me well if you want the price lower you"ll have to do it on your end our end is fixed.. Well I think they hurt me more than helping me. Long story short we went back down and picked it up... It is now sitting in the our shop and it is still for sale
Tony Thacker called me one day at the end of 2020 and was wanting to write about in his on line Torque Talk.. On there you will find many cars with in depth knowledge and history. A fellow can stay on that sight for hours. Anyway Tony did do a story on our car and it just went on his Torque Talk website just now, if anyone cares to read it it is listed below and if anyone wants to talk about the buying the 9 Iron I"m all ears. I am 72 and we raced it for many years even winning a world class award and since then won 3 ISCA awards and we just want to start a new chapter and let someone else have it We bought it is 1976 we have had it now for 45 years.
Tony did a great story on www.torquetalk.com on the car. I hope you all visit his sight from time to time Tony does a great job putting names and faces and history to these cars. Thanks for listening, Butch
https://na01.safelinks.protection.o...u66whPvlEHejWeih7LK8oJTYL27BDKB2c=&reserved=0
Sorry to hear you're selling it.