Carroll Shelby’s contact is still lingering to make love for auction The fate of the classic racers is rarely mentioned with his name. Last August, it was RM Sotheby’s gives Ruddspeed Ace, the British road driver who served as the prototype for Shelby’s Cobra. Next month, at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, Gooding & Co will order a 1967 Toyota 2000GT per block, frame number MF10-100001. This is the first production model with the serial number leaving Toyota line up Japan, for Carroll Shelby’s California store for development to race in the 1968 SCCA Championship in Class C / Made for Imports. Toyota has made a name for itself on seller a lot with economy cars, but want to win Sunday against competitors like Alfa Romeo, Datsun, Lotus flower, Nissan, Porsche and Win.
This is one of three cars that Shelby’s development team prepared for the series, helping Toyota spend $ 500,000 to invest in the racing program. Driver Davey Jordan drove the MF10-100001 to fourth in that year’s championship, teammate Scooter Patrick finished third behind two Porsche 911s operated by the Vasek Polak dealer group. It’s often considered a stellar result for a brand’s first campaign new car in the automaker’s first attempt at a country’s national chain of events. But Toyota doesn’t want to stand out, they want the gold cup. 2000GT retail customer priced at $7,150about $2,000 more expensive than a Porsche 911 or a Jaguar XKE at the time, nearly $3,000 higher than it was in 1967 Chevrolet Corvette. Toyota’s sluggish sales may have helped by great reviews and its appearance in 1967 James Bond movie “You only live twice“but will probably be supported more by headlines about defeating Porsches. Jordan then said, “Toyota was a bit embarrassed and stopped their racing efforts. There was no such thing as racing (in 1969).” Toyota abandoned the model at the end of 1968, and discontinued the 2000GT in 1970 after the 351 had been built.
Gooding & Co says this example has been going on with the same family since 1980, appearing at shows like Monterey History and Goodwood Festival of Speed.
At the moment, the 1989 Mazda 767B, which won the Le Mans Award, holds the record as the most expensive Japanese car sold at auction, with a price tag of $1.75 million. The auction house has yet to provide a pre-sale estimate for the 2000GT, but here is the same car owned by Bob Tkacik and Peter Star by Maine Line Exotics, for sale in 2012 for $1.7 million has yet to receive any participants, it seems. It’s no exaggeration to think they could get that and then some on the current market, with a regular 2000GT selling for over $900,000 in an auction in 2020.
