Exhibitors Revving Up for Newport Classic Car Sale : Exposition: The event by a new triumvirate will mark start of an effort to give the annual O.C. auction international status.

The annual Newport Beach Collector Car Auction will have a new look this year.

Its originator, Rick Cole, has combined forces with two other classic auto specialists to form World Classic Auction & Exposition Co.

The July 10-11 auction at the Hyatt Newporter hotel will be the new company’s first in Southern California and, Cole said, will mark the beginning of an effort to change the nationally renowned Newport Beach sale into an international event on the same scale as the Pebble Beach and Geneva classic auto auctions.

Cole, who recently closed his Hollywood operation and moved to Northern California to join forces with classic car specialists Don Williams and Richie Clyne, favored post-World War II sports and racing cars and celebrity autos in his lineups. Williams, owner of the Blackhawk Collection in Danville, a tony community 30 miles from San Francisco, and Clyne, director of the Imperial Palace Hotel Automobile Collection in Las Vegas, are experts in the so-called heavy classics market that deals in rare models from the 1920s and 1930s.

Automotive Investor magazine calls the Cole-Williams-Clyne marriage “the merger of the year.”

The new company will combine the three men’s interests into an operation that the investor universe, shrunk by the recession, can support. At Newport Beach, one sign of the new direction will be the offering of a 1932 Duesenberg sedan along with the Ford Mustangs and 1950s-era Chevrolet Bel Airs that have been a staple of the event for years.

How much the Duesey will bring is anyone’s guess, but in 1984 Williams sold a 1931 boat-tailed Duesenberg to Orange County developer William Lyon for more than $1 million--a record at the time.

Another sign of change will be an exposition tent--a staple at events like the Geneva and Las Vegas auctions--where publicity-shy buyers and sellers can conduct negotiations in private instead of shouting out offers. Cars offered through exposition are not included in the auction itself.

Expositions originally tended to include the rare and unusual, Williams said. But now they are simply an alternative to the more frenetic activities of an auction.

“When the value of a vehicle is below $50,000,” Williams said, “we insist on an auction offering, and above $200,000 we recommend the exposition.” Expositions tend to add more variety and increase the price range of the vehicles offered at an event, he said.

About 250 vehicles will be auctioned during the weekend, and 25 others will be displayed for sale in the exposition area.

And true to Cole’s original rules for the Newport auction, all won’t be champagne and Rolls-Royces, though there will be a few Rollses on the block. Another of the cars to be offered is a 1972 yellow Ford Pantera once owned by Elvis Presley and, according to the auction brochure, still sporting the bullet hole where Presley shot the steering wheel in a pique one morning when the car wouldn’t start.

Though most of the 6,000 people expected to attend the Newport Beach auction will be coming to gawk at the fancy cars and fancy buyers and sellers, business does get done at such events, Cole said.

Last year, 200 cars and slightly more than $2 million changed hands during the Newport Beach auction.

The two-day event takes a staff of 10 about six months to organize. Chores include sending out more than 3,500 invitations and fielding calls from the hundreds of car owners who would like to put their vehicles into the lineup.

The cost of staging the auction this year will be about $250,000, Cole said.