Vintage Car Buyers Flock to IRS Auction
If the auctioneers working the crowd at the vintage car sale seemed to lack a certain passion for the 1931 Rolls Royce or the ’63 T-bird convertible or the ’48 Hudson Derham limousine, no wonder.
Those guys in the shirts and ties--getting hints from one collector about how to better describe the cars--were a pair of Internal Revenue Service agents.
But their lack of flair did not cool the crowd of about 200 collectible car enthusiasts. They gathered here Wednesday to cannibalize a vintage car collection so its owners could pay back taxes.
The cars, some “cherry” and some hard-driven, were seized by the IRS because Rodney and Judith Adams owed the government nearly $200,000 in employee retirement taxes. The couple, who owned a Santa Ana-based insulation company, fell into arrears from 1983 to 1988.
When revenue agents looked for what assets they could claim from the couple to sell at auction, their eyes fell on the Adamses’ vintage car collection, which they had accumulated over the years and quietly maintained near their Temecula home.
So on Wednesday, car collectors from throughout Southern California--most of whom had never heard of the Adamses’ collection until the IRS promoted the sale--showed up at a storage yard, like vultures sniffing fresh road kill.
By auction’s end, the IRS needed to sell only 22 cars--and a horse-drawn carriage--to collect $209,200. That was enough to satisfy the tax debt and the auction’s overhead, IRS spokeswoman Judith Golden said.
The biggest customer: Orange County radio station owner Art Astor, who already boasts a private 75-car collection in Anaheim that he hopes to turn into a museum. Now he owns five more vehicles--including the hottest car at the auction, the one-of-a-kind ’48 Hudson limo for which he forked over $21,200.
Astor also bought a ’48 Dodge convertible for $19,200, a ’50 Chrysler Town and Country for $13,700, a ’51 Chrysler Newport for $8,200 and a ’42 Dodge for $8,000.
No problem that his money went to the IRS to help bail out a tax deadbeat, he said. “Maybe someday someone will have to pay my taxes,” he laughed.
The third priciest car at the auction--a ’31 Rolls Royce--was bought by Ernie Follis of Vista, for $19,000. “I wouldn’t trade it for all the other cars out here,” he said afterward. “This is the only one I wanted.”
Most of the cars were not in show condition and brought modest bids. A ’53 Studebaker and a ’65 Chrysler each went for $1,700; a ’58 Chrysler Imperial convertible--which carried Princess Margaret when she visited Canada that year but now has holes in its floorboard and upholstery patched with duct tape--fetched $6,600.
In contrast, the IRS never put up for bid the only 1955 Chrysler Imperial convertible ever made--at the behest of Chrysler Corp.’s chairman of the board who ordered the special ragtop for himself. Its minimum bid would have been $45,000.
The IRS said that vehicle--and the others that were not sold--will be returned to the Adamses, who did not attend the auction.
Such auctions are a proven way for the IRS to collect debts. Other auctions have featured rare wines, Waterford crystal, gold bullion and coins and exotic cars.
Some collectors who attended Wednesday’s auction said that given the soft market for vintage cars, they were generally surprised by how much money the vehicles generated.
But Jeff Meier of Woodland Hills said he knew better.
“We’re all here to steal something--but with all these thieves, nobody will get a steal,” he said.
