The first live collector car auction of the year and the largest one in the world wrapped up on January 19. Mecum Kissimmee 2025 included some monster sales, and some big disappointments.
Somehow, this mega-auction continues to draw more consignments to pack into Osceola Heritage Park in central Florida, with nearly 4400 vehicles consigned (up nearly 10 percent from last year). Results as recorded by Hagerty are $224M in total sales (down about three percent from 2024), an average price of $67,290 ($79,554) and a sell-through rate of 74 percent (up from 70 percent), although the sell-through rate for $1M-plus vehicles was down notably from 58 percent in 2024 to 32 percent this year. Some of those major misses included an ex-McQueen, owned-by-Seinfeld Porsche 917K (not sold at a $25M high bid) and a 1965 Shelby 427 Competition Cobra (not sold at a $3.7M high bid), but there were also multiple staggeringly high results for rare Corvettes and a very strong result for a Ford GT40 Mk I road car. It’s impossible to highlight everything from Mecum Kissimmee, but we look at some of the most significant results in detail below.
It’s also worth noting that the January auctions, due to their sheer size and scope, tend to set the tone of the collector car market for the next few months. Kissimmee is just part one of the January auctions, though. We’ll have our full January analysis in the coming weeks after the Arizona auctions wrap up.
Lot S253: 1970 Plymouth Hemi Superbird
Sold for $627,000
Chassis no. RM23R0A162316. Alpine White with black vinyl roof over black vinyl. Older restoration, #2- condition.
Equipment: 426cid/425hp Hemi, column shift automatic, Rallye wheels, Goodyear Polyglas GT tires, original AM radio, Tic-Toc-Tach.
Condition: One of 77 Superbirds fitted with both a Hemi and an automatic transmission. Comes with an original broadcast sheet, original IPM punch cards, and a Dave Wise report from 2022. Restored at an unspecified date but presents very well.
Bottom line: This car has been at auction a few times. It sold for $286,000 in Scottsdale in 2010, for $605,000 at Mecum Indy in 2023, and for $423,500 again at Scottsdale last year.
There have been some fairly soft Superbird sales over the last year as some of the pandemic-era exuberance wore off and as lots of examples hit the market in a short period, many of them through Mecum. This sale bucks the trend, though, especially for a car in a boring color that’s equipped with a less valuable automatic. A strong sale.
Lot F299.1: 1967 Chevrolet Corvette L89 Coupe
Sold for $1,705,000
Chassis no. 194377S122908. Marina Blue with black stinger over black leather.
Equipment: 427cid/435hp L89, M21 four-speed, F41 suspension, side exhaust, J50 power brakes, tank sticker, Protect-O-Plate.
Condition: One of 16 L89 Corvettes built for 1967, and built on the final day of 1967 Corvette production. Sold new in California, and restored by the Naber brothers in Texas in the late 1980s. Still a show car with excellent paint, clean engine bay, and tidy interior with lightly mellowed original leather seats.
Bottom line: Introduced in 1967, the L89 engine option took the 427/435hp big-block L71 and added aluminum heads. It was an expensive and not particularly well-known option, so few buyers opted for it when it was available from 1967-69. And, since Chevrolet equipped just 16 Corvettes with the L89 in 1967, it’s technically rarer than the top-spec L88 (20 built) from that year. This price is nevertheless staggering for a car that isn’t an L88, nor does it have some sort of wild and crazy history. It is by far the most expensive L89-powered car ever sold, and just outside the top 10 most expensive Corvettes of any kind ever sold at auction. An unrestored ’69 L89 convertible sold earlier in the day for about $1M less at $759K, and a ’67 L88 sold on Saturday for not that much more at $2,250,000.
Lot T129: 1998 Dodge Viper GTS-R
Sold for $112,750
Chassis no. 1B3ER69E8WV401080. Stone White with blue stripes over black and blue leather. Original, #2- condition.
Equipment: 8.0L/465hp V-10, six-speed, side exhaust, BBS wheels, rear spoiler, ground effect side sills. Comes with a car cover as well as extra shift boot and pedal covers.
Condition: Number 80 of 100 built, and showing 10,735 miles. Light wrinkling to the leather and general age to the interior but mostly a clean, pampered car that looks ready for the track but doesn’t appear to have spent much time there.
Bottom line: Also called the GT2 Champion Edition, the GTS-R was introduced to celebrate, you guessed it, the Viper’s FIA GT2 title win. Power increased slightly over a standard Viper GTS, while aero bits like the rear wing played into the race car look. Given the performance, the limited production, and the badass looks of the GTS-R, this price seems kind of modest in this day and age. Yet a handful of others have sold at auction for similar amounts, and it’s hard not to look at that as a good value. Imagine what this thing would cost if it were a Porsche.
Lot L187: 1991 Honda CRX Si
Sold for $71,500
Chassis no. JHMED9368MS013800. Teal over gray cloth. Original, #2+ condition.
Equipment: 1590cc/108hp I-4, five-speed, alloy wheels, power steering, air conditioning, sunroof, factory cassette.
Condition: Some of the paint and plastic shows a little age, as does the engine, but the interior is absolutely flawless and overall this is a stunning example of a car that almost never got pampered. The odometer shows 326 miles(!), which are believably represented as the car’s true mileage. Is this the world’s best CRX? Maybe.
Bottom line: If any Honda CRX belongs in a museum, it’s this final-year teal example. Clean, unmodified low-mile CRXs were a rare sight 20 years ago, let alone today, and values for excellent specimens have essentially doubled since 2020. Given this one’s triple-digit odometer reading and best-in-the-world condition, it was always going to attract serious collectors, but this price was still surprising and it’s the most we’ve ever seen anybody pay for a CRX. For reference, a handful of other clean ones with 10K-25K odometer readings (which is still crazy-low for these cars) have sold in the $40,000 range. This is a unicorn, though, and it brought a unicorn price that will keep it on static display, probably forever.
Also at Kissimmee, a lower-spec 1986 CRX HF with just 8100 miles sold for $23,100 and a 2000 Civic Si with 2100 miles sold for a record $66,000, so this was a strong week for vintage hot Hondas.
Lot S245: 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham Limousine
Sold for $264,000
Chassis no. 1G6DW52P7TR710054. Black over blue leather. Original, #2- condition.
Equipment: 454cid V-8 built by Jack Roush, automatic, seating for six, Zebrano wood interior trim, onboard oxygen and fire suppression systems, Thompson VHS television, bulletproof door windows, B6-level body armor.
Condition: Built for then-President Clinton, with the work supervised by the Secret Service. Represented as one of three such cars built and the only one to make it into the private sector (one is with the Clinton Museum in Arkansas and the other is still with the CIA). Our 42nd president can’t have spent much time in this stretched and beefed-up Brougham, because the odometer reads just 627 miles.
Bottom line: This car is a cool piece of history as well as an impressive piece of engineering, and it’s full of ’90s gimmicks like the TV/VHS. It’s hard to say what one would actually do with a 12,000-pound armored limousine that probably gets as many miles per gallon as a cruise ship, but this one really resonated with at least a couple of bidders at Kissimmee. Cars with a connection to U.S. presidents or the royal family can sell for serious money depending on the history, and this price is on the higher end of the spectrum.
Lot F294: 1970 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
Sold for $451,000
Chassis no. 194670S402950. Monza Red with white top over brown vinyl. Recent restoration, #2 condition.
Equipment: 350cid/370hp V-8, M22 four-speed, transistor ignition, aluminum radiator, heavy-duty power brakes, special springs and shocks, front and rear stabilizer bars, tank sticker, Protect-O-Plate.
Condition: Represented as the pre-production pilot car and the very first of just 25 ZR1s built for 1970, with matching numbers, and with a full restoration finished 31 miles ago. Repeatedly awarded at judged Corvette events. Air cleaner signed by Zora Arkus-Duntov. No real issues to nitpick. Any one of these spicy small-blocks is a treasure, but this is the very first one, its condition is commendable, and its colors are unusual but attractive. A real prize.
Bottom line: The ZR1 name became much better known when it was applied (as ZR-1) to the top-spec C4 Corvette in 1990, but the original one was an obscure, expensive option package that took the already potent solid lifter 350/370hp LT1 engine and added more competition equipment. Chevrolet built just 25 in 1970, eight in ’71, and a further 20 in 1972, so it is one of the rarest variations of America’s sports car, ever. Other C3 ZR1s sold recently, including at this same auction, have garnered from the mid-$100K range to the high 200s, so $451,000 for this one is a monster result, even if it did buy the first one.
Lot S152: 1966 Lola T90 Indy Car
Sold for $715,000
Chassis no. SL902. White and red. Competition restoration, #2- condition.
Equipment: 256cid DOHC Ford V-8, in-out transmission, centerlock wheels, leather-wrapped steering wheel.
Condition: Jackie Stewart came very close to winning the ’66 Indianapolis 500 in this car, campaigned by John Mecom’s fledgling team. Steward was leading the race with 10 laps left when an oil pump failed and relegated him to sixth place but rookie of the year honors (Stewart’s teammate Graham Hill took the checkered flag). Stewart was back in the Lola for the Fuji 200 later that year, and he won that race.
Bottom line: Although Mecum has a huge Indianapolis auction in the spring, over a dozen vintage Indy cars turned up in Kissimmee this year, spanning the 1940s to the 1990s. This was the star of the bunch and certainly the most expensive, though its $1M low estimate was too ambitious. Maybe if it actually had won at Indy back in ’66…
There aren’t as many opportunities to actually use a vintage Indy car, but they do exist and hopefully this beautiful and historic Lola will actually see a track.
Lot S258: 1967 Jaguar E-Type SI
Sold for $880,000
Chassis no. 1E16504. Union Jack paint over dark blue leather. Older restoration, #2- condition.
Equipment: RHD. 4235cc/265hp I-6, four-speed, wire wheels, dual mirrors, woodrim steering wheel, wood shift knob, original AM/FM radio.
Condition: The one and only “Shaguar” used in all three Austin Powers films. In a private collection since the films ended and restored by Jaguar Land Rover in the mid-2000s and showing light general age. Groovy.
Bottom line: A Series I 4.2-liter roadster is a desirable spec for an E-Type, and this one is in solid usable shape. What actually got the paddles waving here, of course, is the car’s screen time. How much is Austin Powers’ star power worth? A lot, surprisingly. A normal E-Type in this condition and in today’s market probably wouldn’t bring more than $200K at auction.
Lot S298: 1990 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z 1LE
Sold for $104,500
Chassis no. 1G1FP2387LL131182. Bright Blue Metallic over gray cloth. Original, #1- condition.
Equipment: 5.7L/245hp V-8, automatic, alloy wheels, performance axle, oil cooler, performance exhaust, aluminum driveshaft, special shocks and fuel pickup, gas tank baffle, air conditioning and radio delete, decal and stripe delete. Comes with all original paperwork.
Condition: Rare, original 1LE with just seven miles showing on the odometer. Never plated or driven, and reportedly stored in a basement for the past 30 years before recent detailing prior to sale. Looks showroom fresh, as advertised.
Bottom line: Devised in 1988 to give SCCA Showroom Stock racers a nice advantage, the 1LE package included Corvette front brake calipers and Caprice rotors, a new brake proportioning valve, and a fuel tank that kept the pickup submerged under hard acceleration and braking loads. Chevrolet didn’t promote the 1LE so it wasn’t a big seller, with just 200 built in its first three years and only about 60 for 1990. Only about 30 of those got the torquier 5.7-liter TPI engine (which was only available with an automatic).
Buying a car new and then shoving it into a corner for a few decades isn’t really the best use of one’s money, and when you account for inflation, storage, insurance, and maintenance, the return on investment can be a roll of the dice. In this case, though, the car did pretty well. The original bill of sale reads $16,779, which is a little over $41K when adjusted for inflation.
Lot S214: 1966 Ford GT40 MkI Road Car
Sold for $7,040,000
Chassis no. 1034. Pine Green over black leather. Older restoration, #2- condition.
Equipment: RHD. 289cid/335hp V-8, quadruple Weber carburetors, ZF five-speed, Borrani wire wheels, heated windscreen, reverse lights, wing mirrors, two fuel gauges, mufflers, interior carpet. Also apparently unique in having grilles over the radiator outlets.
Condition: Represented as one of 31 Mk I GT40 road cars built, and reportedly the first road car delivered to a private owner. Ordered new in the U.K. by James Fielding and delivered by Jackie Stewart, a Ford ambassador at the time. Although configured as a road car, it was raced by its second owner in the 1970s. Then passed through several more owners in the 1980s through the 2000s, including Sam Walton (of Walmart fame). Fully restored to its original specifications but retains its original tub, body, and transmission. The engine currently fitted isn’t original, but it does come with a 1966-dated engine that has reportedly accompanied the car since new. Well-presented, genuine, and eligible for lots of great events.
Bottom line: Mecum has done well with Ford GT40s, having sold another Mk I road car for $6.93M at this sale last year and a Mk I Lightweight race car for $7.85M last August.
Pricing these blue-chip Anglo-American sports cars can be tricky. Race history with famous drivers is important for the race cars, while the road cars are fairly rare, tend to be better preserved, and, theoretically, are usable outside of just the track. All things considered, this car sold quite well and is the fifth-most expensive GT40 ever sold at auction.
