Time to be Fascinated by Old Autoweek Classified Advertisements
Your new favorite Instagram account is a time capsule of Autoweek magazine’s classified adverts for now rare cars.
Autoweek has been around since its conception in Detroit in 1958 as a newsletter called Competition Press. In 1964, the name was shortened to just Autoweek. As its initial name suggest, Competition Press was squarely aimed at coveringcar racing, and then became broader in appeal to car enthusiasts in general through the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, the magazine has embraced the communication revolution brought on by the internet and, as well as still printing magazines, has its own website as well as phone and tablet apps and social media outlets. And that’s where we found this gem of an Instagram account showing us classified adverts from deep in the magazine’s archives.
Some of the adverts are simply stunning, like 1958 BMW 507 going for $5000 in the picture above. Allowing for inflation, that would be around $35,000 now for an incredibly rare and desirable car. 252 were built, and one of those went to Elvis Presley. The 507 was an important and hugely influential car, despite taking BMW to the edge of bankruptcy. Its hard to pin down a current value, bu the last one we saw went for over $2 million. Other rare cars include a track prepped 1966 Shelby Mustang with an asking price of $45,000, a 1966 McLaren Mark III race car offered for the same price, a Q-code Cobra Jet Mustang GT Coupe advertised to be in “near concourse” condition for $27,500, and a 1975 Porsche 911 SE with the 935 package and 2400 miles on the clock for $25,500. There’s even a 1952 Ferrari Amil Amiga roadster, which looks like a coach-built 212 to us and we know a few made it to the U.S and ended up with Corvette V8 engines instead of the Ferrari V12. For a “reasonable offer over $3000,” somebody got a steal there if they held onto it.
The most breathtaking so far must be this 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO pictured below. We would love to know the story of this one, but Autoweek isn’t showing the details of the seller. That’s probably for good reason as they are going for anywhere between $40-70 million. That advert’s asking price in 1965 was just $13,500 which would be around $280,000 today. A little research has us believing this GTO was driven by former racing driver and current race team owner, Augie Pabst III.
There are also some not so fast but definitely curious cars in the opening salvo from the Instagram account. The most curious so far must be a 1937 Mercedes 770K that, as well as being sold to the public, was used by high-ranking Nazi officials before and during the World War 2 and, as the advert suggests, by Adolph Hitler himself. Very few survived the war, but one that’s been identified as being Hitler’s own was rumored to have been sold to a Russian billionaire in 2009 for multiple millions of dollars. This one claims “Reichsregierun Adolf Hitler’s” which, if our basic German holds up and we’re interpreting correctly, means a claim of this actually being one of Hitler’s Reich Government cars. According to the history books, he had 7 for his own use, so it is possible.
At the time of writing, the Autoweek Classifieds Instagram page has just 43 followers and is just getting started. We sincerely hope enough people follow the account to justify it being kept up. There must be plenty of fascinating little gems to unearth.
