Bugazzi, Fronty Ford, headed to RM’s Hershey auction

Hmm. Two doesn’t make a trend, but this will the second Barris-built car to cross a major auction block in the month of October, after the Banacek AMX at Mecum. This one, a 1972 Bugazzi, will head to RM’s Vintage Motorcars of Hershey auction October 8-9. The Bugazzi started out as a Harry Bentley Bradley concept atop a Lincoln Mark IV platform as Paul Rimmer’s idea of an American Rolls Royce. Barris took over production from Rimmer and built about 12, one of which headed to Joe Comforte, proprietor of the Mustang Ranch. Being sold without reserve, RM estimates it’ll go for $30,000 to $60,000.

Bugazzi a bit too, umm, rococo for you? At the same event, RM’s also auctioning off this 1915 Ford Model T “Fronty Ford” speedster, equipped with a Peugeot-style Bub Wasp body, a Frontenac overhead-valve conversion on the Model T four-cylinder and Ford wide-track axles. It’ll also go for no reserve, estimated to sell for $40,000 to $60,000.

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A fine day at the 2009 Sports and Exotic Car Show

We’re finding that Saratoga Springs, New York, is a rather ideal location for our annual Sports and Exotic Car Show, which we put on this past Saturday on the grounds of the Saratoga Auto Museum. This year, we utilized the big field between the museum and the nearby Gideon Putnam Hotel, and we were rewarded with an excellent turnout of some magnificent cars. As the featured marque, Alfa Romeos came out in force, but we also had representation from about a dozen other marques, including Allard, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Saab, Triumph, MG, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Datsun, Lotus and even a DAF. Look for full coverage of the show in the November 2009 issue of Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

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Bill and Connor back home

So after 5,188 miles and 23 days on the road, Bill and Connor Miles crossed a country, met plenty of great people, saw plenty of great scenery, and had just one breakdown, when the fuel pump on their GMC let go in New York, just a day or so from getting back home. Fortunately, friendly locals helped them out, and they were on their way and on schedule in no time. If you missed any of their trip, make sure to hit up their archives. So where to next, Bill?

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Checkers as cop cars?

In our recent post on Checker dealerships, frequent commenter Errcoman informed us that Checker offered its cars in police trim as well as taxi trim. Reader Gene Herman also sent us a scan of a 1964 or 1965 Checker brochure that offered a police package Checker. Though, as with most other Checker products, one could order a Checker cop car pretty much any way one wanted. To confirm this, we went to John Weinhoeft, who pointed us to a few recent articles in the Checkerboard News about Checkers as cop cars, as well as the above photo of Checker collector Ben Merkel’s Checker cop car, which originally patrolled Key West, Florida.

In the newsletter articles, Ben mentioned several other police departments he knew of that ordered Checkers for patrol duty, including Terrell, Texas; Mackinaw City, Michigan; Tallmadge, Ohio; Chelsea, Massachusetts; Medford, Massachusetts; Exeter, New Hampshire; and Coburn, Virginia. In addition, he found out that Upjohn Pharmaceutical and Timken Bearing had both ordered police package Checkers as security patrol cars. And apparently the police package remained available all the way through the end of Checker production in 1982.

Know of any other police departments that once used Checkers? Let us know in the comments.

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From the My Hemmings Reader Videos – GTX, day of arrival

Good news, everybody! You’ve known for a while now that you can upload a video along with your online classified with Hemmings to help sell your car, but now you can also upload your videos of your cars just to show off in the Reader Videos section of My Hemmings. And we’ve already seen a few videos roll in, including the above video from member abrke, who apparently couldn’t wait to start burning rubber with his GTX and christened it and his driveway before he could even bother to put plates on it!

Got a video you’d like to share? First, make sure you’re registered for My Hemmings, then on your Account page, look for the Your Videos box on the right of the page. If you’ve uploaded a particularly cool video, let us know!

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