It's been a while since we've had a good, old-fashioned pedal car auction insanity post around here. Fortunately, DT reader and carthority DT found MidAmerica Auction's upcoming Pebble Beach sale, which has enough rarities to fill a mini 8-car garage. [Lot details come from the link above; the links below go straight to each car's photo pages. There are no published price estimates.]:
Let's start slow, with a 1930's custom-made, boat-tail Duesenberg pedal car, which has been fully restored.
They say this Ferrari Testarossa gas-powered go-kart is from the 1980s and is "One of 25 cars originally sold through the FAO Schwarz Christmas catalog for a staggering $50,000." But. I happen to know a thing or two about FAO Schwarz's history of staggering, and their Ferrari go-karts were only $14,000 well into the 1990s. The $50,000 FAO Testarossa turns up in nonsensical Christmas shopping stories by Forbes (2004) and the NY Times (2009). Meanwhile, Autoblog had already spotted an FAO Testarossa on the resale market, asking $24,900. Whether this Testarossa warrants a 2010 price beyond the zenith of miniature car insanity, the 2007 sale of a 1989 Aston Martin Junior Volante for £12,650, remains to be seen. Caveat auriga.
But why muck around with that bankruptcy-tainted tackiness when there is a "rare and valuable" miniature Ferrari 250, electric powered and "beautifully restored"? Though even here, it's not clear when this thing was actually built.
Here's a Baby "Bugatti 51" with a date of 1926, which we all know is really a Type 52 with a build date of between 1927 and 1930. [Related: for sale - Bugatti Type 52, #249A, one owner]
Here's a one-off Packard pedal car, which is supposedly a modern replica of Clark Gable's 1934 Packard Twelve Runabout, but which was actually scaled up [?] from a desktop-sized Danbury Mint model car. Boys and their toys.
Really, it feels like I've been stalling, waiting to get to this incredible-looking, one-off, electric-powered, 1930's Alfa Romeo mini roadster and its "fabulous quality construction."
MidAmerica Marketplace, Aug 13-15, Concours d'Elegance, Pebble Beach [midamericaauctions.com]
The red car is nice and beautiful. Not bad for a pedal car.
And you can get a real Testarossa for about $50K. I'd bet the 2:1 real car to toy car ratio has to be about as close as it gets.