The Stan Antlocer-piloted...
The Stan Antlocer-piloted '63 421 SD LeMans has been painstakingly restored to its as-raced condition by Scott Tiemann of Supercar Specialties for owner John Riconda. This is the very car that sold on eBay for over $226,000 in November of 2008.
Back in November of 2008, it seemed like the entire Internet and collector-car worlds were abuzz about a certain eBay auction that defied all logic. A thrashed and neglected '63 Pontiac LeMans was suddenly generating bids that at the surface, seemed completely insane. Why would multiple parties all vie for this rather humble-looking machine?
The bidding actually surpassed $50,000 by the third day; by the time it ended, the top bid came in at a whopping $226,521.63. This was a serious windfall for the owner, who so underestimated its value that he initially put a $4,000 "Buy It Now" option on the auction, believing that figure was well above its worth.
Though the person listing the car did not seem to understand what he had, he nonetheless offered some tantalizing clues. First, the car was white with a blue interior, had a plexiglass windshield, and the odometer showed just 3,165 miles. Lastly, a rear shot of the coupe showed some very unique damage to the rear bumper.
Apparently the owner of the car had put it in storage for an extended period but died before doing any restoration work. The storage fees piled up, and his widow decided to simply forfeit the car to cover the storage costs. In retrospect, it proved to be an ill-advised move on her part.
Scott (driving) and John take...
Scott (driving) and John take a hot parade lap down the Summit Motorsports Park strip after winning the HPP Editor's Choice Award.
Meanwhile, the Pontiac message boards were ablaze with speculation; was it one of the six 421 SD LeMans coupes or just another old race car that sat neglected for decades? It certainly looked like one, though the aluminum front end was replaced with a regular steel nose.
Many Pontiac fans quickly scrambled for their copies of Pete McCarthy's Pontiac Musclecar Performance 1955-79 to check the VIN supplied in the auction description against the list of VINs and shipping manifests reproduced in the book. The VIN turned out to be of one of the six factory race cars-it was, in fact, the very car campaigned by Stan Long Pontiac in Detroit and driven by Stan Antlocer. The bidding intensified.
Almost immediately everyone from Autoblog.com to various news organizations had picked up on the story. Even though it had been established that this was one of the rare and elusive factory 421 Super-Duty LeMans coupes, not everyone understood the car's historical significance. Many dismissed it as just some weird and dilapidated old car, and other "experts" proclaimed that since the original drivetrain was no longer with it, it was essentially worthless. How wrong they were...
The 421 Super-Duty was built...
The 421 Super-Duty was built by SD expert Doug Hughes. It uses the same headers George DeLorean built for it back in 1963.
Those in the know, of course, understood that this was the hottest automotive archaeological unearthing of the past decade, especially for Pontiac fans. They knew that the auction still had a lot of ground to cover and the final price would likely be a record-breaker. What that final number would be was a matter of speculation at that point.
That speculation would be answered in a very exciting way. The bidding war that ignited the week before escalated to $95,000 with seven minutes to go and then seemed to stall momentarily. It started up again and surged to the sale price in the last 15 seconds.
It was a very wild and bumpy ride, but in the end, Pontiac collector John Riconda won the auction, narrowly beating out a Chicago-based consortium that also valued the LeMans' rarity and unique history.
"I learned about the history of the Super-Duty LeMans and Tempest wagons from Pete's book," Riconda said in an interview for this article. "I was really intrigued with the idea of finding one of the missing cars, but it seemed like a long shot."