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Historys Greatest Picks with Mike Wolfe - Season 1 - Episode 01: Wheelin and Dealin
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00:13I'm Mike Wolfe and I've spent my life traveling the world chasing forgotten
00:18objects and the histories behind them. People everywhere are turning up
00:24artifacts every day, often by chance. And if you're lucky, some of these finds can be worth
00:31serious money. Tonight on History's Greatest Picks. Hot Rods, Speedsters and Jalopies, whether
00:44they've got four wheels, two wheels or hell, no wheels at all, there's always a deal to
00:49be done. We're talking junkyard treasures. This is the world's first supercar. Long lost
00:58classics. This is a car, you hear it before you see it. And barnyard beaters. This could
01:05possibly be one of the earliest models ever produced. So fire it up, put her in gear and
01:11let me tell you the stories behind some of history's greatest picks.
01:24The Ford Mustang has been an icon of speed and style ever since it rolled off the assembly
01:29line in 1964. It's hard to believe that that's over 60 years ago. But not all Mustangs are
01:37created equal. Like the 1965 Shelby Fastback, the winningest Shelby ever, which won 17 straight
01:45wins with Charlie Kemp behind the wheel. In 2021, it's sold at auction for $1.1 million.
01:52Or the 1967 Shelby GT500, aka the Super Snake, a one of a kind prototype, which in 2019 sold
02:03for 2.2 million bucks. But one man found the bargain of a lifetime hiding in the classifieds.
02:16Robert Kiernan, he's a young guy. He's in his 20s. And he's in the market for a car. And he
02:22likes his
02:23cars fast and muscly. He finds Road & Track magazine. And he looks through all the ads and finally comes
02:31across the car that he thinks, OK, this is going to work for my family. 1968 Highland Green 4-speed
02:40Fastback Mustang. Turns out, Robert's the only person that responded to the ad. And so he snatches
02:46it up for $6,000.
02:53One of the great things about Mustangs when they came to market is they were sort of the first
02:57muscle car post-war that was really of the people, right? This new generation of kids coming up.
03:03It was a car they could afford, right? It wasn't expensive.
03:08And yet it still had that speed, that power that people craved, especially young men.
03:14The thing is, this isn't just some bone stock, run-of-the-mill Mustang.
03:20It's been modified. The front grille's all blacked out. You got your aftermarket torque thrust
03:24wheel that make it look a little tougher and cooler. But there's scuffs all over it.
03:30Holes in the floor. Like, you can see the road through the floor when you're driving.
03:36The engine has been modified in a way to give it an extra, like, really meaty roar, right?
03:42This is a car, you hear it before you see it.
03:47The reason for these modifications is that this is one of the original cars from the 1968 movie
03:54Bullet, starring Steve McQueen. There were two leads cast in this movie, Steve McQueen and the Mustang.
04:05The thing that everyone remembers about Bullet is, is this amazing car chase. It's considered,
04:11to this day, still one of the greatest cinematic car chases of all time.
04:16This is really the first time in cinema where you're putting the cameras right into the cockpit,
04:21so you feel like you're in the car with them. You feel like you're in the chase.
04:26That's why there are holes in the front seat of the vehicle, because that's where the camera sat.
04:31McQueen would often turn into the camera so that it was unmistakable. It was him doing the driving.
04:37All car chases from this point on really sort of take their inspiration from this one.
04:44Movie wraps. Nobody really cares about the car that much. So it gets sold to a Warner Brothers
04:50employee, then later finds itself for sale in Road & Track Magazine in around 1974.
04:56So this model of Mustang, after this movie, is dubbed the Mona Lisa of Mustangs.
05:01And it eventually ends up with Robert, and it's sort of his day-to-day knock-around car.
05:06He doesn't really do anything to it. He doesn't modify it. It's still got paint scrapes. It's still
05:11got dents. So it still has all of that original modification from the film.
05:17But when Steve McQueen hears that his favorite partner in crime is wasting away in the suburbs,
05:23he decides he wants it back.
05:27McQueen offers to give the Kiernan family a replacement vehicle. It's now part of the family.
05:35The kids learn to drive in this thing. I learned to drive in a 79 Grand Prix,
05:39and they learned to drive in the Mustang that was in the movie Bullet.
05:43So he contacts Robert and asks him,
05:46can I get Bullet from you? How much do you want? Robert, not interested.
05:51After his initial rejection, Steve McQueen writes this heartfelt letter that he wants to
05:56get the Mustang back.
05:58Kiernan doesn't even respond to McQueen's second offer.
06:01So as time goes on, the car begins to age like a lot of cars, and at a certain point,
06:06the clutch goes. He can't really drive it anymore day to day. He puts it in his garage
06:10and leaves it there for the next 40 years.
06:16Ladies and gentlemen, the Bullet Mustang.
06:20It's not until 2020, when the Mustangs pass down to Robert's kids, that his son decides to finally sell it.
06:29Folks, it is time to witness history.
06:33That's the Bullet Mustang preparing to cross the auction block.
06:39You got to remember, this car was an international superstar.
06:43So when it was advertised and displayed, it had people all over the world losing their minds
06:49to get their hands on it.
06:51Now somebody get $500,000 and start it.
06:53$500,000, a million dollar bid.
06:55$1 million, $1 million.
06:56The Mustang was originally bought from a classified ad for $6,000.
07:01When it's put up for auction in 2020, it's bought by an anonymous buyer for an astonishing $3.4 million.
07:10Sold the car at $3,400,000.
07:14Making it the most expensive Mustang ever sold at auction.
07:27Even though we spent years trying to get it back, for Steve McQueen, the Bullet just wasn't meant to be.
07:33But this guy in our next story, he doesn't let go of his prized possession for 66 years.
07:51There's a young guy named David Eline, who is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin.
07:56He's actually a walk-on football player and a very astute collector.
08:03And he gets a tip about something that is going to be one of the greatest picks he ever makes.
08:10This tip sends him on a journey to rural Wisconsin.
08:15Remember that this is 1941, so roads aren't great, there aren't really many highways.
08:21This is 70 miles from Milwaukee, so it would have taken him half a day to get there.
08:30So he arrives at this farm, and there at the barn, behind a bale of hay,
08:35he sees what looks sort of like a motorbike, kind of.
08:41He sees it as an engine.
08:43And he sees it as a muffler.
08:45And by now, our student is trying to stay cool, stay calm,
08:50because he knows what he's looking at is a very early, early Harley-Davidson.
08:57Like so many other brands, Harley-Davidson strapped the oil tank and the gas tank to the top tube.
09:05And that's why this is called the strap tank.
09:08But Harley did a lot of things a lot different.
09:12They designed a loop frame, heavy-duty lugs, heavy-duty tubing, and their own front suspension.
09:20Strap tanks are incredibly rare.
09:22So to find this one, this could possibly be one of the earliest models ever produced.
09:30If we're talking about the roots of Harley-Davidson, then we got to go way back to 1903,
09:37when a 22-year-old William Harley and his buddy, Arthur Davison, unveiled their first model.
09:43A single-cylinder belt-drive motorcycle.
09:47Harley-Davidson begins in this small, very quaint wooden shed in Milwaukee.
09:55By 1908, the company has 18 employees, and they are manufacturing now 450 Model 4 Harley-Davidson strap tanks a
10:05year.
10:05Very rugged design, and that's what was needed back then.
10:09There was no paved roads.
10:10This is gravel, two tracks, trails.
10:13So, I mean, these bikes had to be built really tough.
10:16And the strap tank kept that tank and that oil tank really secure.
10:22This guy's heart had to be beating so fast, it was blurring his vision.
10:27This was a significant bike, not only for its rarity, but 1908 was the end of the strap tank era.
10:34Harley-Davidson had crested the creative hill, and we're moving forward with a more modern design and more powerful machines.
10:52So, David keeps this strap tank Harley-Davidson for the next 66 years.
10:58And finally, he has it expertly restored and brought back to its full original condition.
11:06So, when it finally comes to auction in 2007, it sells for $198,000.
11:13But just as the market in classic cars has gone through the roof, so have vintage motorcycles.
11:24It's a 1908 Harley-Davidson strap tank.
11:29One of the most coveted motorcycles on the planet.
11:34When the strap tank comes back to auction in 2023...
11:37Whoa!
11:38Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, the reserve is off.
11:42It becomes the most expensive Harley-Davidson ever, selling for $935,000, including the auction house fee.
12:00Classic design, raw power, and speed.
12:03Put those three things together, and you get racing cars like the Ferrari that won the Le Mans and sold
12:09for $36 million.
12:11Or the Mercedes-Benz Streamliner Grand Prix winner that sold for nearly $54 million.
12:18And then there's the Porsche that never made it to the racetrack in one piece.
12:31So, there's this restoration shop, auto restoration shop, owned by Jack Stiles.
12:37The shop is packed full of old car parts and polished fenders.
12:41But, in the midst of this clutter, there is a crate.
12:49Untouched by its owner for 30 years.
12:53If you were to open up that crate and look inside, you'd see a transaxle.
13:00It's a pretty unremarkable part of a car.
13:03Well, what's interesting is it's stamped with the numbers 1-0-0-4-6.
13:10Now, those particular numbers, they have a big story to tell.
13:15There's lore, there's history, there's fame and glory, and a curse.
13:27More than 70 years ago, transaxle number 10046 sat under the deck lid of a Porsche 550 Spyder.
13:36Recently bought by Hollywood rebel and racing enthusiast, James Dean.
13:42The thing about Dean is, he loves driving.
13:44He loves the speed, the raw power.
13:49He loves racing, he loves German engineering, which is what Porsche is all about.
13:57The first Porsche James Dean buys is a 356 Super Speedster.
14:02It's a great car, but it doesn't take long before he upgrades to the next evolution, a 550 Spyder.
14:11Dean personalizes the vehicle.
14:13He puts his racing number on it, 130, and he also paints the back end of it, the nickname, Little
14:19Bastard.
14:20So the Spyder 550 is a street-legal race car that Porsche put together,
14:24and what's really interesting about the 550 Spyder is the motor and transmission have been reversed,
14:30so it's a mid-engine configuration, and it was made to go fast.
14:34It was made to race.
14:35The 550 Spyder is a very small, petite, aluminum-bodied, two-door race car.
14:42It wasn't the fastest car, but it was the most nimble, and it handled the best.
14:48All you needed was a skilled driver like James Dean at the wheel.
14:55It's September, 1955.
14:59James Dean is just wrapped on his latest film, Giant, with Rog Hudson, Liz Taylor.
15:06And during the filming, though, under contract, he was not allowed to race cars.
15:13So he's been chomping at the bit, and now he's done with the film.
15:17He's finally going to get back to his Spyder, and he's going to put it through the paces.
15:21He's going to see what it can do.
15:24So he sets off for the Salinas racetrack.
15:26Now I drive on the highways and I'm extra cautious.
15:31Because no one knows what they're doing.
15:33Half the time, you don't know what this guy's going to do with that one.
15:38But on his way, a Ford stand pulls out in front of him,
15:42and he runs right into the Ford stand.
15:50James Dean is just 24 years old when he tragically dies in a car accident,
15:57cementing him as a Hollywood legend gone too soon.
16:02And not only that, with his death, many believe a curse is born.
16:08So the car is a total write-off, but the body of the wreck is sold for $2,500.
16:15Any of the parts that were usable were cannibalized and sold off to all kinds of collectors.
16:20You can interchange a lot of these parts on those old Porsches.
16:24One motor will fit many, many different vehicles.
16:26So, I mean, it doesn't take long for the parts to get parted out and put onto other vehicles.
16:32And here's the thing that's really weird about this,
16:34is wherever these parts go, misfortune follows.
16:41One of those buyers puts the engine into a Lotus 9.
16:45And he's in a race a year later, driving that car with that engine,
16:49and he gets in a terrible wreck.
16:51He survives, but his friend is not so lucky.
16:55His car had been fitted with the transaxle.
16:59And his car slams into a bale of hay, and he does not survive the accident.
17:04The transaxle survives this incident intact and in usable condition.
17:10So it gets salvaged again.
17:13So the transaxle is still living on.
17:18After these accidents, rumors begin to spread that James Dean's car is cursed.
17:25The parts that came out of that car that he died in, other people are now getting hurt and being
17:30killed.
17:31Two of the tires from the car are said to have been on a car in New York,
17:35and those tires blow, and the car veers off the road.
17:39The body of James Dean's spider goes on display in Sacramento.
17:43And as the story goes, when it's being put up on this display stand,
17:48it rolls over and crushes a worker.
17:51Does the curse really exist?
17:53Doesn't really matter, because people are prepared to believe it.
17:59Do I believe in the curse of James Dean?
18:01I don't know.
18:02I do know that the transaxle was in a wooden crate.
18:07Which has been sealed away in Jack Stiles' workshop for decades.
18:16A standard Porsche transaxle might sell for a couple thousand dollars,
18:20but this one, it brings a staggering 387 grand.
18:28And the winning bid, the owner of the Paranormal Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada,
18:33where it was put on display, keeping the legend of the curse alive.
18:46There are lots of cool cars, but cars from movies and TV shows are in a whole different league,
18:52like the Batmobile from the original 1960s TV series.
18:56You know, the one with the rocket booster and the Batradar?
18:59That sold in 2013 for 4.6 million bucks.
19:04Or a time-traveling DeLorean from Back to the Future,
19:07which sold for more than half a million in 2011.
19:10But when it comes to cool cars with even cooler gadgets, no one beats 007.
19:29So a 10-year lease on a storage unit runs out in Holbrook, New York.
19:33And the payments are delinquent.
19:35No one's paying for it.
19:36So what happens is it's open to the public,
19:38and anyone can come and bid, and they get all the contents inside.
19:43A local couple throws down 100 bucks, and they win the unit.
19:48You're not allowed to peek to see what's inside.
19:51So it's a complete crapshoot on what's going to be behind that door.
19:59They crack open the unit,
20:01and they see blankets over a large shape.
20:06And as they pull off the layers,
20:08they see this futuristic-looking vehicle.
20:11It's real sleek and angular.
20:13It's low to the ground.
20:14Beautiful, older car.
20:16But they have no idea what this car actually means.
20:20They're not really into cars.
20:21They just know it looks cool.
20:23And they put it on their flatbed,
20:25and they start driving back home.
20:30And the people on the road,
20:33they begin to recognize it right away.
20:35Truckers are on their CB radios talking to each other.
20:39Hey, dude, check this out.
20:41Is that the car from The Spy Who Loved Me?
20:44Is that the wet Nelly?
20:46Hey, is that the famous White Lotus from James Bond?
20:48And it turns out that this car that they're taking home
20:52belonged to James Bond.
20:56A 1976 Lotus Esprit.
21:02And it had a starring role in the film The Spy Who Loved Me.
21:07The Lotus Esprit had been launched in the 1970s at the Paris Auto Show.
21:14But one of the Lotus PR guys decided it needed an even bigger stage.
21:20They want people to notice it.
21:22They want people to see it.
21:24They know there's a movie being shot in London.
21:27So day after day, the people from Lotus keep parking the car outside of Pinewood Studios,
21:33where they're filming James Bond.
21:35And it does the job because the producer, Cubby Broccoli, sees the car and says,
21:43this is what we need for the movie.
21:46Lotus then provides the production company with two functioning cars and seven shells.
21:53And they use one of those bodies to create this legendary chase scene.
21:57And James Bond goes flying off the pier.
22:02The car hits the water and it turns into a submarine.
22:06There's underwater motors, propellers in the back.
22:11The tires actually recoil into the body and rudders stick out.
22:16There are batteries to help power it.
22:18And they have the batteries inside of an airtight, watertight compartment.
22:24There are articulated fins to help with the direction.
22:28It can climb, it can dive with ballast tanks, just like a submarine.
22:34There's a rocket launcher in the roof that actually shoots out and it shot down a helicopter.
22:40There was actually one seat built in this vehicle.
22:44And it was actually driven by a stuntman, a U.S. Navy SEAL.
22:48So he's the guy that made the movie magic.
22:50None of this is CGI or special effects like we see today.
22:55This was an actual functioning piece of engineering.
23:00So you got the coolest car.
23:02The car that turned into a submarine.
23:04What do you do with it?
23:05Well, the couple didn't know.
23:06They weren't fans of the movie.
23:07So it just sat in their garage for another 20 years.
23:18After sitting on it for 20 years, in 2013, the Long Island couple bring it to auction.
23:25Bidding starts at $150,000.
23:27And by the end, it sells for an incredible $973,000 to an anonymous phone bidder.
23:42I've been to enough to know that not all junkyards are created equal.
23:46Most are just graveyards for late model cars.
23:49But in Los Angeles, there was one junkyard hiding the world's first supercar.
24:00On the south side of Los Angeles, there's this district of old warehouses and junkyards and scrap merchants.
24:10One junkyard in particular has been pretty much closed to the public for decades.
24:15But even though it doesn't look like much on the outside, inside is like Aladdin's cave.
24:20Amid the rows and rows of rusting chassis, there's one in particular that you might overlook.
24:28This one car, it's racing green paint job, it's just covered in grime.
24:34On the driver's side door is dented in, and the passenger side door is rusted.
24:40But underneath all of that was a 1968 Lamborghini Miura.
24:49This is the world's first supercar.
24:54To understand what it is, and what it's even doing here, you've got to go back more than 50 years.
25:07Rudy Klein doesn't come from the car world.
25:09He's a German immigrant.
25:11He's actually a trained butcher.
25:13But as he tries to make it into his career, he realizes there isn't much money to be made in
25:19meat.
25:19So, he decides to take this drastic pivot in his career.
25:25By the early 70s, Rudy Klein had formed what became known as the junkyard.
25:32But he actually called it Porsche Foreign Auto.
25:36Rudy specializes in classic imported cars that have been either totaled or written off.
25:42These are mainly European cars.
25:44He salvages parts and cannibalizes the cars.
25:48And then sells them to other people who restore classic cars.
25:53Rudy becomes the guy who can source what no one else can source.
25:58It's the place you call whenever you need a stock pristine part for, say, your 1970 Mercedes 280 SL.
26:06Or that place where you're looking for that impossible-to-find piece of trim for your 1966 911 S.
26:13And his collection of broken-down cars, it just gets bigger and bigger.
26:18It's just almost endless.
26:20Cars are just stacked four or five high on top.
26:23And he's got hundreds, if not thousands, of these cars.
26:28But he builds his reputation for being a little bit difficult to deal with.
26:33The type of thing where there is no negotiation.
26:36Few people have actually been allowed to see what's on his property.
26:40You couldn't just turn up and knock on the door and get in.
26:45I've heard stories about people hiring helicopters, believe it or not, to fly over the junkyard to spy and see
26:55what's in.
27:03When Rudy passes away in 2001, the business passes along to his two sons.
27:09By 2011, 2012, the sons have been running the business for about a dozen years.
27:14And they're a little bit like Rudy, maybe not the easiest to deal with.
27:18Up until late 2024, when they've decided to sell everything.
27:29Just to give you an idea of what was discovered back there, there was a Mercedes-Benz Goldwink.
27:34Only 29 of those were ever produced.
27:36There's also the only surviving model of a Horsch special roadster, which in and of itself is a pretty special
27:43car.
27:44Among all these amazing cars, there is unmistakably an ultra-rare 1968 Lamborghini Miura.
27:53350 horsepower, a top speed of 170 miles per hour.
27:57This is the fastest thing on the road at that time.
28:04It blows away the Ferrari 275 and the Jaguar E-Type.
28:11The junkyard star, though, was actually repainted in the non-original color and there wasn't much of the original interior
28:18there.
28:18But it was still an iconic piece of Lamborghini's history.
28:23This would be the poster car on the wall that kids in the 60s would have.
28:29It was one of the most famous cars ever to hit the road.
28:32In fact, it's a model of that that's in the opening scene of the original Italian job.
28:39But it doesn't really look like that anymore.
28:43It's definitely shown its age.
28:44It's a ground-up repair.
28:48The auction listing calls it an intriguing restoration project, which basically means good luck.
28:55But nothing is going to stop the dudes that are chomping at the bit for this once-in-a-lifetime
29:01find.
29:01When the dust settles, the long-lost 1968 Lamborghini Miura sells for $1.3 million.
29:19When it comes to cars with epic stories, none are more infamous than the bullet-riddled 1934 Ford that carried
29:26Bonnie and Clyde on their final ride.
29:36In 2012, a woman inherits a box of keepsakes from her deceased grandfather.
29:42There's an empty tin that used to have aspirin in it.
29:45There's a flathead screwdriver.
29:47There's the corner of a piece of eyeglasses.
29:51More disturbingly, in this box, there's a .45-caliber bullet encasing and a single woman's silk stocking,
29:58which has on its foot bloodstains.
30:02These aren't really valuable things.
30:04This is the kind of stuff that ends up in a junk drawer.
30:07But what makes these valuable isn't what they are.
30:10It's whose they are.
30:2078 years earlier, her grandfather, Zell Smith, is a traveling salesman moving through northern Louisiana.
30:29On this particular day, he just so happens to be passing through a little town called Arcadia.
30:34As Zell drives into town, he spots something he'll never forget.
30:39A battered and bullet-ridden Ford V8 being towed down Main Street to the sheriff's office.
30:47And inside, he can see the bloody corpses of two of America's most glamorous outlaws,
30:53Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, better known as Bonnie and Clyde.
31:02During the Great Depression, from 1932 until their deaths in 1934,
31:07Bonnie and Clyde lead this 21-month rampage of lawlessness.
31:13It's at a time when there's a great deal of antagonism toward the wealthy
31:18because there are so many poor people.
31:20And what that produces is an unnatural sympathy for a couple of sociopathic, murderous outlaws.
31:28These guys got super famous.
31:30They took pictures of themselves.
31:31They were found and sent out to newspapers.
31:34They're becoming glamorous gangsters out on the highways of America.
31:39They capture the imagination of the American public.
31:44And then Barrow does this crazy thing with Bonnie Parker.
31:49They go to Huntsville Prison and he breaks his gang out of prison.
31:56And that's it.
31:57That's when the Texas governor, Ma Ferguson, hires Frank Hamer,
32:03a retired Texas ranger who'd killed dozens and dozens of people during his career
32:06to track down and kill the Barrow gang.
32:10Hamer gets a posse together.
32:12So it's Hamer and five other law enforcement officers.
32:14And they know, because Hamer is an excellent tracker,
32:18that Clyde Barrow is going to go visit a fellow gang member's father.
32:25Hamer and the men decide to lay an ambush for them on a remote road out in the middle of
32:31nowhere.
32:32When the car rolls into view, Hamer and the men open fire on it.
32:38Just obliterate that car.
32:41Bonnie and Clyde are dead before the vehicle even rolls to a stop.
32:46The inevitable end.
32:48Retribution.
32:49Here is Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who died as they lived, by the gun.
32:56As this death car is being towed through the streets of Arcadia,
33:01a crowd is gathered.
33:02They're all hoping to catch a glimpse of the corpses.
33:09And their first instinct is to recover souvenirs from the car and even from the bodies,
33:16because one woman steps forward and cuts a lock of Bonnie's hair off.
33:20One guy steps forward and tries to saw off Clyde's trigger finger.
33:26There's even a guy trying to cut off Clyde Barrow's ear as a souvenir.
33:40So the sheriff's a friend of Zell's, and he explains,
33:44hey, if you want to grab anything out of the car, have at it.
33:46Their car is filled with possessions because they had been living in it.
33:50So Zell reaches in, he grabs what he can off the passenger seat.
33:54And this is fascinating stuff.
33:55It tells the story of how these two young kids were on the run.
34:00The aspirin tin, well, that was because they'd been in a car accident,
34:04and Bonnie had been burned with battery acid.
34:07So this was her painkiller.
34:10The flathead screwdriver.
34:12It is what they used to clean their guns.
34:14And of course, there were bullets.
34:17That car had so many firearms in it.
34:19And the stocking, well, they were conscious of this image they had to uphold.
34:25Bonnie Parker was going to look good to the end.
34:32When he gets home, he lays out his haul.
34:35His wife is quite troubled by the fact that he has participated in this scurry
34:40to gather up as many souvenirs as possible.
34:42It troubles her so much that he stuffs everything away,
34:46and it disappears for decades.
34:49People keep these things for years, their keepsakes.
34:51I mean, they wanted souvenirs from this event,
34:54and decades pass, and they're kind of forgotten.
34:58And then, in 1967, the movie hits the big screen.
35:02You've got Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty
35:05and a shootout that is bloodier than anything anyone's ever seen on screen.
35:11The myth of Bonnie and Clyde is reborn, and suddenly these people that had all these things go,
35:16hey, I've got something from that.
35:18You know, it's 30 years later, and they begin to sell them.
35:21Zell's box of souvenirs from Bonnie and Clyde remains hidden for another 15 years,
35:25but then his granddaughter inherits it.
35:32In 2012, she decides to see how much she can get for her sinister collection of odds and ends.
35:39The answer, $11,000.
35:54There are race cars, there are classic cars,
35:57and then there's a beat-up Ford Escort.
36:01But don't be deceived by looks,
36:02because this one comes with a six-figure price tag.
36:18It's RM Sotheby's annual auction of classic cars in Indiana.
36:23You got the 1970 Alfa Romeo.
36:25You got the 69 Ferrari.
36:27These are dream cars.
36:29These are the ones that you wish you had your entire life.
36:32Most people will never come close to seeing one of these.
36:35These are million-dollar cars or multi-million-dollar cars.
36:39They actually sold the Mercedes-Benz Unlock Coupe for $135 million,
36:45the most expensive car ever sold at auction.
36:51This is not where you go and expect to find a 1976 Ford Escort.
36:59The guy that brings the Escort to the auction is a restaurant owner named Jim Rich.
37:04The thing about Jim is, he might be rich in name, but he's come on hard times.
37:10He shows up with holes in his shoes, missing buttons on his jacket, and torn-up clothes.
37:16He's even got a food stamp card in his pocket.
37:19He's not doing well.
37:21He's hit bankruptcy, and this is his Hail Mary.
37:26The car is sold as seen.
37:32In the glove box, there's a box of matches, a candy tin, and a set of wooden rosary beads.
37:41And that is the clue.
37:51It had been purchased brand new nearly 30 years earlier in 1976 by a young cardinal just starting out on
37:59a new chapter in his life, working for the Vatican.
38:02He's a man of the cloth, right?
38:04He's a humble guy.
38:05He doesn't need a flashy car.
38:06He wants something that's practical.
38:08The less flashy, the better.
38:09He purchased this really basic Ford Escort, the GL-1100.
38:16It has no radio, no air conditioning, not even any hubcaps.
38:22Needed a car to drive around Rome, maybe to the mountain for a hike.
38:25And he's not a great driver.
38:27There's some scratches and nicks on the car.
38:29The fender's dented a little bit.
38:31It's scraped on the bottom.
38:32This young cardinal, he gets good use out of this car, though.
38:35He clocks in 60,000 miles on it.
38:39But after only a couple years, the cardinal has to give up his beloved car.
38:44The reason?
38:47In 1978, he's elected Pope John Paul II.
38:51So from here on out, basically he's in the Popemobile.
38:57And the Escort goes into storage.
39:00But the question is, why storage?
39:01Why not just get rid of it?
39:04There are rumors that occasionally he sneaks back to his old Ford Escort and takes it out for a little
39:10spin.
39:14In 1996, when Rich still had money, he buys the Ford Escort for $102,000 in an auction, the proceeds
39:23of which will benefit the Vatican.
39:26He even flies to Rome, meets with the Pope himself, gives the Pope a promise never to let the vehicle
39:33go.
39:33He puts the Escort on display in one of his restaurants.
39:38But then he goes bankrupt.
39:39He has to get rid of the car.
39:41He has to sell it.
39:44The timing of this is critical, because 2005, the year that he's going to sell this car, is also the
39:50year that John Paul II dies.
39:52He is the most beloved Pope in modern history.
39:57They immediately start talking about making him a saint.
40:01Now, the thing is, if he's a saint, any relic that he has touched becomes very hot property.
40:09If you're ever going to sell the car that used to belong to Pope John Paul II, there's really no
40:15better timing than to do it now, right then.
40:22When Jim Rich puts the Ford Escort up for sale, it goes for a staggering $695,000, making it the
40:31most expensive Ford Escort on record.
40:42It just goes to show, whether it's a supercar in a junkyard, a Hollywood star hiding in a suburban garage,
40:50or a banged up Ford Escort, wherever there are wheels, there's a deal to be made.
41:07We'll see you next time.
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