Fill a room with tiny cars, then toss in a bunch of people with big wallets. Result: $9 million in sales.
OK, $9.1 million, to be precise. When the gavel sounded for the final sale Saturday evening at the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum, more than 200 cars, plus other memorabilia, had changed hands in two days of spirited bidding. Auctioneers thought the sum might hit $6 million; the total was more than 50 percent higher.
“The only part I didn’t like,” said Weiner, the museum’s namesake and founder, “was that it came to an end.”
The auction, which attracted bidders from 20 nations, began Friday at 10 a.m. as the first of 201 microcars rolled across the block. Goggomobils, Messerschmitts, Victorias: They looked like giant toys.
The top price: $322,000 for a 1958 F.M.R. Tg 500 “Tiger,” a bubble-topped, bug-eyed curiosity once manufactured in Germany. A 1951 Reyonnah — named after its creator, a guy named Hannoyer (get it?) — hauled in $184,000. And a 1964 Peel, once the world’s smallest production car, fetched $120,750 — more cash, perhaps, than could fit inside its tiny confines. In addition to the cars, the museum sold a wide array of neon signs, soft-drink machines and other memorabilia from mid-20th century America.
Some of the prices weren’t surprising, Weiner said. “When you have something that’s special, and three or four people are bidding on it, it’s not going to go cheap,” said Weiner, who made his fortune as a bubblegum magnate. He founded the museum, a nonprofit, nearly 20 years ago.
The museum, 60 miles east of Atlanta, will retool, Weiner said. Now that the microcars are gone, he plans to start searching for other automobile oddities, using some of the money generated from the auction to fund his next nonprofit endeavour.
Did you know some cars once ran on coal? Were powered by burning wood? Had propellers?
No?
Well, you will.
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