For the price of a used Corolla with 100,000 miles, you can buy a super-cool car from one of the country’s most well-attended vintage car auctions. You don’t have to be rich or famous. You just show up with a letter of credit for $10,000, and there are pages worth of cars you can buy. This 1968 Chevy Impala wagon sold at Auctions America’s Auburn sale a few weeks ago is a great example of what’s available if you’re willing to show up early. 
There’s not a lot of information — (read: no information) — on this car in the Auctions America catalog entry from their May 8 through 10 sale this year. What we do know is that it was part of a large group of cars sold under the “John Scotti Collection” banner. John Scotti is a car dealer from Montreal, and at Auctions America’s Auburn sale this spring, he shipped around 400 cars south, all sold at no reserve.
What we do know about this 1968 Chevy Impala wagon is that’s a pretty low-option unit. No roof rack, not wheel arch trim, no wood, and it looks like it’s probably a six-passenger wagon, rather than the nine-passenger option. One option it features is the 327-cu.in. V-8, which looks about as clean as an 89,000-mile wagon is going to get.
Inside and out, this wagon is just spotless. For less than eight grand — $7,590 to be exact — it’s a phenomenal starting point for a really cool tow car, or you could leave it alone and just enjoy it as-is.
You may not like Chevys or station wagons or the color blue, but at $1.50 a pound, you simply can’t argue that this isn’t a smoking good deal on a clean 1960s car.
As a Montrealer I was following this auction. Some of estimates were ludicrous but it looks like there were some good bargains after all. Really wish I had known about the sale before hand, maybe could have squeezed out a deal before the cars got sold in the US!
My guess is that if you tried to buy that outright, you’d be looking at $10,000 to $12,000.
No Reserve, though, all bets are off.
Excellent point. This dealership’s usual price premium is what kept me out of their showroom most of the time. Especially when you can recognize Craigslist buys flipped – er, listed – for 2 or 3 times the original price. Wouldn’t have minded grabbing one of those Monte’s for 10k, had more than that in my 71’s resto, haha.
Darren, did you ever visit the showroom? One of my last days in MTL, buddy took me, and I saw a lot of these cars in person. Amazing what some of them went for… I remember seeing the original prices.
I’ve seen a lot of their cars in person at local shows but never took the grand tour at their dealership. Kinda regret it now, haha.
The wagon was a pig with lipstick. Quickie respray, no wheel opening trim (but the screw holes were visible) – looks much better in the pictures. Not that great a deal!