We’ve seen a lot of absurd car auction sales these last few years, both at traditional auction houses and sites like Bring a Trailer. Sometimes we suspect there must be some kind of illegal stuff going on, because the high prices make no sense for what the car is. Of course, that likely isn’t the case, but sometimes a normal car sells for so much, we’re left with more questions than answers. Take this week’s Barrett-Jackson auction of a 2012 Chevrolet Corvette, which sold for a record-breaking $330,000 despite being a regular-ass ‘Vette.
Barrett-Jackson has had some doozies over the years; it’s the place to be if you want to see older folks throw away well into the six figures on garage queen muscle cars or overdone restomods. This C6 ‘Vette was from the David M. Ressler Collection, which offloaded a bunch of interesting and rare Corvette models at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction this week. But aside from having just 65 miles on the odometer and being really clean for a car that’s over a decade old, there isn’t anything special about this C6.
Is it a Z06 or ZR1? Nope. Is it modified to have 1,000 horsepower? Nope, there’s a bone-stock 6.2-liter V8 under the hood. Is it an Autobot, or was it owned by someone famous? Nope, and nope. It’s simply a bright red Corvette that wouldn’t look out of place at an old man Corvette meet held on a weekend morning in the parking lot of some random grocery store. It doesn’t even have a manual transmission, either — it’s equipped with a six-speed automatic.
And yet someone saw it crossing the auction block and thought to themselves, “Yeah, I’ll pay single-family-home-in-Ohio money for that.” It’s not like the sale proceeds went to charity, either. Making this sale even stranger is that other cars from the collection, ones that are both just as plain or a lot more special than this C6, didn’t sell for anything close to what this C6 went for. Another red C6, just seven years older with 7,463 miles and a manual transmission, only sold for $29,000. A special edition 1996 C4 Grand Sport, one of only 810 made that year, sold for just $22,000. Whatever made this particular C6 special enough to sell for more than $300,000 will likely remain a mystery.