You made a couple points I was making. So I guess we do agree to some degree. A buttload of people started the bid and only 4 were willing to dig that deep for the car. I wonder at what point they started to drop off in droves?
If it's worth it to you to pay that kind of money, then you will. Everyone has their reasons to want to pay that much. And on the flip side, not to pay that much. With 4,208 442's made in 1987, the VIN 9 production was 4.5% of the total 2-door coupe production that year. 442's in 1987 aren't desirable because of their blazing speed, but because of their style, relative scarcity, and most important IMO, the legacy to the people that remembered. Even in 1987 the younger crowd didn't have a clue what a 442 was. Definitely not for performance. When you compare one to today's standard V6's at 310 HP like what's in the wife's XT5 SUV, er, CUV (she keeps correcting me on that), it's pretty abysmal performance-wise. But we don't like them or buy them because of their street muscle. Never did, cuz they never had any. Even those supposedly big bad GN's. 🙂
And there needs to be a sentimental attachment to pay that much for a car like that, regardless if it has a fancy paint scheme with a decal package or not. Even if the car cost 18K new back then, you would have to spend nearly $40K for that same sticker price today. So if it stretched to 18.5K that isn't even quite 1/2 of what it would cost you new. So G-bodies of any flavor aren't typically in the $35-40K range. Which if they did, it would stick them close to inflation-adjusted sticker price. It is cheaper to buy a car like the 557 mile example here this than say, a 1970 Cutlass S with 557 miles.
One thing I've learned over the years- You can't have any regrets when you're writing checks for cars, regardless of the price. And it matters not so much of what they ask, just how much you pay.
I haven't been in the market for a G-body in many many years, so I don't pay as much attention to what they bring anymore, but those one-off cars that sell for big $$$ doesn't set the average prices. Although when one does sell, then everyone who has a rust bucket that even looks like that thinks their million mile machine is automatically "worth" a majority of that price. They made over 3 million G-body Cutlasses in various forms, so even with natural attrition, I'm pretty sure the G-body you want is likely still out there.
