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This Week on Hagerty Marketplace: Pristine Pre- and Postwar Treasures
This week on Hagerty Marketplace looks a little different than usual, because we’re taking a moment to look at the results of Broad Arrow’s first auction in 2025. Earlier this month, Broad Arrow offered 105 vehicles from the collection of The Academy of Art in San Francisco. Each lot in the stunning, diverse collection of prewar and midcentury cars was sold without reserve, with sales totaling $14.5 million.
Here, examine three lots, each from a different decade, that posted particularly strong results.
1933 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron Dual-Windshield Phaeton
Sold for $1,039,000
Given the provenance and condition of this car, it comes as no surprise that this blue-over-tan 1933 Chrysler Imperial was one of two cars in the Academy of Art sale to crack the seven-figure mark. (The other was this Gullwing, the auction’s top sale at $1.49M.) The Imperial was the most expensive model that Chrysler made in 1933, and only 155 were produced that year, of which only nine were roadsters. Of that figure, only six exist today, and only one was the personal car of noted LeBaron designer Ralph Roberts. Yup, this is the car.
Believed to be the last Series CL Custom Imperial Dual-Windshield Phaeton built, this car is a concours-winner, boasting Best in Class from last year’s prestigious Pebble Beach event and also from ten years before that, in 2014. Back in 1997, it even won Most Elegant Open Car.
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1954 Kaiser Darrin 161 Roadster
Sold for $128,800
On the spectrum of elegant to kooky, this 1954 Kaiser Darrin 161 roadster sits at the opposite extreme of Roberts’ Imperial above. This fiberglass-bodied car was a competitor of the Chevrolet Corvette, and was announced just months before the first Corvette made its legendary appearance at the Waldorf Astoria in January 1953. Powered, like the C1, by a six-cylinder engine, the 161 had doors that slid forward into the bodywork rather than hinging outward at the A-pillar.
Only 453 examples were made, and the car is both obscure and fascinating today. This one, in an oh-so-’50s combination of white over red, sold for $128,000, very near the #1 condition (concours) value of $144,000. A bargain, compared to a first-year Corvette, whose #1 value is close to $350,000.
1967 Volvo 1800S
Sold for $78,400
The slider moves back to elegant again, with the 1800S, perhaps the least boxy car Volvo ever made. The model was made famous in later years by Irv Gordon, who drove his example (red, like this one) to over 3 million miles. This one has an odometer reading just as remarkable, though for a different reason: just 10,274. The car retains its original engine, which may need some TLC, depending on how long ago those miles were accumulated.
That unusual odometer reading, along with its unrestored condition, are surely two of the main reasons why this P1800S sold for $78,400, not far from its #1 value of $88,200.
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The interior on the 1954 Kaiser-Darrin 161 Roadster is beautiful.
I would take the Kaiser Darrin before the first Corvette any day, after all, there are thousands upon thousands of Mk 1 Corvettes and very few Kaiser Darrin’s! Park them side by side at a motor show and I guarantee that most people will be all over the Kaiser, the Corvette, less so.
Chevrolet built 674 1955 Corvettes, most with the New V8.
Like 12 and 16 cylinder Cadillacs, Duesenbergs and Pierce Silver Arrows, that Imperial Phaeton epitomizes the flickering candle of elegant, expensive cars built at the height of the Great Depression, when even an inexpensive one sold for twice the average home sale in that year. Even better, they survived the WW II scrap metal drives that destroyed the majority of their brethren.
It’s interesting that the Chauffeur or driver has the best ride in the car. Suspended between the front and rear axles gives a better ride than sitting smack above the rear wheels where the wheel motion is semi damped by the rear springs. I always feel for the chauffeur, out in the weather, while the patrons are snug in their little enclosed compartment.
My love for the Volvo may have something to do with love. Mine was a white/black 1965 P-1800S. Several women in New England knew me as their “Saint.” Never should have sold her (the car). One of those women is now my wife.