Crazy Prices for Wrecked Cars from the Biggest Junkyard Auction Ever

Rudi Klein was something of a recluse. But he was a recluse with excellent taste in automobiles. If the condition of those automobiles ran from merely “filthy” to something approaching “crumpled-up beer can,” the buyers didn’t seem to care. If this scrapyard garage sale proved nothing else, it showed that dedicated/crazed buyers don’t mind doing a little body and fender work. Or a lot of body and fender work.

For years the very existence of Klein’s “collection” was rumored in the classic car community. It was down in South Los Angeles somewhere, people said, and it had a lot of Mercedes and Porsches. Few had seen it, even fewer had actually bought anything there.

The scuttlebutt was that if Klein didn’t like you, he didn’t let you in, and not many people ever figured out what Rudy Klein liked. At least in people. His taste in cars, as we said, was impeccable.

Well, it all became a moot point as Klein passed away a couple decades ago and last weekend his mysterious collection was finally put up for sale. On Saturday, October 26, RM Sotheby’s held an auction it called “The Rudi Klein Collection,” but which it later just started calling, “The Junkyard.”

The several-acre business on industrial Alameda St. had a dirt floor and towering steel racks of rusting, dilapidated junked cars. But what cars they were under all that rust and dirt: Porsche 356s, Porsche 911s, all manner of Maseratis, Mercedes, Maybachs, and even a couple of Horches.

They were almost all in terrible shape, with what appeared (to me, anyway) to be rat-eaten interiors, layers of dirt on the outside, spiders in the once-glamorous interiors, and the footprints of multi-toed creatures running up and down the near-earthen windshields.

Pray God they were cats.

It was the first auction I’d ever been to where I was actually concerned about hantavirus. A preventative tetanus shot might have been a good idea.

And yet, when the final hammer had fallen, the results were astounding:

• A 1956 Mercedes SL Gullwing Alloy, with a lightweight aluminum body, a car that originally belonged to Luigi Chinetti, sold for $9,355,000 including commission.

• The 1964 Iso Grifo A3/L Spider Prototype, the only one ever made, sold for $1,700,000.

• A Mercedes SL Roadster with what RM said were “sought-after Rudge racing wheels” went for $1,075,000.

• A beat-up-looking green 1968 Lamborghini Miura P400 sold for $1,325,000.

• The 1935 Mercedes 500K made specially for Grand Prix racer Rudolf Caracciola sold at $3,750,000, “a crowning jewel of the junkyard,” the RM Sotheby’s host said.

• And a 1962 Porsche 356 B 1600 Twin Grille Cabriolet moved for $1,050,000.

(That last one was a little over the top. Granted, the Twin-Grille Cabriolet is a rare and sought-after car, but RM sold one in perfect condition at Monterey in 2019 for $362,500. And several of them sold last year on Bring a Trailer from $195,000 to $405,000. Must have been the early effects of hantavirus.)

And there were parts: engines, transmissions, rear ends, and fuel pumps stacked to the heavens. Resto shops across the country and around the world were tuned in to the auction and bidding online against those who braved the dirt floors and rust.

• A set of Gullwing doors went for $8,000.

• A box of Mercedes clocks sold for $1,250.

• A Ferrari Type 571 transmission went for $2,500.

• Four Ferrari Daytona-style seats were $5,000.

• A Porsche 356 B 1600 engine was $1,750.

• A Bosch fuel-injection pump for a 911 sold at $2,500.

If you need that stuff, you need it.

The parts make sense, but why would people want these wrecked salvage jobs?

“Some of the stuff can’t be restored, you’re buying them from parts,” said Rob Meyer, the “RM” in RM Sotheby’s.

But some of it can, right? How badly could a car be and still be restored after it was smashed up?

“Depends on how bad you are, how mental you are, how much you want it,” said Meyer.

And collectors seem to want it more and more every year. It’s like the housing market in Los Angeles—if you didn’t buy yours in the 1950s, unless you’re a wealthy plutocrat, you’re gonna rent until you die. The days when you could buy a cheap 356 in the Autoweek classifieds (when there were Autoweek classifieds) are long gone. Now you need a million dollars.

Unless you have some of those body shop machines that can pull and stretch a smashed-up wad of sheet metal and frame back into a car, then maybe there’s still hope for you. So maybe the future belongs to the guys in the body and paint shops.

Are auction prices out of control? Tell us in the comments.