Sunday 18th January 2009

This date marked the final day of a weeklong auction in which auto giant General Motors (GM) sold off historic cars from its Heritage Collection. GM sold around 200 vehicles at the Scottsdale, Arizona auction, including a 1996 Buick Blackhawk concept car for $522,500, a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1 COPO Coupe for $319,000 and a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette convertible for $220,000. Other items included a 1998 Cadillac Brougham, which was built for the pope. (That vehicle was blessed by the pope but never used because of safety issues; it sold for more than $57,000.) Most were preproduction, development, concept or prototype cars. The vehicles came from GM’s Heritage Center, an 81,000 square foot facility in Sterling, Michigan, that housed hundreds of cars and trucks from GM’s past, along with documents chronicling the company’s history and other artifacts and “automobilia.” Rumours spread that the financially troubled GM was selling off its entire fleet of historic vehicles, but that was not the case.