Kruse Auction

Last weekend, (Feb 14) we had the second annual Kruse collector car auction at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. It was a pretty dismal affair with a small collection of cars and not much bidding action. I was very surprised that they returned for a second year, especially in the current economic climate. The auction last year had a surprisingly large and varied assortment of cars, but bidding was lackluster and the sale rate was very poor. This year saw a much smaller lot of cars and, if I remember correctly, not a single Italian car. There were two Ferrari replicars, a 250 GTO lookalike. It was a convertible, built on a Datsun 260Z donor. The other was one of the Daytona Spyder replicas built on a Corvette chassis. Both were in pretty nice condition, but both were no-sales. The closest thing to an "exotic" was a Panoz. I am pretty sure it was also a no sale.

I have to admire Kruse's willingness to come to such a small market in such trying times. I couldn't believe that they returned this year. I will be totally stunned if they try again next year. It really is too bad. It would have been nice to have an auction like this to look forward to each year. My friend and I left early. We couldn't stand watching the auctioneers working so hard for nothing. We went across the street and had something to eat.