I almost said the same thing before but didn't post it. I will be sad if the escalating prices mean that both the current and new owners or these cars decide not to drive them to events anymore because of their value. I for one will do my best not to do that, which is easy for me to say because I live outside the USA for about 340 days a year. But whever I get home the Buicks are on the road once the batteries are charged up again. Nevertheless, I think it is sad if these cars all wind up as garage pieces when their owners are there to drive them and don't.
gsxs for sale i feel for the owners selling their gsxs. sometimes priorities in life can change. my daughter got married last year and for a while i thought i would have to sell my X to pay for her wedding. i ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly to keep from selling it. i dont regret it one bit!
its not looking good for the average GSX nut for guys who dont make over 70,000$ a year at their job,its a tough decision to lay down more than what you make a year for a car that you wont drive much. like alot of us, I am always looking for an X in whatever condition coz its gonna have to be a basket case for me to afford it,and I'll restore it myself...wont be concours,but who the hell wants that ,you feel scared to even get dust on it like that. I am not in the position to tell anyone what to do with their car or their money,and the value on our cars is rising...maybe in spite of the best reason,but just because its the next alternative. folks are soon going to realize Buicks, and especially the GSX are QUALITY automobiles,not the injection molded door panel,no space in the trunk,non panel fitting hemicudas that have run the market for years...fish
I met John Arangio at the nationals the year he first brought the Dave Kleiner restored X out of the shop. He had just bought a new enclosed trailer and was like a father with a new born. I remember him saying he wouldn't part with it for $1000,000. That was, I believe, in 99'. On subsequent visits to the nationals I would see it rolled out of the trailer and sitting in the little roped off area, just as pristine as the first time. I don't know that it was ever driven. So now i would venture tthat john must have tired from the shows, and there is nothing rewarding left to do. So if you drive it there goes your concours resto. no alternative but to sell. If he wanted 100000K before, 6 or seven years ago imagine what its worth to him now. I am in the middle of a resto of my 71' gsx Stg 1 car. Building the engine to run street and strip. I'll keep the numbers engine no the floor. But driven it will be. If I were to have a concours resto done I too would be rolling it around then tire of it and sell it. This way I at least have the opprtunity to get tired of driving it.Then perhaps a full resto. My opinion
Arangio's X Sorry Tom, Johns GSX was not restored by Dave Kleiner. It was done by a shop in Knoxville Tn. that specializes in muscle cars and street rods but I can't remember the name. They did a beautiful job in around 10 months, body off, complete. John bought the X out of Lorain Ohio in the spring of 2001 from the original owner who bought it in California. I looked at the car and was going to buy it but instead bought my original white X back. John was the next buyer in line and I'm glad he got it because he's done such a great job with it. The car had the stage 2 kit on it when I looked at it, minus the heads. The owner said the heads sold out after he ordered the kit from a California dealer. It did have the Holley carb, intake and cam. The owner showed me the original invoice on the stage 2 kit that was ordered over the counter. John put it back to original. Thankfully the owner kept all the take off engine parts. It's a great car. The first Base Coat/Clear Q-Q X that was the proper color. It should bid up to big money.
I don't like the red hoses, blue wires, or aftermarket radio on that stage1 4spd. Am wondering what else isn't right either. Am really surprised it's going so high with obvious wrong parts (although the ones you can see would be simple and cheap to change) and so few pictures, particularly none underneath. Have any of the Chicagoland people on here gone over to take a look at it?
The car is the ultimate production X. As far as the way it is equipped. If the body and frame are solid. The engine, tranny and rear original to the car, all of the other things can be changed back to original. 2 years from now it will look like a bargain. As crazy as that sounds. Patrick
Hopfully I will be getting my X out sometime this summer I did the best job I could in restoring this car. I took out the original drive line and installed an Stage 2 engine in its place also a T10 4spd. and a 4:10 12 Bolt. I want to drive my car as much as I can, so I managed to find enough sheet metal as I could and stored it away you never know when your going to get hit. I am going to drive it like it is stolen. My wife wants me to sell it to pay for the kids college and I told her she will have to kill me.She keeps on seeing them on e-bay and the money that people are bidding on them and thinks it would be nice to have some extra change around. Some day I will tell the story on how I got the car 25 years ago.
I think a reason they are coming out of the woodwork is: anytime prices rise quickly in any area, there could be a "bubble". The dot com stock market bubble in 2000 comes to mind. Tech stocks on the Nasdaq were soaring daily to over 5000 on that index. The bubble burst and 5 years later the Nasdaq is still less than 1/2 of it's high in 2000 and most likely will never get that high again. People are talking about housing bubbles now and it is starting to effect prices in my area, the NW suburbs of Chicago. Sales are flat and the only way you can sell a house here the past month or so is to lower your asking price. Maybe the same can be said for a musclecar "bubble"? Prices are soaring and it makes you wonder how long that can continue. If we had a restored GSX that we didn't drive and simply thought of it as an investment, I'd sell mine too while the going is good...Just like I wish now that I'd sold my tech stocks in January of 2000. We love our GSX and drive and race it often as possible. We go to cruise nights every chance we get and there is nothing better than going through the gears the GSX early in the morning on weekends. We bought it to have fun with and that's what we'll always do with ours. Paul
