Damage at Russo-Steele Collectible Car Auction in Phoenix

[370Z/28]

This will make you ill, especially SVT. I hope I can post this right....

This is a link to a slide show documenting the damages at the Russo-Steele Collectible Car Auction in Phoenix this past weekend. RS is held at the same time Barrett-Jackson is each year. Basically, RS is a little lower on the totem pole than Barrett-Jackson...BJ get’s the #1 cars, and RS gets all the others. Still...RS gets a lot of damn fine looking cars. Apparently a line of thunderstorms came through the area Saturday evening and blew tents over, uprooted big aluminum tent poles and generally racked the hell out of everything in its path. After the initial damage was done...with many of the cars suffering smashed windshields and rear windows...they were left exposed to wind, rain, and hail all night long. As I understand it, many car owners were kept off the grounds Sunday until Police and RS officials could assess the damages. How’d you like to be one of these owners kept in the dark about what the status of your car may be after you spent 10 years doing a frame-off restoration...looking for parts...sweating all the details...etc. etc. I read where they estimated the damages at $10.5 million...and they weren’t finished yet. At BJ...each seller signs over their title to the car they want to sell to BJ prior to the car being auctioned...after that, BJ is responsible for the car. At RS...the title remains in the seller’s hands until the car is sold...making the seller responsible for their own car....!!!! Meaning...legally, RS is NOT RESPONSIBLE for any of this damage, and the cars current owner is. I’ll bet the lawyers are lining up all over Phoenix to climb on the bandwagon... Here is the slide show.... https://sites.google.com/a/all...mages

..and here’s a video of the tent flapping in the wind...listen to the guy in the background...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...layer

[joe603]

yikes! tough to look at...

[SVTCOBRA]

WOW! very sad. Some very nice cars in that collection!!! I remember watching Barrett Jackson and they showed some nasty storms....

[370Z/28]

You would have thought they would have known it was coming.

[gwoods]

You would have thought they would have known it was coming.

Oh we did know it was coming.. it poured all week last week.

[spacy9]

Wow. Just wow. A lot of nice cars got hurt.

I am a little confused as to what happened to the black Trans Am in that storm, it looks like someone took a shotgun to it...

[zozoka1212]

Wow I bet some of the insurance companies crying. Hope most owners had insurance on their baby. Although I think how they say it was in the owners hand/responsibility till the car is sold but this seems to be a property damage since the tent did some damages. I guess the lawyers going to sort all these out.

Jeff did you gus have donkeys falling from the sky that time? LOLSure some of the pictures seem like it.

[bschurr]

WOW - that is super sad to see those photos. I watched a few hours of B-J over the weekend and they were talking about the storms but to see the damage to those cars is unreal.

As a classic car owner - it is NEVER about the insurance money. The originality of a car can never be restored to its pre-damage condition.

[370Z/28]

Another wierd thing about it, the back windshield was ripped out and it took the moulding with it! It didn't just shatter the glass, it ripped it out in one piece.

[audtatious]

http://www.kpho.com/video/22315910/index.html

raw footage showing the pipes still laying on the cars and such. There are a whole lotta cars losing some of their value.

[gwoods]

Jeff did you gus have donkeys falling from the sky that time? LOL Sure some of the pictures seem like it.

We prefer to be called Democrates

Phoenix has 300+ days of sunshine every year and it doesn't rain very often at all. The times when it does rain it makes up for the 300 days of sunshine and puts on a purely awesome show!

That night a tornado touched down a few miles away from the auctions. The wind was so strong that the airport closed for a little while. We had enough rain driving home I could not see the lines on the road. It was awesome!

We get monsoons in August. The day starts out normal then in the afternoon it gets orangish and very quite. About the time you are going to drive home a wall of dust very similar to the mummy movie rolls through town. You have to pull over on the side of the road and wait for the dust storm to stop. Then there is an awesome electrical storm, more lighting strikes then you can count. Then it rains all night. It is awesome!

[PyR0NiAk]

Wow. Just wow. A lot of nice cars got hurt.

I am a little confused as to what happened to the black Trans Am in that storm, it looks like someone took a shotgun to it...

HAIL + STRONG WIND =

[biggie]

The one Z I saw got creamed pretty well.

[gwoods]

Just more proof that God hates Mustangs

[audtatious]

Must hate all the others too. The hemi cuda-vert with the windshield folded down about made me sick.

[370Z/28]

Just more proof that God hates Mustangs

[Tampa G35 Sedan 6MT]

I can't believe it...

And it is never about the money! You love the cars for the hours spent into them and a dollar amount most of the time can't be put on that!

The Ford GT hurts... But that one can be fixed

DJ

[gwoods]

Must hate all the others too. The hemi cuda-vert with the windshield folded down about made me sick.

nope they just were too close to the Mustangs when the fury was unleashed!

[zozoka1212]

We prefer to be called Democrates