A 1963 Corvette Sting Ray split window coupe – owned since 2011 by the late Rush drummer, Neil Peart – sold for more than double the estimated price during last weekend’s auction of a group of his vintage cars known collectively as the “Silver Surfer” Collection.
Officials with Gooding & Co. had estimated the Corvette would bring between $150,000 and $180,000 (with no reserve, by the way) at its Pebble Beach Auction held Aug. 13-14.
Instead, the show-quality Stingray – which had undergone a frame-off restoration in 2005 and was accompanied by NCRS and restoration paperwork – wound up hammering for a whopping $368,000.
The Corvette features a 327/340 horsepower L76 V8 engine, hooked to a Muncie M20 four-speed manual transmission.
All but one of Peart’s cars – a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that failed to meet the reserve price – wound up exchanging hands, bringing a total of $3.9 million.
His 1970 Lamborghini Miura P400 S sold for the highest amount – $1.325 million. Also selling were his 1964 Jaguar E-Type Series I 3.8-Litre Coupe for $318,500, 1964 Shelby Cobra 289 for $1.16 million, 1965 Maserati Mistral Spider for $522,000, and 1973 Maserati Ghibli 4.9 SS Coupe for $274,400. All the cars were silver except for the black Shelby.
“The title ‘Silver Surfers’ for my collection of cars occurred to me while driving the DB5 up and down the Pacific Ocean,” Peart explained before his death in January 2020. “Because it felt right to me, I guess — the idea that I was just one of the wave riders.”
Peart had moved from Toronto to Los Angeles in 2000 and said he often drove that way and up into the Santa Monica Mountains in search of natural peace.
“Out past Malibu to Ventura County, I’d weave along barren ridges of rock and vegetation, the ocean always on one big side,” he explained. “Some days would be misted by the marine layer, while other days the sun blared through a clear sky. The waves were slow and gentle, or churned out a powerful, rolling rhythm. It was during one of these drives when out of nowhere, it just occurred to me that the color of the ocean had influenced the silver palette of the collection. What other color looks as good in a blue photo? Not black, not white – silver. And a fortunate risk for the framers’ art, too: silver frames.”
In June, Gooding & Company founder David Gooding said the company was “beyond honored and humbled to be entrusted with the sale of Mr. Peart’s beloved collection of classic cars.”
“Neil Peart touched the lives of so many through his groundbreaking career in music, including my own,” Gooding said, “and we are confident that his personal curation of classic cars will resonate with passionate collectors, finding them new homes with the same appreciation for them as the icon himself held.”
Source:
Gooding & Co and loudwire.com
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Very impressiive dollar figures for those cars! Neil had exceptional taste in cars. Hopefully the family will be at peace now.
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