Pratt isnt spending the public’s money, so why should the public have access to his personal possessions?
i was repying to your statement “without these collectors my children would never get to see a yenko camaro”
with collectors like pratt, even with them, your children will not see some rare cars.
sure, he is free to spend his money whatever way he wants.
but what it boils down to with pratt is millionare/billionare ego. i have all these rare vehicles and you can’t see them.
he may be perseving automotive history, but it doesn’t matter since other autmotive historians and enthusists can not see them.
he might as well drive them and get t-boned by a semi. at least then the rest of us might be able to catch a glimpse of them then.
it also would be different if he had only a few of these cars. a small personal collection if you will. he has warehouses full. one could easily get the impression that his goal is to gobble up as many as he can, all for himself and no one else. like he got the shit kicked out of him as a kid and this is his revenge.
the reason i mentioned leno was that he to spent his money the way he wanted. as a car guy with the means, he buys rare vehicles. the weird, the beautiful, the historic.
but he also knows that because these cars are just that, other car people appreciate them, and he shares the history of them with the public.
its pretty much a given that the first zr1 would get preserved and not driven, especially the way they are marking them, starting with a number ‘1’. i dont see a problem with it.
if you have enough money to buy that car and preserve it, soething tells me you can shell out another 100k to buy another one to drive. no normal person is gonna spend a million just to have the 1st zr1 off the line, which is why plenty others will be bought around normal msrp and driven the way they are supposed to be driven.
He actually bid $900,000, but then raised his bid to $1,000,000 to make it match the serial # 001 of the car. Regardless, the monies from this sale, the Tony Stewart race car, the 2008 GT500 KR, & the 2009 Challenger all went to charities. Basically Ron Pratte’s bid up to $1 million worked in favor of the charity.
Mike/Brandon - I kind of understand where both of you are coming from, but there is no correct answer. I’d like to see these cars in the public eye, but I respect these people who want to preserve them for the future.
Whether his collection is private or not doesn’t really matter. It is his money to do what he wants with it. He may be building the collection for sport, or for a future museum for us to see. Ron Pratte work’s similar to the Blackhawk Collection. They buy/sell cars at BJ, too and do not publicly display their vehicles, either.