The last Australian-designed and built Chrysler Valiant, produced more than 22 years ago, has sold at auction for more than four times its original price, according to the Malvern Prahran Leader.
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Former Chrysler dealers and passionate Valiant collectors, Ivan and June Smith, of Kyneton, paid a record $A37,000 for the still-unused 1981 CM V8 automatic.
The car has covered just 26 kilometres (about 15 miles) and has not been registered since leaving Chrysler’s Adelaide plant (now Mitsubishi Motors Australia) on August 28 that year. The new price then was about $8,780.
The car completes the Smith’s extensive Valiant collection, which starts with the 26th Australian Valiant built a March, 1962, R-type and includes examples from every year, including sporting two-door Charger coupe and hotted-up sports Pacer sedan models. The collection is one of Australia’s largest of the locally-built family cars.
Finished in unblemished white, the just-sold CM was the 565,338th Valiant built over nearly 20 years and was driven off the Tonsley Park production line in 1981 by former Chrysler Australia chief executive David Brown before being presented to dealership Purnell Brothers, of Bankstown, Sydney, in recognition of their achievement in selling more than 20,000 Valiants and upmarket Regals over the years.
It went straight into Purnell’s showroom and was kept by them as a museum piece.
In its new home in country Victoria, the Valiant will lead an equally relaxed life.
“It won’t be driven,” Ivan Smith said, according to the newspaper’s report. “The car will have a special place in our private museum and we will share it with other enthusiasts, car-club members and Shannons’ insurance clients.”
