18 Corvettes Vs 1 Hemi Charger Daytona: Who Got The Bigger Bang For $1.3M?

An incredible collection of 18 commemorative Corvettes has sold at Mecum’s Spring Sale in Indianapolis for a hefty $1.375 million, very close to the $1.32 m paid for a single Dodge Charger Daytona at the same auction. The collection of Indy 500 pace cars was amassed by Dr. Richard Foster, an Indiana physician who began acquiring the cars as a way of remembering each Indy 500 race he attended.

The 18-car haul included real pace cars, festival cars and authorized pace car replicas and was sold off due to the declining health of Foster, who lived 50 miles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and attended his first Indy 500 in 1954 at the age of 12.

Eight of the Corvettes are Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS)-authorized replicas and six are factory-built Pace Car commemorative models. But two of the cars, a 2005 Corvette and a 2006 Z06, are genuine pace cars from the races that took place those years, and a 2004 car in the collection dressed in pace car livery was used as a parade car.

Related: 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 To Serve As Indy 500 Pace Car

Four have earned honors from Bloomington Gold and the NCRS, including the black and silver 1978 car built to mark the occasion of the Corvette’s first outing as an Indy pace car. Foster’s example has just 50 miles on the clock, though that’s nothing compared to the 17 miles showing on his retina-searing 1998 convertible, whose yellow wheels make it one of the most memorable editions, if not the most beautiful.

Forming part of the sale, but not shown in the pictures below, is a 2022 model that is currently awaiting conversion to pace car spec with authorized replica decals. On completion it will be delivered to the unnamed buyer who handed over $1.375 million to create his own pop-up pace car collection.

That’s a big chunk of change, but it does work out at less than $77,000 per car, which some people might think makes the collection better value than the record-busting $1.32 million paid for that Hemi-equipped Charger Daytona, or the $963k someone parted with to take home one of only two 1971 Chevrolet Corvette ZR2 convertibles at the same auction.

Who do you think got the better deal?