A 1956 Chevrolet 150 that was used originally as a U.S. Army Staff car at the Sioux Army Depot in Sidney, Neb., through 1964 was auctioned twice at Saturday’s Barrett-Jackson event in Houston and raised $1 million for the Honor Flight charity, which provides veterans will free trips to visit the war memorials in Washington, D.C.
The car had previously been auctioned at Barrett-Jackson’s Las Vegas event in June for the same cause for $70,000, but the buyer sent it across the block as a charity lot again in Houston.
The partially restored sedan was first won by a $425,000 placed by Enduro Pipeline Services of Tulsa, Okla., but was immediately put it up for auction once more, as sometimes happens at charity auctions, and sold again to collector John Burkland of La Grange, Tex., for about $400,000. Another participant at the auction then made a straight donation of $175,000 to the charity to bring the total raised to $1 million.
The Chevy was purchased from surplus by a local farmer who died a year later and spent most of its life stored in a barn and used as a chicken coop before being resold several times and finally fixed and brought back to running condition in 2018.