This Piece Of NASCAR History Isn’t As Expensive As You’d Think

The Chevrolet Monte Carlo that Jeff Gordon took to victory at the 2000 DieHard 500 NASCAR Cup Series race is up for auction, and it’s probably not as expensive as you’d imagine.

RM Sotheby’s, which is auctioning the Generation 4 #24 Monte Carlo as part of its Dare to Dream Collection from 31 May to 1 June, has the guide price set at $150,000 to $200,000 (£120,000 to £160,000), so while it’s not exactly cheap it’s also a bit less expensive than we were expecting when we saw the listing.

Gordon is one of the most recognisable figures in NASCAR history, having raced in the Cup Series full-time from 1992 until the end of 2014, always in the #24 Hendrick Motorsports car and always with a pretty distinctive paint scheme, whether it was the rainbow of the late 1990s and early 2000s or the hotrod-style flames that came after that.

This particular car comes in the rainbow scheme that Gordon used in 2000, and the chassis is the one Gordon ran in all the NASCAR Cup Series superspeedway races in 2000 and 2001. That includes the 2000 DieHard 500, held at Talladega, that saw him take his 50th Cup Series win.

There are some inconsistencies between the paint on the car as-auctioned and its look on the day on 16 April 2000. The door numbers are slightly different, some of the stickers are a little off, and the spoiler is black instead of red. This is because of the car’s continued use after the 2000 DieHard 500 in further Cup Series superspeedway races and then in the ARCA series.

RM Sotheby’s says that the car was sold by Hendrick Motorsports in 2005 to Gene Felton, and was restored thereafter to its original DuPont livery. Felton, between 1992 and 2015, was the proprietor of a high-end restoration shop which specialised in historic IMSA and ex-Winston Cup NASCAR race cars.

Gordon’s DieHard 500 win was the 50th of his 93 total Cup Series victories, although 2000 came in inbetween two titles years for the #24, whose last Cup Series championship came in 2001.