WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s loaded Chrysler sedan is on the auction block, but it may cost eBay bidders upward of $100,000.
Obama leased the steel-blue 2005 Chrysler 300C for three years before he returned it in 2007. The sports sedan is fully optioned, with a V-8 engine, a GPS navigation system, a sunroof, leather seats and chrome wheels. (New 300C models start in the $35,000 to $40,000 range.) Obama put just 19,000 miles on it before upgrading to a Ford Escape Hybrid, an environmentally friendly sport-utility vehicle.
Last February, a few months after Obama turned the Chrysler in, a Chicago restaurant manager was out car shopping and unknowingly stumbled upon the vehicle at Park Plaza Dodge in Forest Park, Ill.
“I bought the car and everything and after the fact when I was leaving the showroom, the salesman that was in there said, ‘You better hang on to that car,’ ” Tim O’Boyle said. “I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘It used to belong to Obama.’ ” “I couldn’t believe it,” said O’Boyle, who paid about $24,000 for the car. “It was immaculate. It was like brand new.”
In the months afterward, O’Boyle hardly drove the car, and in December he decided to cash in on Obamamania. He auctioned the car on eBay. Bids started rolling in, soaring above $100,000.
But then he withdrew the auction because his accountant said he’d “be better off owning it for over a year for capital gains purposes.”
With the one-year mark next month, the Obamamobile is back on eBay, with the current high bid now at $100,000. And there’s more.
“There have been offers outside of eBay that have gone as high as $1 million,” he said. “We’re just trying to substantiate where they’re coming from.”
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