Auto dealership closes a sweet sale

The best way to put a dent in the recession: Sell a car to an Arab sheik.

That's what Doug Page of Classic Cars of Sarasota did last month. Specifically, Page sold a 2008 Dodge Viper to a member of the royal family of Qatar. The sheik paid $102,000 for the car, plus another $15,500 to have it driven to Atlanta, where a plane awaited it for transport to the Middle East.

Page, through Classic Cars, bought 28 2008 Dodge Vipers last year in an auction. He says the sheik emailed him a few days after the listing appeared on Classic Cars' website. The sheik, says Page, asked in the email if it was a legitimate listing. Page wrote back that it was, and he included instructions on where the sheik could wire money.

Page initially thought it could be a scam. Two days later, however, Page had $102,000 in the bank. “I never spoke to the guy,” Page tells Coffee Talk. “I did it all over the Internet.”

Page says he normally only seeks a down payment on a purchase, not the full price. But the payment helped Page easily proceed to the next phase, when the sheik, again over email, asked him to drive the car to Atlanta for pickup.

Classic Cars opened in November. It's a subsidiary of Specialty Cars, another high-end auto business in Sarasota. In addition to Vipers, the dealerships sell everything from Camaros and Corvettes to Bentleys and a DeLorean. Page says he has sold dozens of cars to Europeans in the past, but this was his first sale to a sheik.