For sale -- a car that came out of the ark

December 2, 2008 | 7:12 pm

“Look at this. It’s worthless -- ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless.” So says Belloq, the baddie in the first Indiana Jones movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The owners of this car aren’t going down the same dusty path.

It’s the Nazi staff car featured in that film’s famous chase scene and it is up for auction, with an expected selling price of somewhere between $60,000 and $80,000. Like most things in Hollywood, it isn’t what it seems. Although made to look like a 1937 Mercedes-Benz, it’s actually constructed from various bits of classic Jaguars. Indy would no doubt have deduced this had he known that Craig Hinton of Leaping Cats (based in Coventry, England), was the man tasked with creating this machine, but he never got to look underneath like he did with that Mercedes truck.

For carcheologists, Hinton bolted together a Mark V body over a Mark IX chassis, put in a 285-horsepower XKE engine and a four-speed manual transmission, then drove to it from England to Tunisia, north Africa, where the filming was taking place. It had to withstand the rigors of shooting a car chase and be capable of 120 mph. Like badges of honor, the rear passenger side still has a few dents that resulted from the car’s starring role.

It’s drivable too. Vital fluids have been replaced and the brake system (with discs front and rear) has been bled. The auction takes place on Dec. 11 at noon, Pacific time. Interested parties -- like Harrison Ford, perhaps? -- can put in a bid online at eBay live auctions or www.liveauctioneers.com. The car is currently on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum and is just one of over 500 lots going under the hammer as part of Profiles in History’s Hollywood #33 auction.

What would be really cool is if Indy’s magic pants were up for sale. Being dragged for hundreds of yards at high speed over a desert road and not one rip? What were they made of?

-- Colin Ryan

Photo: Profiles in History