Meet the star of the auction block: The 1939 Futurliner

At more than 12 tons, 33 feet long, 8 feet wide, more than 11 feet tall and complete with an Allison J-35 jet engine display, the 1939 Futurliner No. 3 Power for the Air Age headlined the 30th anniversary of Hot August Nights.

As of 3:30 p.m. Saturday, bidding stopped at $2.6 million and went into private negotiations.

The 1939 Futurliner No. 3 Power for the Air Age was part of a group of custom vehicles styled by Harley Early for General Motors during its 1939 Parade of Progress. Each numbered Futurliner covered a different topic from jet engine technology and agriculture to stereophonic sound and microwave ovens. According to Dave Kindig, owner, president and designer of Kindig-It Design in Salt Lake City, this piece is “35,000 pounds of history.”

Reno firm brings changes to auction at Hot August Nights

“If you couldn’t go to the World’s Fair, then GM might come to your town, set up this big Futurliner, and it was like carnival,” Kindig said. “People would come with their families to check out all the technology.”

Kindig and his crew restored the Futurliner from 2013 to 2014, and was featured on the television show, “Bitchin’ Rides.” According to Kindig, the build took a total of 19 months, over 37,000 hours and had anywhere from five to 12 crew members working on it at any given time to restore the Futurliner back to its original state including original motor, suspension, drivetrain and interior.

“They’re very sought after, and they are very rare,” Kindig said. “There’s only three of them that have been restored, and out of all three of them, ours is the only one that has ever been done back to original state from 1953 to 1956.”

Other features include a gasoline GM 302 inline six-cylinder with a Hydramatic transmission, Art Deco bodywork, red sides, white roof and large chrome side panels. Kindig said he and his team wanted to restore it back to the original state to preserve a part of history.

“Not only is it an important piece of automotive history, but it’s also an important piece of American social history,” Kindig said. “It’s the end of the innocence age where everyone wanted to just stay home and watch TV in their air-conditioned homes instead of going out with their families and do stuff.”

In 2015, Futurliner No. 11 sold for $4 million at a Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona. Kindig said he’s hoping to see Futurliner No. 3 in a reasonable area because “it certainly is worth that much.”

“I’m very excited to see where it’s going to go,” Kindig said. “My guys have worked so hard on this on this piece of automotive history, and we’d love to see it go to a great museum where other people and other generations can appreciate what happened back in the past. This is a nice piece that was put back to the original. It really deserves to be somewhere seen.”

One of only 12 Futurliners ever manufactured and nine known to exist, the Futurliner No. 3 is available for auction both online and in person at Hot August Nights Auction presented by Motorsport Auction Group at 2 p.m. Saturday.

“It’s not something everybody is in the market for,” Kindig said. “They’re quite big to store, to show and to do it properly. So you never know, the right buyer might be here.”