I’m often not shocked by car auction results these days, but this one caught me off guard. There was a period, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything on Bring a Trailer and Cars and Bids was going absolutely crazy. It felt like even ordinary cars were breaking auction records every week. However, in the last year or two, prices have started to normalize. Then, someone went and dropped $226,000 on a 1993 GMC Typhoon. Seriously, can we be done with this? Let’s try to understand why someone would spend the price of a Porsche 911 GT3 on a 32-year-old GMC SUV.
For starters, the Typhoon is rare. GMC only produced 4,697 Typhoons over a two-year production run. Furthermore, just 345 of those were Apple Red, like the one in this auction. This particular example has a mere 668 miles on the odometer, making it practically brand new. Collectors are always willing to pay a premium for classics with such low mileage.
Then there’s the Typhoon’s following. The Typhoon was the first real American performance SUV and, at the time, was one of the quickest vehicles on the market.
The Typhoon was essentially the SUV version of the GMC Syclone pickup truck, sharing its 4.3-liter turbocharged V6 engine. This engine generated 280 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque. However, it made more sense in SUV form. Who needs to haul that much performance and lumber from Home Depot? All that power, channeled through a four-speed automatic transmission to all four wheels, allowed it to reach 60 mph in 5.3 seconds back in its day. This made it quicker than a Ferrari 348ts!
The Typhoon also ran the quarter-mile in 14.1 seconds. This performance nipped at the heels of the Acura NSX back then and is still impressive today. All this was achieved in a body-on-frame SUV with an original sticker price of only $29,530—less than half the price of the Ferrari. It even had self-leveling rear suspension in 1993.
This specific Typhoon is in exceptional condition. It looks like it was driven from the dealership directly into a hermetically sealed garage, emerging only recently after a three-decade slumber. The only potential downside to this originality is its original set of Firestone Firehawk SVX tires. These should be replaced if the new owner actually intends to drive it.
The Typhoon also has a cool aesthetic, with its literal two-box design, three-door configuration, and large square headlights. Did GM designers have nothing but rulers when they designed it?
That’s all well and good, but does that make an old SUV with a rudimentary dashboard and likely rushed leather really worth more than a new, fully loaded, 530-horsepower Range Rover? With $226,000, I could have bought my first condo and a brand-new Honda Civic Type R with some money left over.
Considering everything, the Typhoon’s appeal is understandable. It’s a unique piece of American automotive engineering, and GM deserves credit for producing such a vehicle at that time. I also get paying a lot of money for a mint-condition Typhoon, especially one with barely any miles. Whoever dropped a quarter-million dollars on this three-decade-old SUV most likely doesn’t live in a cheap condo and likely has other really cool cars in their collection. It’s probably no big deal for the buyer. But for the rest of us, this price tag seems like madness.
