GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A 1909 Austin 60 made in Grand Rapids sold for $345,000 at RM Auction’s annual antique car sale on Amelia Island on Saturday, March 9.

The price fell short of the pre-auction estimate placed on the car, one of only a handful of Grand Rapids-made cars still known to exist.

Prior to Saturday's auction, RM Auction officials estimated the fully restored touring car would sell between $500,000 and $750,000.

The cream colored touring car was on the auction block less than 4 minutes during the sale, held in association with the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, an antique car show.

RELATED STORY: Rare car made in Grand Rapids 103 years ago expected to fetch top price at Florida car auction.

The auction will be only the fourth time the only known surviving Austin 60 goes on sale, according to local automotive historian George Ferris, a retired counseling director at Northview High School. Only four of the Grand Rapids-made Austins are still known to exist, he said.

Sometimes confused with the British-made Austin, the Grand Rapids-based Austin Automobile Co. was a “vanity project” started in 1903 by Walter Austin, son of Grand Rapids lumber baron, James Austin.

The company, which made about 30 cars a year from its factory on S. Division Avenue, ceased production in 1918, when the Austins decided to get into the real estate business, according to local historians.

E-mail Jim Harger: jharger@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/JHHarger