The Checker cab once known as Lee Harvey Oswald's getaway car revvedup plenty of bidders at the Saturday auction.
Cab 36 went for $35,750.
That's quite a bit more than the nickel tip Oswald paid his cab driver for his 95-cent metered cab fare on November 22,1963, moments after President John F. Kennedy was killed.
Oswald took the cab because the bus he tried to escape in got stuck in traffic.
Cab 36 was sold along with the rest of the collection from the defunct Pate Museum of Transportation in Cresson, about 17 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
Checker Motors Corp. donated the cab to the museum in 1979 with a letter of authentication.
It's a big piece of history, said Donnie Gould, a car specialist for RM Auctions, whichhandled the sale. It's tough to get an automobile that tells a story the way this car does.
The 1962 cab was expected to fetch a bidding price anywhere between$20,000 to $30,000, he said.
Oswald is accused of having fired the fatal shot from the sixth floor window of the old Texas School Book Depository in Dallas as Kennedy's motorcade passed by.
Cab driver William Wayne Whaley recalled that when Oswald approached his taxi, he at first thought he might be a wino because it looked like he had slept in his clothes, the Dallas Morning News reported in Friday editions.
Whaley, who has since passed away, said Oswald wasn't chatty. The cabbie dropped him off a few blocks past the rooming house where it was later learned Oswald lived.
The cab driver saw Oswald again in a police lineup the next day.
