He may not have walked away with the prize, but Dave Ressler still feels like a winner.

Ressler, who owns Ressler Chevrolet and Subaru in Mandan and another dealership in Bozeman, Mont., got himself caught up in a $1 million auction for charity, for a Hummer used by CNNto cover the war in Iraq.

The bidding started off slow, until it moved into the $300,000 range.

"At $300,000, I thought, 'This is way too good of a foundation to not get the money,'"Ressler said, speaking of the Fisher House Foundation, which helps wounded and injured service members and their families.

So Ressler decided to push the bidding higher, and jumped his bid from the $300,000 range to about $600,000.

But another bidder held his ground, and eventually, the two high bidders were standing onstage in a bidding war that would end with both sides satisfied, Ressler said.

Ressler didn't win the Hummer. He wanted it, but said he also realized the money to the charity was just as important. More important, even, than adding to his world-class car collection.

"Iwent up to the gentleman and said, 'Are you going to bid $1 million?'" Ressler recalled of the auction, held in Scottsdale, Ariz., by Barrett-Jackson Co.

The gentleman, who happened to be Dave Liniger, founder of Re/Max International Inc., nodded and said "Yes, I am."

And Ressler told Liniger to do it, to bid it up above the million-dollar mark, to take the Hummer. So Liniger did, and Ressler threw in $250,000 for the charity on top of it, for good measure.

"He won it, but Ifeel like Iwon, too,"Ressler said.

Jim Weiskopf, vice president of communications for Fisher House Foundation, said they never expected the bidding to get to the seven-figure mark.

"We had no idea what to expect. Ithink we were thinking six figures,"Weiskopf said.

And when Ressler tacked on that extra quarter of a million, they were more than pleased.

"It was a wonderfully generous gesture on his part,"he said. "We appreciate both families."

Ressler, also an avid Corvette collector, had followed the history of this particular Hummer, its time in Iraq in 2003, and its overhaul on The Learning Channel's "Overhaulin"show.

When he found out the company was going to auction it off for the charity, he jumped at the chance to bid on it, he said. The charity hit home, he said, as his two brothers and his father are all veterans.

"Ithink a million-dollar donation to this charity is sizeable,"Ressler said.

The charity, based in Rockville, Md., is a private-public partnership known for building "Comfort Homes"near VA or military hospitals, to keep veterans' families close in their times of need.

(Reach reporter Crystal R. Reid at 250-8261 or at crystal.reid@;bismarcktribune.com.)