Collectible Car Auctions: Are They What They Are Cracked Uo To Be?

Ah, car auctions. The thrill of the hunt, the crash of the gavel, the hub-bub of money and more money and even more money, the idea in the back of your mind that you might just come across a dream car for next to nothing and make out like a bandit.

It’s those trappings and that thought process that keeps the car auction business going.

It is, unfortunately, not the often harsh realities of finding and buying a car at auction.

Sure, there’s a lot of minor auctions around town. I’ve had more than one relative pick up some sort of vehicle at one of these and walk away reasonably satisfied, but these were mainly utilitarian vehicles. Pick ups, stake-bed trucks, farm gear, that sort of thing.

In this sort of situation, and actually for auctions in general, it really is “let the buyer beware”. You have to be pretty savvy, know what you’re looking for, know how much you’ve got to spend, keep your wits about you and know the potential mechanical problems of cars in general and the car you’re looking at specifically.

But those other auctions, the one’s you see on TV, the ones where they’re selling dream cars at un-dreamed of prices … well, those are something else entirely.

Hunter S. Thompson once said, “The collector car business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

OK, he actually said that about the music business, but darned if it doesn’t apply to the car auction world too.

Really, if you’re just as much a student of humans and human nature as you are a car person, you should check out one of these high status car auctions the next time one is on your TV.

90% of the cars you’ll see are the ones that were in your High School parking lot (OK, they were in my High School parking lot, and I’m starting to give away my age), and restored to within an inch of their sheet-metal lives. Hemi ‘Cudas, Malibu SSs, muscle cars that were cool then and still cool now are going for half the cost of your house. Over-priced doesn’t begin to describe it.

And the people that are buying them?

They all seem to by middle aged drips on their 3rd heart bypass and their 2nd trophy wife. They all made obscene amounts of money as land developers or sewage contractors or drug salesmen in the upper mid-West, lower East-side sales region for Glixnarr Pharmaceuticals.

They’re they guys that got more money then sense and have suddenly developed a need to go out and start buying cars by the dozens.

Why? They couldn’t give you a clear answer if their toupee depended on it; they just know they want it. Sure-sure, some might tell you “I’ve wanted one since High School” or some such, but it all boils down to the same reason they’re spending equally profane amounts of do-re-me on “that Monet fella; I got a couple a’his fer the wife!”: status.

They want to be able to tell their friends that they just got a Co-Po Camaro, and there’s really not much more to it than that.

But here’s the real bottom line: It’s bad for normal car guys like you and me.

It’s not just bad because normal, middle-class schmos like me and you are getting priced out of the market, it’s bad because what is getting tagged as “cool” or “worthwhile” in the car world is being determined by guys who aren’t into cars, they’re just into the money that the cars represent.

It’s the same reason that letting guys just smart enough to make licentious amounts of money loose on the art market degrades what art is: pretty soon it’s not about van Gogh and what he was trying to get across, it’s how much you paid for it and how much you screwed over the next highest bidder.

Right now there are cars sitting in garages whose history is unknown and unknowable
to the dry cleaning magnates and furniture store owners. You could walk in and say, “Hey, just like Ed McCullough’s.” and they would stare at you blankly.

And that is a shame. For all of us.

Stumble It!