Best of Show Automotive Blog

As many of our customers know, we run each and every one of our cars on Ebay monthly. We do this because Ebay is the cheapest form of international advertising in the world. Where else can you spend 90 bucks and get an ad in front of potential customers all over the planet? Most importantly, behind Google, Ebay is the number one driver of traffic to our website.

That being said, we almost never sell anything on Ebay. Why is that? Simply put, serious classic car buyers simply don’t shop on Ebay. I liken Ebay to a garage sale. If you’re looking for parts, or a project car, or Billy Bob’s 1972 Duster with 218,000 miles, it’s a great place to be. If you’re looking for a top notch classic or high performance car, the pickings are slim.

Because we advertise on Ebay so heavily, we have the privelege of hearing from classic car “market experts” at least five times daily. The common refrain is that collector car values are in a free-fall and that Hemicudas can be had for the price of a can of pork and beans on every corner. Here’s a message we received just today from an Ebayer with the moniker “sidehill_dan”: “You actually looked on the internet lately. I can buy a #1 RS SS 396/375 horse camaro for 30 to 35K”.

When we receive this stuff, we typically shake our heads, delete it and move on. What made Dan’s message so poignant was that not one hour before we received his sage advice, we sold an SS 396/375 HP Camaro TRIBUTE for $45K. After I received Dan’s message, I sent him back a reply that if he could find us 100 investment grade (numbers matching/documented/#1) RS SS 396/375 horse Camaros for $40K a pop, we had 4 million in cash waiting for him.

But Dan’s email is reflective of the current mood of the hobby. Nearly every guy we talk to that has cars for sale, or, as in Dan’s case, guys trolling for turd cars on Ebay, seems to believe that the market is soft and classic cars are dropping in value, with few buyers. Most of the industry magazines have been touting this nonsense for the last couple years and I guess people are actually believing it.

The purpose of today’s blog is to state, emphatically and for the record: if you people that collector car values have fallen and/or are falling, you’re dead wrong.

As in any market, there is “smart money” and “dumb money”. Smart money intellligently pursues high quality cars with all the right stuff. Price is secondary. Dumb money pursues cars that aren’t worth the bargain price they are selling for and would require $80,000.00 in parts and labor to bring them up to the standards of a #1 or strong #2 car.

Best of Show’s sale were up 30% in 2009. In 2010, the lid has absolutely blown off of our sales, with a 43% increase in total sales volume over 2009. Every high dollar investment grade car is getting pounced on as quickly as it comes through the door.

Why? For the same reasons that collector cars have outperformed every asset class in the world over the past 30 years, except for gold. Here’s why:

1. There is a finite supply of collector cars. As with precious metals, the number of investment grade 1969 Camaros doesn’t increase substantially year to year. The supply is fixed.

2. The number of true investment grade cars and outstanding customs is a fraction of the overall supply. Sure, Dan can find a turd 396/375 HP Camaro for $35K. So what? Turd cars are a dime a dozen. But the smart money isn’t buying turd cars. They are buying documented, original drive-train, original sheet-metal, good color combo cars, with high quality restorations or they are buying lights out customs. Pro Touring cars are red-hot.

3. The values of classic cars are tied to their restoration costs. As the costs for material and labor to build a car increases, so does the value of a car that’s ready to show or drive.

4. Unlike stocks, bonds, real estate and cash, classic car values have never been artificially pumped up by cheap and easy credit and professional manipulators. Nearly all classic car sales are 100% cash transactions. No leverage=no artificially created bubble.

Don’t believe me? Check out the HAGI Top Index: http://www.historicautogroup.com/.

Right now, as I write this, the following asset classes are experiencing a boom in prices: precious metals; rare art; precious gemstones; collector cars, and; comic books. Now ask yourself a question: in an era when the socialist governments of the world have spent the economies of their countries into bankruptcy and every paper currency is poised for hyper-inflation, what would you rather have your money in, an investment grade collector car or a pile of freshly minted paper dollars printed by the same clowns who will run up a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit this year, while promising everyone lots of free stuff?

Here’s our take: in 2010, classic cars are going to experience a significant increase in paper money value, as smart money continues to chase hard assets in a big way. This trend is going to continue for years. If you have an investment grade collector car or a super-nice custom and you can’t sell it, or your buddies are telling you the market is down, send it to Best of Show. We’ll sell it for you, quickly, as a top price, and we won’t charge you a penny until I present you with a check.

If you’re a classic car buyer, trade in your soon-to-be worthless paper dollars before the moron politicians and market manipulators run out of ways to prop up the rotting paper empire that has been imploding over the past few years. The smart money is doing just that right now, in anticipation of what is coming.

Or, if you’re dead-set that classic car values are dropping like a stone, we would be happy to buy your investment grade car at a rock bottom price. We have a pile of paper dollars to trade for them and can’t get rid of them fast enough.

We have a film crew here today at the Museum, filming some technical segments for a new television program we are sponsoring, titled “Cruisin’ Ohio with Jeff Phelps”.  Look for the debut episode the second week of May.  The show will run for 20 weeks and is tentatively scheduled for Mondays at 8 PM.  The main focus of this new show will be the coverage of assorted cruise and car show events throughout Ohio during the 2010 cruising season.

We had great weather here in NE Ohio last week, for the first time since early November and all of the car guys (and gals) are starting to come out of their winter hibernation.  You can see the excitement building on people’s face-the first day of spring was this weekend and, in no time at all, the car show and cruise season will begin here.  From there, it will be an endless onslaught of shows and cruise events through October, as people cram 12 months worth of enjoying their hobby into five months of good weather.

Got a busy schedule?  There will be cruises every single night of the week-heck, why not hit them all?  Do you like to eat?  No problem.  There’s Dennys, Mr. Chicken, Arbys or Quaker Steak & Lube.  If you’re a Veteran, take your pick of the VFW cruise events-just leave the german cars at home!  If you’re the religious type, there’s a cruise event for every denomination in any given week, and I have to say that those are some of the most well-behaved cruisers you will ever meet.  Are you into tuner cars and tired of being booted out by the grumpy old guys who think the world stopped turning in 1972?  No problem!  Hit the Superfly Sunday (can you think of a cooler name?) cruise that runs from May 2 through October 3 at the old B F Goodrich headquarters in Akron.  In short, there’s something for everyone.

Most people on the outside of this hobby picture Barrett-Jackson or an Amelia Island type event as representative of the classic car world.  In reality, events such as these, while sexy, aren’t reality.  The true heart of the hobby is the vast social network of classic car enthusiasts that get together and hang out on an ongoing basis while enjoying their cars. 

Many enthusiasts only own one car, and that car is like a member of the family.  I’ve been going to a local cruise off and on for the past 15 years and every single I’ve made it there, there’s a guy there with his late 40′s Buick, sitting in the same spot in his chair, yapping happily.  If I ever attend this cruise and DON’T see him there, I’ll assume something is terribly wrong.

Cruisers are big on tradition as well.  Most of them have their entire summers planned out in their heads, especially the weekend shows.  Saturdays and Sundays are usually where you will find the annual cruise events which attract the really big crowds and the same people attend the same show year after year after year and would sooner miss the event than miss their daughter’s wedding. 

Our annual cruise event is now in it’s fourth year and people start asking us about it at least six months in advance.  We are holding it on June 6th this year, which is the first weekend after Memorial Day, same as the last three years.  Last year, we were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of people who showed up ( a little under 5,000) as our annual show coincided with the grand opening of the Mentor Museum of Speed.  You literally needed a helicopter to capture the scale of the 2009 event!

But we like a challenge, so we decided to do it again.  On Saturday, June 5th, we will be offering free admission to the Museum, with the cruise event and free Museum admission on Sunday, June 6th.  There will be food, a live band, television coverage, and, of course, a lot of cruisers with their cars. 

Unlike last year, I am hoping to actually make it out of the mob scene in our main building and into the parking lot so I can check out all of the cool stuff that made it to this year’s show.  Witnessing first hand the passion people have for their cars definitely gets me energized.  I hope I will see you at our 2010 cruise event and all over NE Ohio for this summer’s cruising season.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the rain stays away and we all wrack up a ton of miles on our cars.

As any innovative business owner or manager will tell you, you know you’re doing things right when: 1. half of your competitors hate you, and; 2. the other half try to imitate you.  More typically, it’s a mixure of both.

First off, as a capitalist, I believe that free-market competition drives innovation and reduces costs.  Study any unregulated or lightly regulated industry over any period of time, and you typically see exponential advances in the quality and sophistication of a particular product or service.  Conversely, as soon as the industry becomes ultra-profitable, the leaches move in and try to tax it and regulate it to death.  This simple economic truth is the single largest factor driving the ongoing economic destruction of our economy.  Simply put, we’ve forgotten what made us a wealthy nation and allowed four generations of politicians and their politically connected friends to steal our nation’s wealth by promising something for nothing to people who actually believe products and services simply fall from the sky.

But let’s not get into politics.  After all, this is a classic car blog, right? 

Back on topic–Best of Show created a new business model for our industry about four years ago.  Our goal was to combine a unique marketing platform, with a first class inventory, a willingness to accept trades, an OEM restoration shop that turned out excellent cars in a reasonable period of time, a custom build shop that turned out jaw-dropping stuff you could actually drive.  Oh … and we wanted to be able to transport these cars ourselves to the end customer.  In short, we wanted to provide the average hobbyist with a first class experience when he (or she) looked to buy or sell a classic car.  Did we have any idea that this concept would succeed?  Not really-we just had a hunch that would.  Our hunch was based on direct involvement in the hobby for decades and being a customer of many of our competitors.  In short, we felt there was room for improvement.  It was a typical “build it and they will come” business model.

So, at great expense, both in time and in capital investment, we built it.  And boy, did they come!  We have, quite simply, the best customers in the world.  Our customers love cars and they do business with us because they love our business model and they know we love cars also!  We connect with our customers, which leads to transaction after transaction. 

After our first year in business, I received an email from a “dealer” in New Jersey.  His email indicated that he knew what game we were playing-that we were listing cars for sale and then marking them sold, only to roll them out 9-12 months later!  He truly didn’t understand that we actually took cars we had sold back in trade and that customers who purchased from us came back and bought again!  Think about it: this is a guy who has screwed his customers over so many times that the concept of repeat business is simply alien to him.  But he’s still out there, selling cars with fake documents and bogus stamps and trolling for his next victim! 

As stated above, while some competitors have scratched their heads while swearing at us under their breath, others have tried to copy us.  We have a local competitor-let’s call them B & S.  Over the past year, B & S has very clearly and unmistakably tried to copy everything we do.  First, it started with image editing, then the write-ups and even our inventory.  We get a chuckle out of it, because they don’t do it very well-it’s like a copy of the real thing. 

This weekend, we have a display at the 2010 Cleveland Autorama/World of Wheels show at the IX Center in Cleveland, Ohio.  We brought two cars we are really proud of-a 1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee we restored (the finest restored 1970 Super Bee in the world) and an absolutely mind blowing 1970 Plymouth Cuda HEMI Pro Touring car that stops everyone in their tracks the moment they lay eyes on it.  This car has a complete custom suspension and is absolutely SICK.  Stop and check it out through Sunday, March 21.

Yesterday, one of the guys from B & S stopped by our display and made a couple of moronic comments to one of our junior employees, who didn’t know who he was.  Then he slinked off.  When a couple of our guys told me about it, I wasn’t surprised.  If you check B & S’s website, you’ll see that they have moved about 80 cars in three years!  In other words, about as many as Best of Show moved in the first couple months of 2010.

So put yourself in their shoes.  You have a competitor who is ten times as successful as you are.  You try to copy what they do, but it doesn’t work.  It must be frustrating.  I know I would probably walk around in a bad mood and bad-mouth my competitor as well, right?  Wrong!  And this is the point of this entire post.

To be successful at anything in life requires effort-lots and lots of it.  Mix in a little creativity, some trial and error and some luck and years and years of hard work and you get an overnight success!  Not everyone is willing to do that and some wish to take the easy route.  Why not just copy the guy in the lead?  As B & S has found out, and will continue to find out, copying without the inspiration, passion and creativity that are the true drivers of success, will lead to a pale imitation of the real thing. 

In the spirit of being a good neighbor, I do have solution forour friends at B & S.  Best of Show Automotive would be happy to take your entire inventory and sell it for you.  Give us about 90 days to move all the cars you’ve been sitting on for 2-3 years now.  Let us show you the difference between a copy and the real thing.

Running a classic car restoration and sales business is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my lifetime.  To be able to pursue one of my true passions in life in a working environment makes me a very fortunate person.  One of the best things about running Best of Show Automotive is all of the incredible people I have the opportunity to meet, from every corner of the world.  Our customers love these cars as much as we do and the cars themselves are great levelers.  Let me explain.  I’ve become friends with GM assembly line workers from the 1960′s, members of royal families from halfway across the world, Presidents of companies and legends of the classic car world.  Put all of these guys in the same room in a normal social setting and they would have a hard time making conversation.  Put them all at a car show and all normal pretenses disappear … they turn into a group of 16 year old boys salivating over cars.

Unfortunately, the hobby has its seedy underbelly of morons and haters.  I could make a daily blog out of  the daily barrage of flame-mail we get from these jealous turkeys, who hide behind anonymous forum screen names or an online form which allows them to spew their venom without having to show any backbone.

Best of Show, by way of contrast, does everything right out in the open.  Our facility is open six days per week to the public, and we catalog everything we do on our website.  Our formula seems to be working very well, because our sales were up 40% in 2009 and, most importantly, we picked up 100-125 new long-term customers who will buy/sell/trade/consign with us for as long as they are breathing.  That’s the secret sauce in what we do-it’s not sizzle and it’s not flash.  It’s excellent long-term relationships with incredible customers who love these cars as much as we do.

This morning, I received in my inbox a communication from an anonymous moron via our online system.  Here’s the summary of what I received:

Name: Barrett Jackson
Email: bighead@bestofshowautomotive.com
Phone:
Best Time To Call: Day
Comments: hey , I dont see the cars you took to BJ on your top 10, maybe you should start a net catagory “lost my ass at B/J.” People are talking and its not good. Prime time flop…..was that you crying in the corner? I say you have the life expectancy of a house fly in this business and time will tell, you wont be around in 10 yrs if that. Good-Luck

Thanks & Regards

Barrett Jackson

Now, I can’t respond directly to this moron, because as normal, he was too spineless to list his actual contact information.  But I am a good sport, so I am going to take his suggestion and create a Blog post with the title “We lost our ass at Barrett-Jackson”.  So here we are.  We’ve even put a reference and link to the post on our ticker!   Now, each time Mr. Moron logs on to our website (I am sure he’s on it daily), he can see that we took his suggestion to heart.

For those of you who are unaware of what Mr. Moron is talking about, Best of Show Automotive decided to restore the legendary Super Stock Magazine A12, Project Six Pack, in early 2009 (See: http://inventory.bestofshowautomotive.com/CarDetails_sold_post2010.asp?VIN=1969RR4406PACK).  Project Six Pack was a three time NHRA record holder from the early to mid 1970′s and a very special car if you love Mopars, as we do.  If you grew up during that era and read Super Stock Magazine, you knew the car.  We purchased the car from its one and only owner, Ted Struse, one of the nicest guys you will ever meet and, with Ted’s assistance, returned the car to its NHRA record setting form.  This was an extensive restoration and we were fortunate enough to track down nearly every original part that was on the car in 1973, even the motor, mechanical tach and the original wiper blades which were duct-taped together and placed in the trunk. 

After the restoration was completed, we unveiled the car at the 2009 Carlisle All Chrysler Nationals in Carlisle, PA, at a fantastic event, attended by our customers and a “who’s who” of the Chrysler drag racing world.

Shortly after the event, we consigned the car to the 2010 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction.  Barrett-Jackson is a no reserve auction.  We had no idea what the car would bring.  Obviously, we hoped to at least recover our restoration costs and, ideally make some money, but, there’s no guarantees.  Literally, a car consigned to a no reserve auction can sell for a buck?  Why did we consign the car to Barrett? One word: marketing.  Barrett-Jackson is a marketer’s dream and for a company like ours, a place where 150,000 potential customers congregate in one place.  In other words, you couldn’t buy a better marketing opportunity if you wanted to.

As everyone who was in Scottsdale can attest, the January auctions were a near disaster.  The weather caused serious damage to Russo & Steele on Thursday night and completely blew down all of the tents at the Silver auction.  The main tent at Barrett-Jackson was evacuated Thursday night and they brought it fork lifts as a precaution.  Our employees watched cables snap, as the auction rolled on.  By the time Saturday rolled around, the weather was back to normal, but attendance seemed to be way off.  The airport in Scottsdale were shut down for much of the day on Thursday and a lot of people just decided not to come.  The customs did pretty well, as they always do, but the stock muscle cars seemed to be down.

Project Six Pack ran through on Saturday afternoon as scheduled and sold for $110K, with buyer’s premium.  Unfortunately, we failed to cover our restoration costs (by about $30K).  Were we disappointed?  Not really.  Not if you’ve been in business long enough and you understand the big picture.  For the benefit of Mr. Moron, let’s do a tally.  We “lost” $30k on the restoration of Project Six Pack.  For that $30K  investment, we got the car featured in six magazines, four of which won’t be rolling out until 2010.  We personally met Herb McCandless, Tom Hoover, Tom Coddington, Al Adams, Ted Struse, John Wehrley, Jim McCraw and Bob Karakashian.  We used the car for marketing purposes for nearly six months and, to top it off, our employees sat at Barrett-Jackson for six days, surrounded by an endless stream of high dollar collectors, fronting one of the best restored cars in the entire facility, handing out literature and free Project Six Pack die-cast models and glossy prints.  And for the next 50 years, any time Project Six Pack is at a show anywhere, every one will know that the restoration was done by Best of Show Automotive.  Did we lose your asses at Barrett-Jackson?  Only a moron would think so.

As for Mr. Moron  and his people “talking”, their conversation is as relevant to our business as  bunch of kindergarten students standing around jabbering about Spongebob Squarepants.  Guys like him and his friends are not our customers-they are a blight on the hobby and it’s time they were put in their place.  

As the hobby continues to evolve and buyers become more informed and sophisticated, they will choose to do business with companies that actually stand behind what they do.  Because of his hateful, envious attitude, we’d be willing to bet that Mr. Moron will be in a different line of work ten years from now.  The days of buying a car at an auction and flipping it for a quick profit at another auction six months later are over.  The easy money is gone and you need to actually work now.

In reality, in order to earn a profit in this business, you must take care of customers and bring true value to the hobby.  Best of Show sold 335 cars in 2009.  Did we make a profit on every single car?  Of course not.  Did we make a profit in 2009?  You betcha.  Will we make a profit in 2010?  Count on it!  Because of cars like Project Six Pack and the Best of Show built Pro Touring 1970 Dodge Charger  (http://www.bestofshowautomotive.com/restoration-70charger.html) we debuted at the 2009 Mopar Nationals, there is now a long line of work at our restoration shop (about a year’s worth) and our worldwide customer base is growing each and every day.

In closing, I would like to invite Mr. Moron and his “people” to come down to Best of Show any time and see what we do.  More likely, we will run into you at some of the national shows in 2010 year where cars we have restored will either be on display or our customers are kicking your cars butts in judged competition.  We have some really cool cars getting ready to roll out for the 2010 season, including Paul Brown’s 1970 Dodge Coronet Superbee 440+6 4 Speed, a 1 of 6 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Convertible 383 4 speed, a black on red 1967 Plymouth GTX Hemi 4 speed and another really cool 1970 Dodge Charger Pro Touring car.

Whether we run into you or not, Best of Show will be doing everything out in the open and growing, one inch at a time.  We know what we will be doing on February 11, 2020.  How about Mr. Moron?  Who wants to make a wager that he will be spending a lot of time on our website?

For those of us who live in NE Ohio, our collector cars tend to get put away in October.  Usually, the weather starts to turn nasty in late October, and in November, anything can happen.  This year, we actually had a pretty nice November, with a lot of sunny, dry days.  We were test driving cars up until this past Monday, December 4th.  But, alas, as of today, our classic car cruising/driving season is officially over.  As I look out my office window and gaze upon the 30 MPH winds, the snow whipping through the air and the ice slowly taking over, it’s official.  2009 is done!  But wait, you say, what if it warms up next week and it gets sunny?  Sorry, once they start salting the roads here, we simply can’t take a high value car outside until late spring, after a good month of rain has washed away all of the salt and winter grime that will accumulate over the next 4-5 months.

Many people who live here in NE Ohio love the change of seasons.  They can’t wait to hit the ski slopes and sled hills once the snow comes down.  Not me.  I hate winter and I hate snow!  I want to cruise every day of the year!  For a die-hard car buff, it’s like being locked up in jail for 5 months every year.  By February, you get a little stir crazy.

At the same time, I believe that the people who live in the Northeastern states appreciate the spring and summer a little more than all of the warm weather cruisers.  In NE Ohio, on literally every night in the spring and summer, there’s at least five car cruises going on, with some major cruises that bring in upwards of 600 cars on a weekly basis.  As depressing as the winter is, the spring and summer months are just the opposite, as everyone furiously rushes to cram 12 months of cruising into 6 months of good weather. 

So, if you are fortunate enough to live in Florida, Arizona or any part of the world where nearly every day is sunny and dry, don’t take it for granted!  If you can take your car out tonight or this weekend, do so.  And while you’re cruising around in your favorite ride, remember that we are jealous as hell and counting the days until late April!

One of the perks at running a classic car restoration and sales business is that you get to play with the cars of your dreams.  But, as with anything, familiarity occassionally breeds boredom and one can take it all for granted.

Today started out as one of those blahhhhh days.  Grey skies … drizzle … lots of work to do and not enough time.  I had to take a walk out to the museum facility to pitch some boxes and noticed a group of 25 automotive tech students that showed up to spend a few hours here (we get a lot of these groups here at Best of Show).  As I stopped to watch these guys spread out all over the place, I was reminded why we do this.   Seeing the excitement in these guys faces as they walked around looking at HEMI cars and COPO Camaros and 800 HP Mustang Cobras was infectious.  About the only thing I can liken it to is watching your small children open presents on Christmas morning.

Feeling a little more enthused about the day, I took a walk over to our mechanical area to see what was brewing.   The overhead door opens and in rolls a beautiful 1970 Shelby GT350 in Grabber Blue.  Dave is detailing a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T HEMI survivor car sold new by Mr. Norm’s.  Kenny’s busy working on a sold 1970 Dodge Charger RT/SE.  Tim’s floating between a sold 1968 Dodge Coronet R/T and a sold 1928 Ford Street Rod.  And, OHMIGOD, is that a REAL 1970 Pontiac GTO Ram Air IV 4 Speed on the lift?  Where did that come from???????  Then, Greg, our Transportation Manager, notifies me that a 1969 Dodge Charger 500 HEMI 4 Speed is showing up in a couple of hours, followed by a 1974 Pontiac Trans AM SD 455.

Completely overwhelmed by the coolness of it all … and realizing I have a job that most guys dream about, I feel reenergized and motivated.  And look, the sun’s even coming out!

Just another day at the office!

Did you happen to watch the Barrett-Jackson live from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas this past weekend? Speed Channel had a live broadcast for all three days of the auction, and while the Las Vegas event pales in comparison to the Scottsdale event in January, it’s great entertainment nonetheless.

First off, let me give you my take on the auctions in general. Auctions are a lot of fun. If you love classic cars and you’ve never been to a major classic car auction, plan a weekend and get out to one of the big events. You take 1,000 cars of varying quality, thousands of buyers, many more spectators, add in a little bit Barnum & Bailey and you’ve got yourself quite a spectacle. The people at Barrett-Jackson, however, take it to a different level. Mix in some celebrities, a ton of super nice customs, some feel-good charity cars, every high rolling ham in the car collecting hobby and live television and you’ve got capitalism run amuck!

The no reserve factor at Barrett-Jackson is the final ingredient in the secret sauce that sets this auction apart from all of the rest. You empathize with the guy that spent two years and 3,000 man hours on a car that sells for $55,000.00. You feel good for the guy that spent something like ten years on the custom 67 Nova and walked away with a mind-bending $175,000.00. And every car sells! There’s a lot of raw emotion at these events, even with the Speed Channel commentators. These guys were crying when the 1961 Jaguar “Ol’ Yaller III” only brought $198,000.00. You could hear the tortured anguish in his voice over the unfairness of it all. “Why, a 1969 Camaro custom brought $255,000.00 earlier today”, he wailed. I’ve got some news for the Sports Car Market guys who guest commentate on Speed Channel and are constantly belittling the muscle car market in the pages of their magazine, which they need to rename “British/Italian/German Sports Car Market” …. get used to 1969 Chevrolet Camaro customs bringing more than the obscure British stuff. They are, after all, simply better cars!

Now here’s the all important question …. Is Barrett-Jackson a leading indicator of the health of the collector car hobby? My answer would be an emphatic YES and NO!

Yes, you can spot trends at Barrett and get a sense of what’s going to be hot. For example, a few years ago, the two nicest “big fin” Desotos showed up and everyone was shocked when each car brought north of $200K. Of course, every “big fin” car in the US came out of the woodwork, prices ran up for a while and at Barrett Jackson 2008, there was at least 2008. The classic car market is like every other market … supply eventually will meet or outstrip demand, as Hemi E body owners found out a couple of years back.

The problem with Barrett-Jackson is that it’s an artificial, insulated corner of the hobby. Most of the guys in the hobby don’t and will never buy a car at an auction. And the cars that do sell at Barrett-Jackson are like every other car in our hobby: a unique piece which can only be judged based on it’s own individual merits. In other words, unless you are there, and can carefully inspect the car close-up (the cameras make the worst pig look like a show queen), examine the numbers, check the documents, etc., you can’t use a Barrett-Jackson sale as a barometer on what something is worth. Last year, a 1967 Dodge Coronet R/T sold for $55,000.00. A customer emailed and said … “see, Mopars are on their way down … that used to be an $80,000.00 car”. What Mr. Market Expert did not understand, since he didn’t see the car up close, was that it was an amateurish restoration, with a replacement drive-train, no documents and a color change. In other words, it’s not a car we would have paid $30,000.00 for. So does that mean the market is up or down on 1967 Coronet R/T HEMIS? Doesn’t mean either. It simply means that on that day, someone was willing to pay, rightly or wrongly, $55,000.00 for a non-numbers matching, undocumented car with a mediocre restoration.

What did I see at this weekend’s sale? Two things stood out like a sore thumb. The established trend of great custom builds that you can actually drive outperforming numbers matching cars that you can’t drive is continuing. Thankfully, the days of the “numbers matching Nazis” appears to be at a close. Two, I saw a lot of buyers in their 30’s and 40’s pulling the trigger on large purchases. Normally, it’s the same group of wizened veterans buying 90% of the cars. The generations are changing, and it looks like the guys my age are spending the big money for the best stuff. Very nice to see and, bodes well for the future of the hobby.

As you’ve probably noticed, we have a fondness for Mopars at Best of Show Automotive.  OK, maybe more than a fondness.  We do love them all, but we’re rabid about Mopars.  And you can lay the blame squarely at my feet.  I am guilty as charged.

Strangely enough, my first car WASN’T a Mopar.  It was a 1972 Chevrolet Nova, that I “rescued” from a trip to the boneyard by waving 50 bucks in my uncle Jim’s face.  Quickly determing that the boneyard would only give him 35 bucks, and I was 5 miles closer, he parked the car in my dad’s driveway, carefully slinking away before my dad noticed what was going on.

Eighteen months later, with a new set of doors and transmission, the 72 Nova was ready for prime-time duty as a work/school/personal recreation duty vehicle.  God, I hated that car.  It seemed like something broke every time I drove it.  Having no money, I learned very quickly how to keep an unsafe vehicle on the road.  My greatest triumph was grafting the radiator out of a retired U.S. mail jeep (my dad was thrifty with his vehicle purchases) into the Nova to keep the 250 V6 from overheating.  Ever wonder what happens when the drive-shaft pops off at 55 on the freeway?  Wow, what an experience!  And it’s so impressive to the girl who just wanted a ride home from school!

A year later, when I realized that the Nova really should have gone to the bone-yard, and that keeping a zombie car alive was not only unnatural, but life-threatening, my fascination with Mopars began.  First, there was a 72 Dodge Dart with a slant six.  What a slug, but those 426 Hemi badges on the fenders sure looked cool!  Then, I graduated to a 1968 Dodge Coronet with a mighty (it seemed mighty at the time) 318 small block.  Next, onto a 70 AAR Cuda I owned for three days (that’s another story for another time), a 66 Satellite 318 car, and, finally, at the age of 21, a 1967 GTX with a 440 and a 4 speed.
The 67 GTX was my first “real” muscle car, and when I found it, I just knew I’d lucked into the greatest car ever built.  Of course, it needed body-work, paint, an engine rebuild, a new transmission and a new interior, but those were just minor details.  I finally had a REAL muscle car.  Of course, “restoring” a car with no garage would be difficult, so I rented one of those 25 bucks a month storage units, parked the car in it and disassembled it.  After 24 months and $25,000.00, my “restored” 1967 GTX was done.   God, I loved that car.  I loved to look at it … drive it … change the plugs … talk about it.  You could have pulled into my driveway with a brand new Ferrari and I wouldn’t have been impressed.  I had the greatest car in the world.

And then, fate intervened.  Newly married, my wife became pregnant and we had no medical insurance).  With no savings, and facing financial ruin at the age of 24, I had two choices: sell the Honda Accord that got me to work daily, or sell the garage queen 67 GTX.  After three months of advertising, I sold the GTX and a large stash of parts for $9,000.00, quickly learning a $16,000.00 lesson in the financial realities of siring babies with no health insurance and restoring cars and having to sell them.

Onto a life of responsibility, and kids, and mortgage payments, and medical bills and, well, you know the drill.  But I never fell out of love with that 67 GTX.  And every time I see one now, I just can’t resist it.  That’s why we’ve restored one here recently at Best of Show, which you may have seen on our web-site, or in the latest issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.  It’s also why we are restoring a black on red HEMI, 4 speed 67 GTX survivor.  Are 67 GTXs the most valuable cars in the world?  No.  Are they the fastest cars ever built?  No (although they are pretty darn fast).  Will a 67 GTX ever bring a million bucks at Barrett-Jackson?  I doubt it, although with the way they are printing money these days, it might take a million bucks to buy a Ford Taurus in a few years.

The reason we restored our 67 HEMI GTX automatic  and the reason we are restoring the 67 HEMI GTX 4 Speed is pretty simple: I love these cars.  And I will always love these cars, so I bet we will have a few more motor into our facility in the future.

Why is any of this important and why am I even writing this?  It’s pretty simple.  The number one question we get here at Best of Show when people come to visit is “how are you guys selling so many cars at top prices in a down economy”?  As visitors will tell you, one can’t walk around our 60,000 square foot display facility with literally tripping over 40 cars with sold signs on them.  And as the veterans will tell you, it changes weekly.  The answer is pretty simple: guys love these cars.  Right now, this hobby, exist a small, but vocal group of nattering naybobs who want everyone to believe that prices are down … or they are inches from collapsing.  They think they are going to short the collector car hobby the way a hedge fund shorts a stock that’s over-valued.  These guys think they know the collector car market, but, in fact, most of them don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about.  Playing on Ebay 3 hours a week does not make you a market expert on anything, let alone collector cars.  The same holds true for attending a few auctions.  Hate to break it to you guys, but the auctions are a tiny slice of the collector car hobby, and the numbers are distorted both up and down at these sales, for a long list of reasons we won’t get into today.

Here’s the long and the short of it: guys love these cars.  We have customers who love Corvettes and customers who love Mustangs and customers who love ‘Cudas.  The Buick GS guys love boasting about their HEMI killing 455 Stage 1s and the tri-five Chevy guys have cruising their Bel Airs to car shows 6 nights a week here in NE Ohio in the summer.   Guys love these cars.  They love driving them and talking about them and working on them and restoring them and it will ALWAYS be this way.   Sure, if the economy is on fire, you might see some drunken novice over-paying for a mediocre car at an auction, but he’s not the heart of the hobby.  The heart of the hobby are the guys from Switzerland who flew over here earlier this week and spent three days in awe of the Mopars of their dreams, taking home two cars, or the husband and wife that purchased the 55 Chevy yesterday.  I bet they will hit 500 cruises over the next ten years with that car and enjoy every minute of it.  These cars aren’t like stocks or bonds or real estate inflated by cheap money.  Most of these cars still sell well below their restoration costs and very, very few of them are purchased with borrowed money.

These cars represent our youth and the dreams we had when we were young.  They represent a time in our lives when anything was possible and we held the world in our hands.  Sorry, Chicken Little, but you’re never going to be able to short-sell that, no matter how hard you try.

If you ever get a chance to stop in here at the Mentor Museum of Speed and you see me walking around on the floor, ask me about the 1967 Plymouth GTX Hemi we have on display here.  I’d love to show it to you.