Best of Show Automotive Blog

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?