0 - I have written in the past that I know Doug personally from his pre-fame days in Atlanta; we still keep in touch, but we are obviously not as close as we once were. I texted with him after the announcement, which coincided with his appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast (which I listened to). It is my understanding based on Doug’s comments on the podcast that he remains the majority owner of Cars & Bids; I don’t know what percentage of the entity he owns, but the business is theoretically / on paper worth a minimum of ~$75 million. It could be north of $100 million, of course. I did not pry into the transaction terms and structure - if he wanted me to know, he would have told me. He did share the comps that informed his Carrera GT purchase, which were all from … BaT!
1 - I don’t understand the popularity of auction sites, personally. Despite working in finance, I have never been interested in keeping up with the values of toys that I own (or aspire to own). I would never buy a car in a competitive auction scenario.
2 - I am amazed that BaT does not have a financing partner, especially given the aggregate dollar volume of sales and the range of prices; seven figure cars are likely purchased with cash or loans against assets (brokerage accounts, real estate, business interests, etc.), but there are plenty of buyers of cars below, say, $500K (just a guess) that will need financing. Why not bring it in house?
3 - To my point above, Cars & Bids uses Lightstream, the unsecured lender that SunTrust (now Truist) purchased. I worked the buy side of that deal a LONG time ago.
As a guy who has zero business buying a $$$ car online (or at all), I use BaT just like I used to use eBay Motors, which is daydream fodder. I randomly see or hear about a cool car, and I think “oh cool, Ferrari 360, I like those, I want to look at a bunch of pictures of cool ones and see what the going rate for one is so I can daydream about buying one when daycare bills and 529 plans are no longer my problem.” And then I spend 20 minutes clicking and fantasizing. And then I continue on with my life.
I go the opposite way. I enjoy the shallower end of the pool and see a Merkur Xr4ti and make a serious bid on it because it isn't THAT much money vs my finances. Unfortunately, or perhaps not, I have been the second place bidder many times, but have yet to win.
At some point for obscure cars below a certain threshold I don't know how I would ever come across them. There isn't any other searchable digestible national market place.
However, I also realize that my ES350 would wipe the floor with it in every conceivable metric - save styling. I'd probably keep it for a year, realize my nostalgia was underwhelming, and then re-list it on BaT.
I feel you on those daycare bills, ha. As an aside, I managed to turn a 1981 Celica into a bathroom (which never fully materialized before we up and moved) so I, too, dream about that one day car.
re: 2; That's genious and they should do it. I quit looking at BAT after spending 2 hours on the phone trying to get a day-of loan for 60k to buy a 996 GT3... In retrospect I could have owned it for 2 years for free if I dumped it now, but that's besides the point.
I've sold an 500E there about 2 years before they were hot an lost money. The buyer showed up to claim his prize when I was out of town, and was so rude and condescending my wife almost canceled the sale. My brother sold a car there and was happy, and his bestie listed his there with my brother bidding it up. He ended up being the high bid and paying the fee cause they weren't close to hitting the number. BAT tries really hard to get you to list w/o a reserve.
If anyone wants to assist me in my current obsession; I want (NEED!) a hot wagon. The AMGs are the easy button, or an E34 M5. The CTS-V are ok too, but a touch to garish for my highfalutin taste. The next are the home-made kind, E9X M3 wagon swaps of my current favorite daydream, an E39 M5 swap. I would take a hot Volvo too, screw Jack and his lack of imagination. Anyway.
I had half a mind to leverage some connections to learn firsthand why Hearst hasn’t adopted a financing partner in hopes of potentially earning a fee putting one together for them.
Alas, I stumbled into another interesting deal about six months ago that’s taking up all of my time.
" I would take a hot Volvo too, screw Jack and his lack of imagination."
So would I, and in fact I drove a Ford 302-powered V-8 240 in a couple of races, but the "282" on offer seemed to have a LOT of excuses as standard equipment.
I've long wondered about your second point. Seems like a no-brainer. Originally, no financing made sense because of the age of most of the cars, but now that what seems like half of the listings are less than five years old, they are leaving money and bidders on the table.
I got similar messages when i sold the truck I had in high school. The truck was semi broken half the time cause I was 16 and a crappy mechanic. Half my facebook dm's were some form of "wasn't this the truck you were always working on". Yes it was, but it was as fixed as an 80's Dodge product could be when I sold it.
I am banned from commenting on Cars and Bids. Pointed out the hilarity of flippers claiming "the car wasn't right for me 🥺👉👈" when asked why they were selling.
Oh, and my comment about selling a car with 10 year old tires being moronic got flagged as well.
The 360 with which he failed to attract even a single woman?(Apart from his wife, if I haven't gotten my timeline botched up. )And any lady attracted to a guy with a 20 year old ferrari that a spec miata could probably cream around any track strikes me as being, uhm...., difficult.
I shudder at your comment about needing to interact with every commenter on BaT. I’d be OK with legit questions, but all the stupid questions and comments from the peanut gallery would tire me out, and it appears to be bad form to verbally eviscerate them even if you are right. Would be great if they had different comment areas for the real bidders, another for legit experts, and a third for the vapid morons (“glwta!,” “brought my popcorn for this one, hurr durr durrr,” etc).
it really irritates me that experts comment on BaT for free and the seller and Hurst profit from their knowledge. I guess it’s just the sign of the times where expertise is valued at zero or expert value is Hoover-ed up by lizards. I am somewhat of an expert on 105/115 series Alfas and limit sharing my expertise either in person or on Alfa forums. I learned my stuff from the Alfisti old timers in the 80’s and now I’m one of those old timers. I need to pass that knowledge on, but damned if I will do it to help Hurst or Doug DeMoron.
I had an internal job pitched to me a couple of years ago. Exposure was offered in reply to my request of a higher grade and more money. It was all I could do to not laugh in his face.
"Hold on, it gets better still. You might think that you’d be better off putting your Porsche 993 on Cars and Bids, since BaT already has five 993s on the site, but you’d be wrong — because the presence of your car will increase interest in the others, and vice versa. Every time an auction closes on a car like yours, you basically inherit all the bidders but the top one."
A couple of miles from where I'm sitting is the site of the Northland Mall, opened the year I was born, 1954, regarded as the country's first regional shopping mall. Now being redeveloped, it was originally built by the J.L. Hudson company, Detroit's version of Macy's, but even with the region's most prominent retailer as an anchor they had trouble at first renting out the other space. Operators of shoe stores would say, "Why should I locate there, you already have a shoe store." They didn't realize that if there was a bunch of shoe stores in one general location, that's where people would go to buy shoes.
It may be apocryphal, but I've heard that is the same strategy for fast food. Wendy's or Burger King would site a restaurant near a McDonald's to grab some of that potential customer traffic
I believe Jack did an article about these "chicken corners." Maybe he could post an archived version of it so that the host doesn't receive any additional clicks. It was a good one as I recall.
Lowes and home depot are a block from eachother where i live too. Ace is 10x more convenient. Also 10x more expensive. I used to temp at the Ace corporate headquarters
I can't bring myself to buy a car from ANYONE online. Nor am I going to buy one in an auction where I have to bid against a bunch of goofballs who are way too excited because it's a RARE 1 of 5 example that combines Metallic Pea paint with the optional Rallye Fun Pack. I'd just assume buy it from a private seller or even a consignment dealer, as long as I can touch the damn car first.
Also, how the hell is a "30th Anniversary" Miata worth 40k? When I can buy a brand new Miata, even with the stupid retractable roof, for way less?
It was better equipped than any Miata you can buy this year, it had $4k worth of genuinely unique wheels with bespoke engraving, and it only came one way (besides choice of roof) so everybody knows you have the bad boy. It's the '96 Grand Sport of NDs... and that $40k number is the floor, there are other results at $43-46k.
I'm in my 30s, I just don't feel like giving Google ALL my data. I mean, it's one thing to use my gmail to log into OnlyFans, but letting them see all my obscure old car searches is just too much!
Besides, "Hey Jack, your article on this car was the 400th hit on Google" would have just been shitposting, even by my low standards.
your comment on the "144 a month lambo bolian" and everything else on that show man. That really sent my down the baruth rabbithole.As a side note, that was the pinnacle of TST for me. Now it's become whatever this jerkoff is:
Matt used to be fun. Now he's just an NPC talking about how we should all drive hybrids. As someone who lives in India with middle class parents, I can tell you that when they asked me what they should buy to replace our venerable innova(basically a hilux with a mpv body on it), and they said the word hybrid, I lost my collective mind. Three of my friends have parents that own ev's and hybrid's(lol ev adoption everywhere except california is about 0.000004 %, tell that to mr. "I live in california and I have a job where I sit at home and write for a website so why dont we all just cycle to our nearest grocery store and school and buy two cars one fun and one ev why dont we all do that"). When you dont have a 9 figure trust fund from daddy "tiffany coo", sometimes your parents with government jobs dontt have the money to pay insurance on two cars and then fund their son's college in the US.
Lol. I mean nothing I read or watch is any interesting to google and tbh, it is pretty convinient lmao(this is a cry for help, they have me locked up in their basement). Does your onlyfans have feet streams?
Second, I'm with you. For something like a car, I want to crawl all over and under it before considering a purchase.
Agree with the article comment about car collecting, and hence auction sites catering to it, to fade. There are a couple young gearheads at my place of work, but otherwise I think the interest in cars in general is dropping off in the coming generations
I think that is blissfully wrong. As someone who's young and around young people, I assure you we acknowledge ev's but we dont give any more of a shit about them than a 60 year old from good ol' lubbock texas would. In fact, most of my friends swear by z's, gtr's and hellcats. The rest take an uber. That's it. Car culture will be alive. What's killing it is morons on car twitter telling me how I should live my life and how I should have an ev and a fun car and how a demon 170 is "dumb" and shit on it(probably because it doesn't matter to their narrative: https://jackbaruth.com/?p=20187) but somehow having a classic car and an ev is acceptable, but if I like a trx and a 2020 stick shift redeye with a henessey tune, I'm a "environmental heathen".
After my experience selling a car on BaT, some level of protection and gurantee around the sale would be the only way I'd try selling another car on a site like that.
I went with BaT since the car was something I truly didn't know how to value, so an auction seemed like a good fit. I thought that'd be the lowest hassle way to get the sale for a fair price. Instead I got to deal with getting sued by some super boomer Perry Mason afficiando who seemingly spends most of his free time writing letters to the editor to the newspaper and replying to @potus on twitter.
I realize you can get sued for a regular private party sale just as easily, but at least in those cases you can tell the buyer to fuck all the way off before the sale as soon as its clear they're a piece of shit. With BaT I was stuck with this guy or I'd just have wasted my time/money with the auction and been unable to re-list. Which, yes in hindsight would have still been the better move here.
"Instead I got to deal with getting sued by some super boomer Perry Mason afficiando who seemingly spends most of his free time writing letters to the editor to the newspaper and replying to @potus on twitter."
I am in no way surprised by that. Bad sellers create bad buyers who make good sellers miserable.
The fun thing is the guy recently won another auction for another 50 year old british car. It'll be interesting to see if another lawsuit pops up in the court system or if I uniquely offended his sensibilities.
Your thoughts on better consumer protection make me think of sites such as KEH and Adorama. They buy the camera gear, inspect it, rate it, and resell. I predict the original seller gets substantially less than if they sold direct Craigslist-style. As an end user I've never had an issue and what arrives in the mail is exactly as described in their rating systems. As a result I rarely buy new camera gear.
I've sold three cars to Carmax. Always been satisfied with the price and the process. Could I have found somebody to give me more money? Maybe. But not dealing with people and their bullshit has a considerable dollar value.
Ive sold every car and bike I’ve owned on craigslist. Can be slightly annoying but it’s a couple grand difference from the car offers i get. I’ve also had some rare cars people want but dealers dont.
There is no new rover. I do quite like a SD1 tho. With the buick V8. Squint hard enough, it looks like a daytona. Hot up that buick V8 with some cams, probably goes like a daytona.
I don't call it entertainment myself, but I know what you mean. I sold a '98 BMW 540 6-speed with almost 200k miles to someone who seemed burdened by the cost of the bridge toll and fuel to get it home (30 miles away).
I've never purchased from Carmax, but I sold to them on one occasion. The experience was great. I move around a lot, and sometimes on short notice. So, the ability to off load a car quickly and as late as possible before moving internationally was more than worth the grand or two I might have made had I sold it myself.
The best thing about buying from Carmax is the 30 day/1,500 mile return. Bought a Elantra last year and after 3 days realized I hated it. 3 weeks later it took an hour to return the Elantra. The next owner also returned it.
If you want to following the Elantra's merry journey here's the link. It's been to Austin - Plano - Freeport - Katy - Austin - Independence, MO and soon to Kansas City https://www.carmax.com/car/22790419
Absolutely. I bought a lot of used gear from Adorama and it always exceeded my expectations.
I have a Nikon D90 I no longer need and am thinking of selling it to them. I don't want the money so much as knowing it's being used by someone who wants it.
Anyone on this list looking for a starter DSLR, please message me.
Sportster/Nightster twins are on my to test ride (if the truck comes somewhere nearby for a demo day) list along with the Pan-Am even though I think the Pan America is ugly as sin.
The contrary argument would be that few buyers would likely bid on a old VW coming thru Mecum, so you might get a deal .... if you knew it was legit ...?
C&B is for nitwits and rubes- BaT is for those who can afford to avoid the truth that they are nitwits and rubes.
An acquaintance sold his comically overbuilt Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on C&B, after multiple failed attempts to seal the deal on BaT. You gotta know your audience- the guy who want to name his Jeep “Beerslayer” and drive around with his foot hanging out of the hole where the door once was, wants nothing to do with the Moscato enthusiasts at BaT. The purple prose of the summaries is good for a laugh, though.
Possibly, depending on the car seats. I will tell you that the seatbelt layout makes the Jeep a bit of a PITA; my 5y/o can easily buckle herself into her booster seat in my wife’s MDX but can’t do the same in the Jeep. The male end is kinda behind the seat back, and the female end tends to flop around and is harder to buckle. Apologies if I used wrongthink to gender my seatbelts.
Jacks is probably going to kick me off the site, but I bought a car off of BAT earlier this year, a 1975 Mercury Bobcat (Ford Pinto). The auction went well, and I paid a little less than I expected.
Downsides
The car is not as represented. Since I bought it, I have had to put a new exhaust system on it, rebuilt the front end and need to go through the brakes. It also needs tires. I would expect this with any old car that I buy, but I would have been happier had the seller mentioned these things. All they could talk about was the oil change and the new air filter.
I love the car. I have low expections of old cars when I drag them home.
Going to take it on a vintage car rally in May here in Colorado. Should look great next to the 911's, Panteras and Ferrari's.
Red on red on red. I'll bet it even had the pillow tufted seats. Too bad the manufacturers don't put hat kind of effort into their small cars these days...
It is a hatch. The only wagon I wanted has the 2 portholes for the rear windows. Pintos have vanished, this is the first one in decent shape I found in Colorado after several months of desultory looking.
My buddy had one of those pinto wagons with the portholes back in the day. His had been wrecked and repainted so the groovy stripes were gone, but it was a fun little shitbox.
This is a 3 day driving rally. We are starting in Grand Junction this year and driving all over southwest Colorado and southeast Utah. We will drive about 800 miles in 3 days. This is a rally for people who know how to work on cars. There is no mechanical support, except for each other. We have a couple of guys who drag something out of a field and drive it every year. They did a Jaguar head gasket on the side of the road one year.
Not sure where you are in the Front Range, but over in SE Aurora (Hampden and Tower), there is a nice impromptu car show every Friday evening at the Sonic there. There is usually a decent variety of cars.
I’ve bought and sold on both sites you mentioned. A couple thoughts.
1) the C&B “community” is largely half as intelligent and informed as BaT. A lot are dick riders of noted grifter and champagne socialist Doug Demuro. You can go look for yourself; there are E46 M3 auctions on that site that come and go with no mentions of VANOS or rod bearings. Any attempt to pick too many nits will invariably be met with a chorus of “where’s your bid?!?” Or “looks like EAG showed up”.
2) C&B bidders seem to not care if they get banned, or at least care much less, because most know this is a second rate platform. One of the cars I sold on that platform, I had the high bidder show up fully prepared to not take the car. I had to let him inspect and drive it before he would hand over the cash (and had I not gotten a sweet price for a quick and ethical flip I would have told him to fuck off). On BaT, you don’t want to get banned, or at least will care more, as who knows if YOUR HOLY GRAIL, your any $ amount car, might show up there. This incentivizes some higher level of seller confidence for sure on BaT.
3) I’ve had more normal interactions and sales off Craigslist than C&B. All my buyers have been freaks in some way. Craigslist might be a little “rural” and boomer, but tends to be more honest of a transaction IMO with people knowing what they got themselves into.
Also side note I noticed you didn’t mention CL. That’s still my go to for stuff I want to drive versus collect (or accumulate)
4) For some reason foreigners love C&B. No clue. I’ve been asked to ship out of country more there than selling Knick knacks on FB marketplace. It’s weird.
5) the UX on C&B I have to admit is slightly better for selling. Other than the retina searing colors, that is. BaT you tend to be needing to look for something “specific” and search or use the alert function. C&B you can entice someone to buy something they’ve never heard of or cared about previously with some nice pics and good customer service.
Ultimately as a platform for running an auction, C&B is better to me, but I’d never run a no reserve C&B auction on a car I cared about or had a high cost basis on. If I wipe out on flipping a Sentra SE-R, whatever, but on a GT R? Never.
Lastly cause this is getting long- I like buying in this format because 1) no fucking car sales people 2) no one is going to snipe or come in and steal my prospect I’m doing my due diligence 3) dealer can’t play “oh I have another buyer” games 4) I can request documents, videos, specific pictures etc and if I don’t like them or I don’t like the answer I can pass knowing another is gonna come out in a matter of months and 5) I have SOME form of recourse if something is fucked. IME it’s much better than going back to some dealer. Did I mention I hate dealers and car salesmen?
I'm not really that surprised by anything you've written. In much the same way that readers of this site tend to be prickly and a bit intellectual, I would imagine that any site primarily populated by DeMuro fans would be notable for idiocy and ethical lapses.
I just bought a new car from a dealer. What a hassle. Go in and they have the car i want. Great. 1k saftey features and 5% over msrp and it’s all yours! Ok, Ill give your 500 for that bs package and 0 over msrp so we can get this done. Sales manager says no. so monday comes around and i call every dealer with the car i want in a 60 mile radius. I gladly woudlve paid $500 too much to avoid the hassle but not 3,500. Ended up getting the car for msrp. It just took 3 weeks.
"You know they put that TruCoat on at the factory..."
I wonder how much longer this price gouging is going to continue. The chip problem was supposed to be resolved by now, and the economy is shit. There's no excuse for it.
I watched "Tetris" last night. Decent movie but when the KGB is following everyone around I was just thinking "The NSA and CIA are doing this shit to Americans today" The USSR didn't have Appple and GOogle to help with the dirty work.
It was a telluride which still seems to be the hottest midsize suv (cuv?) on the market. The fact i paid msrp and the layoffs are starting to happen more makes me think the bubble has popped. If the kid wasnt coming in a month at the time, I’d have waited six to buy it. It’s a nice car but 50k is a lot of money. My last new car was 16k and I loved it.
Hate the process. Luckily I don’t desire almost a single new car and I’ll never have to buy one again if I don’t want. Tried on the CTR, cancelled my G80 order, just miserable.
I called like 20+ honda dealers for an FL5, minimum ADM was $5k (which im OK with paying with), and those move fast, but most wanted like $55-65k, and many of them seemed dismissive to even mention the car in the first place
Thankfully my experience at Acura for an Integra was much better and the process was smoothed out
Part of the problem of being me is that most of my readers are successful and proud people in their own right, and more likely to challenge me than affirm me. Doug plays to a different audience.
I’ll be honest, I can’t see “detesting” Doug. What are his sins? Wearing two tshirts and being overly exuberant while geeking out over car minutiae? He’s mostly just annoying, so as a result I don’t watch his stuff, but I don’t hate the man for it. Seems like he built a nice life for himself doing something he loves. More than most of us can say. Sure I understand he started out with some insurance settlement or something, but who cares?
The best reason to despise him is that he is a calculating and entirely inauthentic person who has noticeably lowered the quality of every field in which he participates. There's nothing personal about that, but there was also nothing personal about any of the people who closed factories and sent them overseas.
I think he was pretty brave to deride meghan markle. Shouldn't have apologised for it. She deserved all that and more. Even though I fully support tate's arrest, and dont agree with the redpill bullshit to an extent that I'm willing to support a sex offender, he had a great take on the markle drama: https://youtu.be/Hg3pI-FnpPs?t=742
1) if the primary accusation is is being “dick riders”... have you ever spent 90k on a beat ass RS2 because Jack owned it? You ever buy a shirt with something jack says in one of his YouTube videos? You ever buy a car based on a fake “take” provided by jack at the top of an auction website? Doug’s schtick would be easily imitable by anyone with Porsche lawsuit money and a punchable face. I doubt there’s a many people with the capability to reproduce content you see here; I’m paying an artisan for his services. I support a lot of small artists and near homeless people in my personal life, this one just writes about cars
2) if the primary accusation is Jack being a grifter.... he’s doing a really bad job of it (no offense Jack). I see no insta pics with MAGNUM CONDOM WALKER Porsches or big titted press ladies. If I’m missing those lmk
3) if the primary accusation is champagne socialist... cmon now
"You ever buy a shirt with something jack says in one of his YouTube videos?"
In 1997, a BMX team sold a shirt with something I wrote on it. Thankfully, it was a complete and utter failure -- worse yet, I think my first wife threw away MY shirt!
Go look at the “previously owned by doug demuro” RS2 he sold. Beat as fuck. Unfortunately Hoover who for all intents and purposes seems more genuine than doug has jumped on the bandwagon too.
This is fair. I was reminded this morning that several Baruth Substackers (and Wordpressers, before that) have reached out to me via email and LinkedIn. It's rare to be be in a, ugh, *community* that expands beyond silly usernames and profile pictures on a comment feed. And some of the people here ARE danged intelligent and seem full of wisdom, which I respect.
Hey, at least your honest. Unfortunately, you would spend your newly found Youtube wealth on broads, booze and racecars, stop making new videos and have to take a job as a Motor Trend writer to pay your legal fees or at least I hope you would. If I have to watch you on Youtube I need Supernova growth followed by failure that is incomprehensible.
And I almost forgot. despite all of the above, I have been warned by the C&B moderation team more than once for being too “abrasive” or “mean” about people’s cars (aka people trying to pass off junk). They run that shit like a Facebook community standards pool party. And before anyone says “well you can unhide comments on it!” I have had my comments straight up deleted by their dedicated jannies, I mean mod team, many times.
I used to read BAT before they started the full-scale auction site. In those days, you needed to bring a trailer because what you were buying was probably broken. They always had a lot of weird stuff and it was fun. Now it's all serious business. Maybe the buyers, sellers, and the webmasters aren't very smart but they all have big money and I, being the cheap-ass I am, have been squeezed out.
I've always had decent luck on Craigslist but since they started charging to list used cars the number of listings has dropped. Facebook marketplace has a fair number of the kinds of junkers I favor but if a person really wants to find a specific vehicle, or parts, you need to join the specific facebook group for that vehicle.
Still, don't want it to be too easy. The fun is in the finding not the owning...
I like that CL has started charging a little to weed out some of the the time-wasters, but it does seem that a lot of market share has shifted to FB (well...I assume, since I don't really go there).
"if a person really wants to find a specific vehicle, or parts, you need to join the specific facebook group for that vehicle"
Wow: that's really interesting...so you're saying that there are listings that don't show up if I do a radius search for that specific model?
Yes, because the members are always trolling their local sites and posting up things that aren't posted to Facebook. I almost bought an 88 Dodge Shadow ES Turbo 5 speed someone in the turbo Dodge group linked to. It was listed in a local PA auto auction site. Went for like $800 with fees. Took everything I had to not buy it but I just don't have a place to build it and don't want a divorce that bad.
I've seen lots of other ads and sales in these groups, too. They don't put them in the marketplace, they just post a note saying they want to sell. People know what they have and what the market will bear. Deals get done fast and simple.
I really wanted that thing. It was almost identical to the one I bought new in 1988 with the exception that it was sold with all the option boxes ticked. Who's to say what condition it really was in. It was old and pretty worn out but I didn't see anything to indicate real corrosion problems or terrible mods. It just looked like a well used old car. And it was soooo cheap and just close enough for me to go and get...
I found myself checking on it a couple of times a day and finally I had to say "fuck it, no more." I even dropped out of the Turbo Dodge facebook group. Even looking at that stuff is like picking at an open wound. I already have too much stuff, too little space and other things that require all my resources.
Thanks. I am in VA and I've seen a lot of cars here the same. Nissan trucks from the same era as my Hardbody can look pretty good on the outside, but can also have fist-sized rust holes in their frames. My truck is from Washington state so no issues and I am careful to ensure that it never goes out on the road where there is any salt down.
Much as I might want it, I really don't have any business buying something like that to work on anyhow.
Facebook groups are also great for rare parts and wheels and ive generally had positive experiences interacting and asking questions vs randomly DMing someone on marketplace
These days I have a short list of specific targets, so I set up a saved search (as specific as possible including transmission, 4WD if I need it) for a and get the email alerts.
Although many of my searches go years between hits (I agree that a significant portion of the traffic has gone elsewhere), it almost eliminates the spam.
I got Amazon prime just about as soon as it came out. I dumped it a year or so ago partly out of pique with Bezos and mostly because I didn’t see the value in it any longer.
I got burned on counterfeit items twice and now use Amazon only to fill my kindle.
I never used their music at all and their movies only rarely. It’s starting to give me a Facebook 2019 feel, though I’m aware that sounds completely ridiculous.
I’m definitely a mid-stage curmudgeon, but the commerce internet is swirling around the same toilet as the information superhighway internet as far as I can see.
I refuse to use Amazon. Other than some used college textbooks 15 years ago, and some junk an ex-girlfriend finessed me into paying for about a decade ago, they never get my money. I don't care if I end up paying more.
If amazon prime didnt have streaming, I’d have canvelled years ago. The free shipping with movies thing is nice. I’ve stopped buying nice stuff on amazon cause it’s all fake
Almost all of my consumables come from Amazon, most of them on a schedule. I get shitter paper once a month, Tide once a month, paper towels and Cascade pellets and dish soap 3-packs once a quarter, etc etc. I’m sure it costs a little bit more but it automated all the shit I have to buy anyways, I’m never out, and I never have to think about it.
Walmart has a prime competitor that's 90% of the way there and includes free grocery delivery. Never have to worry about fakes anymore and grocery delivery is way more valuable to me than streaming.
I have a theory as to why Amazon never got quite the level of hate Walmart did (deservedly, IMHO, because I saw it kill the downtowns of many small towns in Texas in the 1990s):
All the same people who railed against Walmart can't live without Amazon.
Here in McPherson, KS I was on the city planning commission when the Hell-Mart Stooper Center was under construction in the early 2000s. It was troubling that; at the time of opening, only 8 of the 400 or so employees of the store would have been able to afford a house in our zip code. Granted, we're fairly expensive for Kansas, but come on.
Since then, it abundantly clear that they systemically treat the staff like shit. Also, after running one of the two local competing grocery stores out of business, began raising prices and much less aggressively stocking the shelves.
Our little town is far from "eviscerated" by Wal-Mart. Its actually not that hard to rarely darken their door. This is good, because I don't believe that they deserve my business.
Their inventory system isn't very good. They're often out of stock on things they say they have, and in a limited sample size I've had two delivery screwups with Walmart compared to years of Amazon deliveries. You also need to get to $35 for free delivery when you pay for Wal Mart, which isn't competitive with Amazon. Not ready for prime time.
Two of my boys do internet marketing. Some of that is on Amazon. They say it's a cesspool of counterfeit items and the one boy says he'd never put anything into his body that came from Amazon
To kill time, I have spent many hours lurking on BaT. I have posted a comment or two. My favorite part of the site is the stilted, scrubbed-by-the-legal-eagles, prose. "The owner reports that this SkyFlash 5000 makes a whooshing sound when it's run off of a cliff. A new parachute was reportedly installed when the oil was checked on February 14, 2023..."
I absolutely hate BaT. Not for anything about the site itself, but what it, and their new money bidders, have done to the enthusiast car market.
When I was talking with the seller I bought my 535i from, he pointed to BaT cars as comps. Most were in better shape/had fluid leaks fixed, but the fact that someone was dumb enough to publicly pay $55k for a 535xi wagon with 110k miles shouldn't influence other car sales.
Similarly, two X358 XJ portfolios just sold for 175k and 90k respectively.
This sort of thing puts price pressure on every car of that model, even if it isn't the weird specially optioned one up on BaT.
Another great example of the decline and fall of the internet. I’ve been trying to get a copy of Ricardo’s High Speed Internal Combustion Engine for a couple of years now. I don’t need a first edition or anything fancy. It’s a ninety year old book that’s been reprinted many times. It’s out of copyright, even.
The cheapest I can find is 245.00!
I’m going to have to haunt library sales near good engineering schools.
As the owner of a deep sea blue, manual, M-sport 535i... I'll say it's by far the best looking E60 you can get.
That combo seems to pop up frequently on BaT, and the wagons go for more. That particular wagon had very nearly every possible option box checked on it. It's a unique car.
I credit bangle with making m sport package a necessity on any bmw. Just look at a non m sport 525i. Looks like a slightly y2k'd camry. Bangle was a pretty visionary guy in that regards.
Funny, but I just bought a car on BaT and picked it up on Tuesday. The key for me was buying from an established BaT seller who has sold hundreds of cars on the site. The car turned out to be way better in person than the description and the 200 photos on BaT. The dealer was very responsive and even did some excellent cosmetic work for me on the car before I picked it up. All in all, a great seamless experience and I’m totally pleased with the deal I got. I would never buy a car on BaT from an individual without inspecting the car first. C&B doesn’t interest me at all.
Are people who sell hundreds of cars on the site dealers? Are they buying registering driving these cars and just buy and sell a lot or do they buy them locally then "list them" without ever registering them. Hundreds of cars is a lot of cars!
In the case of the car I bought, the title was in the dealer’s name. My car was a California car and the dealer was in New Jersey. These dealers have independent reps around the country who look for cars that the dealer knows will be appealing on BaT. It appears that the business model of the dealer I bought from is to usually list these cars on BaT at No Reserve, so while he may not get top dollar for each listing, he is making money on the volume of cars he sells. The cars are not sitting on his lot, once they list on BaT at No Reserve they’re sold in 7 days. I just checked and this dealer sold 55 cars on BaT in March.
There is a group of dealers who sell directly or sell on consignment hundreds of cars there. That level of volume gets them a reputation which rapidly gets pointed out in the their auction comments.
A few things:
0 - I have written in the past that I know Doug personally from his pre-fame days in Atlanta; we still keep in touch, but we are obviously not as close as we once were. I texted with him after the announcement, which coincided with his appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast (which I listened to). It is my understanding based on Doug’s comments on the podcast that he remains the majority owner of Cars & Bids; I don’t know what percentage of the entity he owns, but the business is theoretically / on paper worth a minimum of ~$75 million. It could be north of $100 million, of course. I did not pry into the transaction terms and structure - if he wanted me to know, he would have told me. He did share the comps that informed his Carrera GT purchase, which were all from … BaT!
1 - I don’t understand the popularity of auction sites, personally. Despite working in finance, I have never been interested in keeping up with the values of toys that I own (or aspire to own). I would never buy a car in a competitive auction scenario.
2 - I am amazed that BaT does not have a financing partner, especially given the aggregate dollar volume of sales and the range of prices; seven figure cars are likely purchased with cash or loans against assets (brokerage accounts, real estate, business interests, etc.), but there are plenty of buyers of cars below, say, $500K (just a guess) that will need financing. Why not bring it in house?
3 - To my point above, Cars & Bids uses Lightstream, the unsecured lender that SunTrust (now Truist) purchased. I worked the buy side of that deal a LONG time ago.
As a guy who has zero business buying a $$$ car online (or at all), I use BaT just like I used to use eBay Motors, which is daydream fodder. I randomly see or hear about a cool car, and I think “oh cool, Ferrari 360, I like those, I want to look at a bunch of pictures of cool ones and see what the going rate for one is so I can daydream about buying one when daycare bills and 529 plans are no longer my problem.” And then I spend 20 minutes clicking and fantasizing. And then I continue on with my life.
I go the opposite way. I enjoy the shallower end of the pool and see a Merkur Xr4ti and make a serious bid on it because it isn't THAT much money vs my finances. Unfortunately, or perhaps not, I have been the second place bidder many times, but have yet to win.
At some point for obscure cars below a certain threshold I don't know how I would ever come across them. There isn't any other searchable digestible national market place.
That is me. Just bought a Mercury Bobcat (pinto). Now if I could just find a 75-79 Granada...
Why not a Monarch?
BE CONSISTENT! :)
I don't know why, by I have an absolute lust for a Mercury LN7. Probably because it touched me so deeply when it was first made.
If this came up today, I can't say I wouldn't be the highest bidder.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1982-mercury-ln7/
However, I also realize that my ES350 would wipe the floor with it in every conceivable metric - save styling. I'd probably keep it for a year, realize my nostalgia was underwhelming, and then re-list it on BaT.
I suppose I don’t need to window shop / daydream, because I already know what I want!
Rather than “what can I get for $X?,” my thought process is “I want ______, which costs $Y, so how do I achieve that goal?”
I feel you on those daycare bills, ha. As an aside, I managed to turn a 1981 Celica into a bathroom (which never fully materialized before we up and moved) so I, too, dream about that one day car.
re: 2; That's genious and they should do it. I quit looking at BAT after spending 2 hours on the phone trying to get a day-of loan for 60k to buy a 996 GT3... In retrospect I could have owned it for 2 years for free if I dumped it now, but that's besides the point.
I've sold an 500E there about 2 years before they were hot an lost money. The buyer showed up to claim his prize when I was out of town, and was so rude and condescending my wife almost canceled the sale. My brother sold a car there and was happy, and his bestie listed his there with my brother bidding it up. He ended up being the high bid and paying the fee cause they weren't close to hitting the number. BAT tries really hard to get you to list w/o a reserve.
If anyone wants to assist me in my current obsession; I want (NEED!) a hot wagon. The AMGs are the easy button, or an E34 M5. The CTS-V are ok too, but a touch to garish for my highfalutin taste. The next are the home-made kind, E9X M3 wagon swaps of my current favorite daydream, an E39 M5 swap. I would take a hot Volvo too, screw Jack and his lack of imagination. Anyway.
Bless ye all this Good Friday.
I had half a mind to leverage some connections to learn firsthand why Hearst hasn’t adopted a financing partner in hopes of potentially earning a fee putting one together for them.
Alas, I stumbled into another interesting deal about six months ago that’s taking up all of my time.
" I would take a hot Volvo too, screw Jack and his lack of imagination."
So would I, and in fact I drove a Ford 302-powered V-8 240 in a couple of races, but the "282" on offer seemed to have a LOT of excuses as standard equipment.
The AMG E 63 S Wagon speaks to me. It just doesn't speak to my bank account
I was going to suggest a breathed on Hemi Magnum, but you said highfalutin. Maybe a Hellcat crate motor would fit.
Oh it would for sure, but if I can’t handle GM interiors I for definitely can’t handle a fiat one.
You might be surprised!
It isn't a fiat interior.
I've long wondered about your second point. Seems like a no-brainer. Originally, no financing made sense because of the age of most of the cars, but now that what seems like half of the listings are less than five years old, they are leaving money and bidders on the table.
They could hire steve lang to do the repos
The self-repoing Ford's are almost here too!
He's a real friend to the working man!
This comment has been flagged as non-constructive
I got that treatment when I pointed out the very public previous mechanical failure of a race car being sold on BaT!
I got similar messages when i sold the truck I had in high school. The truck was semi broken half the time cause I was 16 and a crappy mechanic. Half my facebook dm's were some form of "wasn't this the truck you were always working on". Yes it was, but it was as fixed as an 80's Dodge product could be when I sold it.
The father of a friend always said, "You can't fix an old Mopar. you can only work on it."
Lol, many such cases!
I'm a day late and a $ short. All I see of a comment with 26 likes is "This comment has been flagged as non-constructive"
That's the joke -- BaT is highly eager to flag comments as non-constructive.
Substack doesn't even have a mechanism for that.
(but you should've seen it before it was flagged!)
Ha
Too funny.
I am banned from commenting on Cars and Bids. Pointed out the hilarity of flippers claiming "the car wasn't right for me 🥺👉👈" when asked why they were selling.
Oh, and my comment about selling a car with 10 year old tires being moronic got flagged as well.
Ironic, since a car with ten year old tires made Doug famous.
Damnit JACK! just came to say pretty much exactly this! haha
Great minds, sir!
The 360 with which he failed to attract even a single woman?(Apart from his wife, if I haven't gotten my timeline botched up. )And any lady attracted to a guy with a 20 year old ferrari that a spec miata could probably cream around any track strikes me as being, uhm...., difficult.
"It's fully restored. It sat under a tree for 15 years until the property was sold, and it had to be relocated to a garage. Hence, re-stored."
Ha. I am sure I am close to being banned as well. Good riddance
I shudder at your comment about needing to interact with every commenter on BaT. I’d be OK with legit questions, but all the stupid questions and comments from the peanut gallery would tire me out, and it appears to be bad form to verbally eviscerate them even if you are right. Would be great if they had different comment areas for the real bidders, another for legit experts, and a third for the vapid morons (“glwta!,” “brought my popcorn for this one, hurr durr durrr,” etc).
it really irritates me that experts comment on BaT for free and the seller and Hurst profit from their knowledge. I guess it’s just the sign of the times where expertise is valued at zero or expert value is Hoover-ed up by lizards. I am somewhat of an expert on 105/115 series Alfas and limit sharing my expertise either in person or on Alfa forums. I learned my stuff from the Alfisti old timers in the 80’s and now I’m one of those old timers. I need to pass that knowledge on, but damned if I will do it to help Hurst or Doug DeMoron.
The BaT experts get paid in internet esteem.
The only currency that matters is updoots
You and Sherman just likes from me. You 2 are making bank!!!!
Can I buy a hot dog with all this EXPOSURE?
fuck no
I had an internal job pitched to me a couple of years ago. Exposure was offered in reply to my request of a higher grade and more money. It was all I could do to not laugh in his face.
For certain businesses it makes sense. Demonstrating some expertise for a specific model probably can drive you some new customers.
I charge $300 an hour for advice and give it away for free on reddit when I’m bored. And the retard redditors dont even listen
Plastic timing chain tensioner on a Jaguar 4.0 v-8? Its so low miles they don't need to be changed! Also, easy fix!
Yes...I'd combine Categories I&II.
"Hold on, it gets better still. You might think that you’d be better off putting your Porsche 993 on Cars and Bids, since BaT already has five 993s on the site, but you’d be wrong — because the presence of your car will increase interest in the others, and vice versa. Every time an auction closes on a car like yours, you basically inherit all the bidders but the top one."
A couple of miles from where I'm sitting is the site of the Northland Mall, opened the year I was born, 1954, regarded as the country's first regional shopping mall. Now being redeveloped, it was originally built by the J.L. Hudson company, Detroit's version of Macy's, but even with the region's most prominent retailer as an anchor they had trouble at first renting out the other space. Operators of shoe stores would say, "Why should I locate there, you already have a shoe store." They didn't realize that if there was a bunch of shoe stores in one general location, that's where people would go to buy shoes.
It may be apocryphal, but I've heard that is the same strategy for fast food. Wendy's or Burger King would site a restaurant near a McDonald's to grab some of that potential customer traffic
I believe Jack did an article about these "chicken corners." Maybe he could post an archived version of it so that the host doesn't receive any additional clicks. It was a good one as I recall.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230124171046/https://www.hagerty.com/media/opinion/avoidable-contact/avoidable-contact-142-using-the-chicken-corner-strategy-to-save-new-car-enthusiasm/
There it is! Thanks!
There's a Home Depot and a Lowe's next to each other not that far from here.
Lowes and home depot are a block from eachother where i live too. Ace is 10x more convenient. Also 10x more expensive. I used to temp at the Ace corporate headquarters
I can't bring myself to buy a car from ANYONE online. Nor am I going to buy one in an auction where I have to bid against a bunch of goofballs who are way too excited because it's a RARE 1 of 5 example that combines Metallic Pea paint with the optional Rallye Fun Pack. I'd just assume buy it from a private seller or even a consignment dealer, as long as I can touch the damn car first.
Also, how the hell is a "30th Anniversary" Miata worth 40k? When I can buy a brand new Miata, even with the stupid retractable roof, for way less?
It was better equipped than any Miata you can buy this year, it had $4k worth of genuinely unique wheels with bespoke engraving, and it only came one way (besides choice of roof) so everybody knows you have the bad boy. It's the '96 Grand Sport of NDs... and that $40k number is the floor, there are other results at $43-46k.
Oddly enough, the first DuckDuckGo hit I get for the car is a Hagerty article written by...you.
Thanks for reminding me how much I want an ND.
Get one. It may be the last real one of the breed. You won't regret it.
Imagine being so old you use duckduckgo holy shit is jacks readership age skewed
I'm in my 30s, I just don't feel like giving Google ALL my data. I mean, it's one thing to use my gmail to log into OnlyFans, but letting them see all my obscure old car searches is just too much!
Besides, "Hey Jack, your article on this car was the 400th hit on Google" would have just been shitposting, even by my low standards.
And to think I used to actively manipulate Excite! listings for a living, twenty years ago!
I think I might be your youngest listener. 17 lol. I was going through the TST podcast archives and came across this gem: https://open.spotify.com/episode/78lcQ0PRfywc3VfmSN9hsC?si=1f3234a821ed4527
your comment on the "144 a month lambo bolian" and everything else on that show man. That really sent my down the baruth rabbithole.As a side note, that was the pinnacle of TST for me. Now it's become whatever this jerkoff is:
https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/1644360727900356609?s=20
Matt used to be fun. Now he's just an NPC talking about how we should all drive hybrids. As someone who lives in India with middle class parents, I can tell you that when they asked me what they should buy to replace our venerable innova(basically a hilux with a mpv body on it), and they said the word hybrid, I lost my collective mind. Three of my friends have parents that own ev's and hybrid's(lol ev adoption everywhere except california is about 0.000004 %, tell that to mr. "I live in california and I have a job where I sit at home and write for a website so why dont we all just cycle to our nearest grocery store and school and buy two cars one fun and one ev why dont we all do that"). When you dont have a 9 figure trust fund from daddy "tiffany coo", sometimes your parents with government jobs dontt have the money to pay insurance on two cars and then fund their son's college in the US.
Lol. I mean nothing I read or watch is any interesting to google and tbh, it is pretty convinient lmao(this is a cry for help, they have me locked up in their basement). Does your onlyfans have feet streams?
I don't use goolag or DDG but am curious as to what the young hep cats use these days.
I am reminded of this gem: https://stonetoss.com/comic/e-girls/
I didn't understand a word of what you said but that comic is kinda funny bixby is the goofiest ass assistant
First, nice Vacation reference.
Second, I'm with you. For something like a car, I want to crawl all over and under it before considering a purchase.
Agree with the article comment about car collecting, and hence auction sites catering to it, to fade. There are a couple young gearheads at my place of work, but otherwise I think the interest in cars in general is dropping off in the coming generations
I think that is blissfully wrong. As someone who's young and around young people, I assure you we acknowledge ev's but we dont give any more of a shit about them than a 60 year old from good ol' lubbock texas would. In fact, most of my friends swear by z's, gtr's and hellcats. The rest take an uber. That's it. Car culture will be alive. What's killing it is morons on car twitter telling me how I should live my life and how I should have an ev and a fun car and how a demon 170 is "dumb" and shit on it(probably because it doesn't matter to their narrative: https://jackbaruth.com/?p=20187) but somehow having a classic car and an ev is acceptable, but if I like a trx and a 2020 stick shift redeye with a henessey tune, I'm a "environmental heathen".
"Where's my old car?"
After my experience selling a car on BaT, some level of protection and gurantee around the sale would be the only way I'd try selling another car on a site like that.
I went with BaT since the car was something I truly didn't know how to value, so an auction seemed like a good fit. I thought that'd be the lowest hassle way to get the sale for a fair price. Instead I got to deal with getting sued by some super boomer Perry Mason afficiando who seemingly spends most of his free time writing letters to the editor to the newspaper and replying to @potus on twitter.
I realize you can get sued for a regular private party sale just as easily, but at least in those cases you can tell the buyer to fuck all the way off before the sale as soon as its clear they're a piece of shit. With BaT I was stuck with this guy or I'd just have wasted my time/money with the auction and been unable to re-list. Which, yes in hindsight would have still been the better move here.
"Instead I got to deal with getting sued by some super boomer Perry Mason afficiando who seemingly spends most of his free time writing letters to the editor to the newspaper and replying to @potus on twitter."
I am in no way surprised by that. Bad sellers create bad buyers who make good sellers miserable.
The fun thing is the guy recently won another auction for another 50 year old british car. It'll be interesting to see if another lawsuit pops up in the court system or if I uniquely offended his sensibilities.
Your thoughts on better consumer protection make me think of sites such as KEH and Adorama. They buy the camera gear, inspect it, rate it, and resell. I predict the original seller gets substantially less than if they sold direct Craigslist-style. As an end user I've never had an issue and what arrives in the mail is exactly as described in their rating systems. As a result I rarely buy new camera gear.
In a nation of middlemen, there's an example of when it's genuinely useful!
Isn't that what carmax is for?
I've sold three cars to Carmax. Always been satisfied with the price and the process. Could I have found somebody to give me more money? Maybe. But not dealing with people and their bullshit has a considerable dollar value.
Ive sold every car and bike I’ve owned on craigslist. Can be slightly annoying but it’s a couple grand difference from the car offers i get. I’ve also had some rare cars people want but dealers dont.
You didn't have to call me out directly like that.
I wouldn't mind having another Jag or P38. The new Rovers leave me cold.
There is no new rover. I do quite like a SD1 tho. With the buick V8. Squint hard enough, it looks like a daytona. Hot up that buick V8 with some cams, probably goes like a daytona.
I don't call it entertainment myself, but I know what you mean. I sold a '98 BMW 540 6-speed with almost 200k miles to someone who seemed burdened by the cost of the bridge toll and fuel to get it home (30 miles away).
When are people going to understand there's no prestige in driving a 15-year-old Mercedes?
When there isn't, which depending on the community involved is not yet the case.
When they understand there's no prestige in driving any Mercedes
Wait, are you telling me there’s prestige to be had in driving a car?!
The 30 year old ones are better than the new ones. The 15 year old ones are close to the low point, which would be around 1998-2000, I guess.
I've read economics papers that suggested consistent markers of poverty are:
- Not finishing high school
- Single parenthood
I would add borrowing money on a 15 year old high end luxury car to the list.
I used them to dump a leased BMW 328 M Sport Touring. Worked great for that situation
I've never purchased from Carmax, but I sold to them on one occasion. The experience was great. I move around a lot, and sometimes on short notice. So, the ability to off load a car quickly and as late as possible before moving internationally was more than worth the grand or two I might have made had I sold it myself.
The best thing about buying from Carmax is the 30 day/1,500 mile return. Bought a Elantra last year and after 3 days realized I hated it. 3 weeks later it took an hour to return the Elantra. The next owner also returned it.
If you want to following the Elantra's merry journey here's the link. It's been to Austin - Plano - Freeport - Katy - Austin - Independence, MO and soon to Kansas City https://www.carmax.com/car/22790419
I think Johnny Cash wrote a song about that! 😂
can't say, never used it or looked into it.
Absolutely. I bought a lot of used gear from Adorama and it always exceeded my expectations.
I have a Nikon D90 I no longer need and am thinking of selling it to them. I don't want the money so much as knowing it's being used by someone who wants it.
Anyone on this list looking for a starter DSLR, please message me.
I suspect they will seamlessly shift to pickup trucks and more recent domestics, which are both raising steam as we speak.
As I have said before, if there was some market where it was possible to short muscle car futures I would put my life savings in it.
That’s what I thought about Lugers and WWII surplus arms. Has not proven to be the case thus far.
That's because they have appeal beyond a given generation in a way that a lot of Boomer favorites don't. IMO.
Harleys too. Although, Harley Davidson might actually be making a transition to not just being Boomer Cycles. I very much like the new sportster.
Sportster/Nightster twins are on my to test ride (if the truck comes somewhere nearby for a demo day) list along with the Pan-Am even though I think the Pan America is ugly as sin.
New Sportster is really nice.
The contrary argument would be that few buyers would likely bid on a old VW coming thru Mecum, so you might get a deal .... if you knew it was legit ...?
C&B is for nitwits and rubes- BaT is for those who can afford to avoid the truth that they are nitwits and rubes.
An acquaintance sold his comically overbuilt Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on C&B, after multiple failed attempts to seal the deal on BaT. You gotta know your audience- the guy who want to name his Jeep “Beerslayer” and drive around with his foot hanging out of the hole where the door once was, wants nothing to do with the Moscato enthusiasts at BaT. The purple prose of the summaries is good for a laugh, though.
I love driving my Jeep doors off. I also enjoy slaying beers. I wouldn’t put the second one on a sticker though.
Seriously, doors off Jeeping in the summer is about the most legal fun you can have in a moving vehicle.
Can i get three car seats in the back of a wrangler? I’d love a jeep with a manual
Possibly, depending on the car seats. I will tell you that the seatbelt layout makes the Jeep a bit of a PITA; my 5y/o can easily buckle herself into her booster seat in my wife’s MDX but can’t do the same in the Jeep. The male end is kinda behind the seat back, and the female end tends to flop around and is harder to buckle. Apologies if I used wrongthink to gender my seatbelts.
Jacks is probably going to kick me off the site, but I bought a car off of BAT earlier this year, a 1975 Mercury Bobcat (Ford Pinto). The auction went well, and I paid a little less than I expected.
Downsides
The car is not as represented. Since I bought it, I have had to put a new exhaust system on it, rebuilt the front end and need to go through the brakes. It also needs tires. I would expect this with any old car that I buy, but I would have been happier had the seller mentioned these things. All they could talk about was the oil change and the new air filter.
I love the car. I have low expections of old cars when I drag them home.
Going to take it on a vintage car rally in May here in Colorado. Should look great next to the 911's, Panteras and Ferrari's.
--Stephen
"Jacks is probably going to kick me off the site, but I bought a car off of BAT earlier this year, a 1975 Mercury Bobcat (Ford Pinto)"
Sir, and I say this with all respect
ARE YOU FUCKIN HIGH RIGHT NOW
Owning a Mercury Bobcat qualifies you for "ACF Gold" Status!
So what gets you Platinum?
The Foghat tour bus?
The Slap Shot tour bus.
I'm just here to commend you for name-dropping Foghat. But the proper answer would of course have been the Steely Dan tour bus. It is Jack, after all.
Only a fool would say that!
Nice! When I was 16 one of my Dad’s lease cars was a 1976 triple red Bobcat with a stick. Loved that little car.
Red on red on red. I'll bet it even had the pillow tufted seats. Too bad the manufacturers don't put hat kind of effort into their small cars these days...
Fiat did with the 500! Sooo many exterior colors and interior variants.
They really did. That car deserved more success than it had.
Wasn't it EBay Motors some years ago with a TV commercial of a guy who found his dream Fluorescent early 70s Gremlin on that site?
I would have held out for a 77 with the all glass hatch (assuming you didn't buy a wagon).
It is a hatch. The only wagon I wanted has the 2 portholes for the rear windows. Pintos have vanished, this is the first one in decent shape I found in Colorado after several months of desultory looking.
My buddy had one of those pinto wagons with the portholes back in the day. His had been wrecked and repainted so the groovy stripes were gone, but it was a fun little shitbox.
The "not as represented" and "needs additional repairs" appears to be why BaT is such a hot marketplace for Citroen DS/SMs
Link to the rally? Might take the kid
https://classiccaradventures.com/colorado-events/hagerty-silver-summit/ss-event-info-and-registration/
This is a 3 day driving rally. We are starting in Grand Junction this year and driving all over southwest Colorado and southeast Utah. We will drive about 800 miles in 3 days. This is a rally for people who know how to work on cars. There is no mechanical support, except for each other. We have a couple of guys who drag something out of a field and drive it every year. They did a Jaguar head gasket on the side of the road one year.
Not sure where you are in the Front Range, but over in SE Aurora (Hampden and Tower), there is a nice impromptu car show every Friday evening at the Sonic there. There is usually a decent variety of cars.
I’ve bought and sold on both sites you mentioned. A couple thoughts.
1) the C&B “community” is largely half as intelligent and informed as BaT. A lot are dick riders of noted grifter and champagne socialist Doug Demuro. You can go look for yourself; there are E46 M3 auctions on that site that come and go with no mentions of VANOS or rod bearings. Any attempt to pick too many nits will invariably be met with a chorus of “where’s your bid?!?” Or “looks like EAG showed up”.
2) C&B bidders seem to not care if they get banned, or at least care much less, because most know this is a second rate platform. One of the cars I sold on that platform, I had the high bidder show up fully prepared to not take the car. I had to let him inspect and drive it before he would hand over the cash (and had I not gotten a sweet price for a quick and ethical flip I would have told him to fuck off). On BaT, you don’t want to get banned, or at least will care more, as who knows if YOUR HOLY GRAIL, your any $ amount car, might show up there. This incentivizes some higher level of seller confidence for sure on BaT.
3) I’ve had more normal interactions and sales off Craigslist than C&B. All my buyers have been freaks in some way. Craigslist might be a little “rural” and boomer, but tends to be more honest of a transaction IMO with people knowing what they got themselves into.
Also side note I noticed you didn’t mention CL. That’s still my go to for stuff I want to drive versus collect (or accumulate)
4) For some reason foreigners love C&B. No clue. I’ve been asked to ship out of country more there than selling Knick knacks on FB marketplace. It’s weird.
5) the UX on C&B I have to admit is slightly better for selling. Other than the retina searing colors, that is. BaT you tend to be needing to look for something “specific” and search or use the alert function. C&B you can entice someone to buy something they’ve never heard of or cared about previously with some nice pics and good customer service.
Ultimately as a platform for running an auction, C&B is better to me, but I’d never run a no reserve C&B auction on a car I cared about or had a high cost basis on. If I wipe out on flipping a Sentra SE-R, whatever, but on a GT R? Never.
Lastly cause this is getting long- I like buying in this format because 1) no fucking car sales people 2) no one is going to snipe or come in and steal my prospect I’m doing my due diligence 3) dealer can’t play “oh I have another buyer” games 4) I can request documents, videos, specific pictures etc and if I don’t like them or I don’t like the answer I can pass knowing another is gonna come out in a matter of months and 5) I have SOME form of recourse if something is fucked. IME it’s much better than going back to some dealer. Did I mention I hate dealers and car salesmen?
I'm not really that surprised by anything you've written. In much the same way that readers of this site tend to be prickly and a bit intellectual, I would imagine that any site primarily populated by DeMuro fans would be notable for idiocy and ethical lapses.
Did you just call us pseudo intellectuals? How dare you! #sarcasm
I just bought a new car from a dealer. What a hassle. Go in and they have the car i want. Great. 1k saftey features and 5% over msrp and it’s all yours! Ok, Ill give your 500 for that bs package and 0 over msrp so we can get this done. Sales manager says no. so monday comes around and i call every dealer with the car i want in a 60 mile radius. I gladly woudlve paid $500 too much to avoid the hassle but not 3,500. Ended up getting the car for msrp. It just took 3 weeks.
"You know they put that TruCoat on at the factory..."
I wonder how much longer this price gouging is going to continue. The chip problem was supposed to be resolved by now, and the economy is shit. There's no excuse for it.
The major auto groups forecast at least 18 more months of it.
We live in Soviet Russia now, basically.
I watched "Tetris" last night. Decent movie but when the KGB is following everyone around I was just thinking "The NSA and CIA are doing this shit to Americans today" The USSR didn't have Appple and GOogle to help with the dirty work.
They had the people’s children fulfill the same role
It was a telluride which still seems to be the hottest midsize suv (cuv?) on the market. The fact i paid msrp and the layoffs are starting to happen more makes me think the bubble has popped. If the kid wasnt coming in a month at the time, I’d have waited six to buy it. It’s a nice car but 50k is a lot of money. My last new car was 16k and I loved it.
"Did I tell you about my new ride? It's a ~Telluride~".
^ Can't put a price on that!
My name is on the title but it’s mostly the wife's car. My car is an old crappy volvo.
Sorry; that wasn't meant as a slam.
First, congratulations on being a father and needing a kid-hauler.
I was kind of struggling to get up to date with the fact that a Kia CUV is the new hotness, and just having some dad-joke fun with the name.
Is it perhaps a crappy 242 bertone?
Fuck dealers.
Hate the process. Luckily I don’t desire almost a single new car and I’ll never have to buy one again if I don’t want. Tried on the CTR, cancelled my G80 order, just miserable.
I called like 20+ honda dealers for an FL5, minimum ADM was $5k (which im OK with paying with), and those move fast, but most wanted like $55-65k, and many of them seemed dismissive to even mention the car in the first place
Thankfully my experience at Acura for an Integra was much better and the process was smoothed out
An Integra type s? I was curious if those would be easier or harder than CTR.
And yes I was offered to cut the line for a championship white CTR... for 25k ADM 😂
I know someone selling a new one...
Email me the particulars if he doesn’t want a mind bending price for it
> A lot are dick riders of noted grifter and champagne socialist Doug Demuro
Uh... SBO? We *paid money* to read this blog. What does that make us?
Wise and respectable men, obviously.
Part of the problem of being me is that most of my readers are successful and proud people in their own right, and more likely to challenge me than affirm me. Doug plays to a different audience.
He does play a character in his public persona; if I didn’t know him personally, I would detest him.
Clarkson now plays a caricature of himself, as well.
"He does play a character in his public persona"
I'll take your word for that, but I still detest him.
I’ll be honest, I can’t see “detesting” Doug. What are his sins? Wearing two tshirts and being overly exuberant while geeking out over car minutiae? He’s mostly just annoying, so as a result I don’t watch his stuff, but I don’t hate the man for it. Seems like he built a nice life for himself doing something he loves. More than most of us can say. Sure I understand he started out with some insurance settlement or something, but who cares?
The best reason to despise him is that he is a calculating and entirely inauthentic person who has noticeably lowered the quality of every field in which he participates. There's nothing personal about that, but there was also nothing personal about any of the people who closed factories and sent them overseas.
He hides a sharp mind behind a constructed veneer of affable buffoonery.
That's more than enough reason.
I think he was pretty brave to deride meghan markle. Shouldn't have apologised for it. She deserved all that and more. Even though I fully support tate's arrest, and dont agree with the redpill bullshit to an extent that I'm willing to support a sex offender, he had a great take on the markle drama: https://youtu.be/Hg3pI-FnpPs?t=742
He HAS to.
I’d like that comment but will not give you the affirmation
1) if the primary accusation is is being “dick riders”... have you ever spent 90k on a beat ass RS2 because Jack owned it? You ever buy a shirt with something jack says in one of his YouTube videos? You ever buy a car based on a fake “take” provided by jack at the top of an auction website? Doug’s schtick would be easily imitable by anyone with Porsche lawsuit money and a punchable face. I doubt there’s a many people with the capability to reproduce content you see here; I’m paying an artisan for his services. I support a lot of small artists and near homeless people in my personal life, this one just writes about cars
2) if the primary accusation is Jack being a grifter.... he’s doing a really bad job of it (no offense Jack). I see no insta pics with MAGNUM CONDOM WALKER Porsches or big titted press ladies. If I’m missing those lmk
3) if the primary accusation is champagne socialist... cmon now
"You ever buy a shirt with something jack says in one of his YouTube videos?"
In 1997, a BMX team sold a shirt with something I wrote on it. Thankfully, it was a complete and utter failure -- worse yet, I think my first wife threw away MY shirt!
“ZOMG check out my new cars n coffee shirt!!! It says THEEEESSSE buttcheeks only open for DOUG!!!!”
Can't see him as a "top" tbh
Way too much gesticulating to be a top
It was indeed #1. Reading your screed has given me renewed hope that I am not one of those creatures. You paint a bleak picture of his fanbase.
Further, if I ever catch Jack flexing his $5M Nantucket house, I’m reversing the hell out of all my substack charges!
Substack paid for the concrete floor in my barn, which is infinitely more valuable to me than a Nantucket home...
Imagine what you would be able to pay for if you offered mErcH here
Go look at the “previously owned by doug demuro” RS2 he sold. Beat as fuck. Unfortunately Hoover who for all intents and purposes seems more genuine than doug has jumped on the bandwagon too.
FWIW, I bought a DTTS shirt from Jack several years ago.
A bargain at twice the price!
Frat Bros?
A group of patrons providing patronage.
This is fair. I was reminded this morning that several Baruth Substackers (and Wordpressers, before that) have reached out to me via email and LinkedIn. It's rare to be be in a, ugh, *community* that expands beyond silly usernames and profile pictures on a comment feed. And some of the people here ARE danged intelligent and seem full of wisdom, which I respect.
I would trade all of you assholes for ten million loyal YouTube cucks!
Hey, at least your honest. Unfortunately, you would spend your newly found Youtube wealth on broads, booze and racecars, stop making new videos and have to take a job as a Motor Trend writer to pay your legal fees or at least I hope you would. If I have to watch you on Youtube I need Supernova growth followed by failure that is incomprehensible.
a group of patrons patronizing while providing patronage!
A group of patrons being paternal to the paterfamilias!
And I almost forgot. despite all of the above, I have been warned by the C&B moderation team more than once for being too “abrasive” or “mean” about people’s cars (aka people trying to pass off junk). They run that shit like a Facebook community standards pool party. And before anyone says “well you can unhide comments on it!” I have had my comments straight up deleted by their dedicated jannies, I mean mod team, many times.
Fuck jannies in every capacity.
What’s a jannie?
Forum moderators, short for 'janitors'. Think of a hall monitor or HOA president with anonymity.
And how.
THEY DO IT FOR FREE!
Too "abrasive" and "mean?"
I like the cut of your jib!
Sold a car on Craigslist and it was a great experience. Can’t say much for auctions, don’t trust ‘em
CL is my jam.
I used to read BAT before they started the full-scale auction site. In those days, you needed to bring a trailer because what you were buying was probably broken. They always had a lot of weird stuff and it was fun. Now it's all serious business. Maybe the buyers, sellers, and the webmasters aren't very smart but they all have big money and I, being the cheap-ass I am, have been squeezed out.
I've always had decent luck on Craigslist but since they started charging to list used cars the number of listings has dropped. Facebook marketplace has a fair number of the kinds of junkers I favor but if a person really wants to find a specific vehicle, or parts, you need to join the specific facebook group for that vehicle.
Still, don't want it to be too easy. The fun is in the finding not the owning...
I like that CL has started charging a little to weed out some of the the time-wasters, but it does seem that a lot of market share has shifted to FB (well...I assume, since I don't really go there).
"if a person really wants to find a specific vehicle, or parts, you need to join the specific facebook group for that vehicle"
Wow: that's really interesting...so you're saying that there are listings that don't show up if I do a radius search for that specific model?
Yes, because the members are always trolling their local sites and posting up things that aren't posted to Facebook. I almost bought an 88 Dodge Shadow ES Turbo 5 speed someone in the turbo Dodge group linked to. It was listed in a local PA auto auction site. Went for like $800 with fees. Took everything I had to not buy it but I just don't have a place to build it and don't want a divorce that bad.
I've seen lots of other ads and sales in these groups, too. They don't put them in the marketplace, they just post a note saying they want to sell. People know what they have and what the market will bear. Deals get done fast and simple.
I really wanted that thing. It was almost identical to the one I bought new in 1988 with the exception that it was sold with all the option boxes ticked. Who's to say what condition it really was in. It was old and pretty worn out but I didn't see anything to indicate real corrosion problems or terrible mods. It just looked like a well used old car. And it was soooo cheap and just close enough for me to go and get...
I found myself checking on it a couple of times a day and finally I had to say "fuck it, no more." I even dropped out of the Turbo Dodge facebook group. Even looking at that stuff is like picking at an open wound. I already have too much stuff, too little space and other things that require all my resources.
Tom- not sure where you live, but to a first approximation, everything in PA from 88 is riddled with corrosion.
I just looked at a twenty year old Ranger last week. The body was in really good shape, but the suspension was just eaten up.
The brine they put on the roads here is worse than salt.
Thanks. I am in VA and I've seen a lot of cars here the same. Nissan trucks from the same era as my Hardbody can look pretty good on the outside, but can also have fist-sized rust holes in their frames. My truck is from Washington state so no issues and I am careful to ensure that it never goes out on the road where there is any salt down.
Much as I might want it, I really don't have any business buying something like that to work on anyhow.
Facebook groups are also great for rare parts and wheels and ive generally had positive experiences interacting and asking questions vs randomly DMing someone on marketplace
CL around here is full of wheel/tire shops spamming ads. It’s been years since I’ve found something worthwhile on there.
Yeah, it's gotten insane here.
These days I have a short list of specific targets, so I set up a saved search (as specific as possible including transmission, 4WD if I need it) for a and get the email alerts.
Although many of my searches go years between hits (I agree that a significant portion of the traffic has gone elsewhere), it almost eliminates the spam.
It also eliminates a lot of the good bits because people are incapable of properly filling out the boxes.
Craigslist once had affordable sruff. Now it's become AutoTrader.
"Stuff," not "Sruff."
God DAMN this phone and its overly-small buttons.
Always “aito” when I want to type “auto!”
I got Amazon prime just about as soon as it came out. I dumped it a year or so ago partly out of pique with Bezos and mostly because I didn’t see the value in it any longer.
I got burned on counterfeit items twice and now use Amazon only to fill my kindle.
I never used their music at all and their movies only rarely. It’s starting to give me a Facebook 2019 feel, though I’m aware that sounds completely ridiculous.
I’m definitely a mid-stage curmudgeon, but the commerce internet is swirling around the same toilet as the information superhighway internet as far as I can see.
What a shame, it could have been great.
I refuse to use Amazon. Other than some used college textbooks 15 years ago, and some junk an ex-girlfriend finessed me into paying for about a decade ago, they never get my money. I don't care if I end up paying more.
Because screw Bezos.
The move is to keep prime and buy one-time use tools (sold and shopped by Amazon, of course) and return them afterwards. Allegedly.
Idk man returning used condoms sounds sketch af
Surprised no one has made a "those aren't one use!" counter-joke.
SLACKERS.
Well not with that attitude.
Only sailors wear condoms.
The Harbor Freight strategy.
If amazon prime didnt have streaming, I’d have canvelled years ago. The free shipping with movies thing is nice. I’ve stopped buying nice stuff on amazon cause it’s all fake
Almost all of my consumables come from Amazon, most of them on a schedule. I get shitter paper once a month, Tide once a month, paper towels and Cascade pellets and dish soap 3-packs once a quarter, etc etc. I’m sure it costs a little bit more but it automated all the shit I have to buy anyways, I’m never out, and I never have to think about it.
Walmart has a prime competitor that's 90% of the way there and includes free grocery delivery. Never have to worry about fakes anymore and grocery delivery is way more valuable to me than streaming.
Full circle, I guess?
It’s honestly hilarious how fucking Walmart are the good, well, better guys now. Their inventory is their inventory and not rajs from mumbai.
I have a theory as to why Amazon never got quite the level of hate Walmart did (deservedly, IMHO, because I saw it kill the downtowns of many small towns in Texas in the 1990s):
All the same people who railed against Walmart can't live without Amazon.
There are two kinds of people who hate Walmart:
0) people whose small towns were eviscerated by Walmart;
1) people who hate the kind of people who live in small towns
Here in McPherson, KS I was on the city planning commission when the Hell-Mart Stooper Center was under construction in the early 2000s. It was troubling that; at the time of opening, only 8 of the 400 or so employees of the store would have been able to afford a house in our zip code. Granted, we're fairly expensive for Kansas, but come on.
Since then, it abundantly clear that they systemically treat the staff like shit. Also, after running one of the two local competing grocery stores out of business, began raising prices and much less aggressively stocking the shelves.
Our little town is far from "eviscerated" by Wal-Mart. Its actually not that hard to rarely darken their door. This is good, because I don't believe that they deserve my business.
2) people who hate interacting with employees of Walmart who can't speak English
I have not been in a Wal-Mart since 2011; my hometown was so small that there was no local Wal-Mart until 2013!
I’d like to extend my streak to 20 years, or more.
Or people like me who, rightly or wrongly, pin the proliferation of cheap Chinese junk to Wal-Mart!
Walmart would come in and say, "We plan to put up a store in your town".
Town: No, you can't.
Walmart: "Ok, our 2nd choice is across the town line. It's only a half mile. That town will get the property taxes and you won't".
Town: On second thought.
five years later:
Walmart: Thanks for your business, folks. We're shutting this store and opening a Walmart SuperCenter 10 miles down the road.
Town: Wait. What? But you've decimated our retail sector and we have nowhere else to shop.
Walmart: It's just 10 miles. And there's always a Dollar General looking to move in.
Town: Yeah, but what about this big retail box building you're vacating?
Walmart: Not our problem.
SPIRIT HALLOWEEN: COMING SOON
They did that very thing to Chicago. But Chicago deserved it.
Truer words were never spoken. All Trump has to do is publicly praise Amazon and it’ll be on to the next big thing.
I know, right? We've fallen so far.
Yes, I’ve actually used that. I tend to buy directly from whatever company produces what I need now. No question as to authenticity of goods then.
Thanks for the tip!
Their inventory system isn't very good. They're often out of stock on things they say they have, and in a limited sample size I've had two delivery screwups with Walmart compared to years of Amazon deliveries. You also need to get to $35 for free delivery when you pay for Wal Mart, which isn't competitive with Amazon. Not ready for prime time.
Two of my boys do internet marketing. Some of that is on Amazon. They say it's a cesspool of counterfeit items and the one boy says he'd never put anything into his body that came from Amazon
To kill time, I have spent many hours lurking on BaT. I have posted a comment or two. My favorite part of the site is the stilted, scrubbed-by-the-legal-eagles, prose. "The owner reports that this SkyFlash 5000 makes a whooshing sound when it's run off of a cliff. A new parachute was reportedly installed when the oil was checked on February 14, 2023..."
One of my ducklings at Hagerty came from there. The list of hoops he had to jump while writing a description was impressive, in one sense of the word!
I absolutely hate BaT. Not for anything about the site itself, but what it, and their new money bidders, have done to the enthusiast car market.
When I was talking with the seller I bought my 535i from, he pointed to BaT cars as comps. Most were in better shape/had fluid leaks fixed, but the fact that someone was dumb enough to publicly pay $55k for a 535xi wagon with 110k miles shouldn't influence other car sales.
Similarly, two X358 XJ portfolios just sold for 175k and 90k respectively.
This sort of thing puts price pressure on every car of that model, even if it isn't the weird specially optioned one up on BaT.
Agreed. But that's the network effect of the Internet. Raises the price of every rare item. You should see what it's done to books.
Another great example of the decline and fall of the internet. I’ve been trying to get a copy of Ricardo’s High Speed Internal Combustion Engine for a couple of years now. I don’t need a first edition or anything fancy. It’s a ninety year old book that’s been reprinted many times. It’s out of copyright, even.
The cheapest I can find is 245.00!
I’m going to have to haunt library sales near good engineering schools.
Is there a corner of the internet that fetishizes people overpaying for rare books though?
Some dude on BaT at least bid 175k for a 14 year old XJ. That's just nuts
"Is there a corner of the internet that fetishizes people overpaying for rare books though?"
Not really. There ARE people like that but they are not Extremely Online.
What is that, like fifty cents a mile? For a USED BMW?
What a moron.
As the owner of a deep sea blue, manual, M-sport 535i... I'll say it's by far the best looking E60 you can get.
That combo seems to pop up frequently on BaT, and the wagons go for more. That particular wagon had very nearly every possible option box checked on it. It's a unique car.
Still wildly overpriced for what it is.
I credit bangle with making m sport package a necessity on any bmw. Just look at a non m sport 525i. Looks like a slightly y2k'd camry. Bangle was a pretty visionary guy in that regards.
Funny, but I just bought a car on BaT and picked it up on Tuesday. The key for me was buying from an established BaT seller who has sold hundreds of cars on the site. The car turned out to be way better in person than the description and the 200 photos on BaT. The dealer was very responsive and even did some excellent cosmetic work for me on the car before I picked it up. All in all, a great seamless experience and I’m totally pleased with the deal I got. I would never buy a car on BaT from an individual without inspecting the car first. C&B doesn’t interest me at all.
In a saner world, you could have bought it from him directly. Ten years ago, you would have.
Are people who sell hundreds of cars on the site dealers? Are they buying registering driving these cars and just buy and sell a lot or do they buy them locally then "list them" without ever registering them. Hundreds of cars is a lot of cars!
In the case of the car I bought, the title was in the dealer’s name. My car was a California car and the dealer was in New Jersey. These dealers have independent reps around the country who look for cars that the dealer knows will be appealing on BaT. It appears that the business model of the dealer I bought from is to usually list these cars on BaT at No Reserve, so while he may not get top dollar for each listing, he is making money on the volume of cars he sells. The cars are not sitting on his lot, once they list on BaT at No Reserve they’re sold in 7 days. I just checked and this dealer sold 55 cars on BaT in March.
There is a group of dealers who sell directly or sell on consignment hundreds of cars there. That level of volume gets them a reputation which rapidly gets pointed out in the their auction comments.
I'm in particular thinking of the 70's bike flipper, what's-his-name, Ultra-something.