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.
Apr 7, 2023·edited Apr 7, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
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.
Apr 7, 2023·edited Apr 7, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
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.
Apr 7, 2023·edited Apr 7, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Your comment on consumer protection reminded me of a situation from a few years ago. A wealthy guy on the West Coast bought a 23 window 1959 VW bus at a Mecum auction. He paid over $100k for it, and the bus turned out to be a “fugazi”
He posted it on thesamba.com out of excitement for his new purchase, and to share pictures with that community. Forum members there looked at pictures of this guy’s acquisition, and analyzed them like the Zapruder film. They collectively determined that it could not be the genuine article. A lawsuit against Mecum followed. If anyone has the time and curiosity, you can read all 30+ pages about that situation here:
As to Mecum, that is the last auction I would buy a foreign car from. Though plenty of foreign classics go through their auctions, their bread and butter seems to be American cars from the ‘50s - ‘70s. I’ve caught a few of their auctions on TV when nothing else is on, and the people doing the commentary have a deep knowledge of muscle cars, and will prattle on at length about whatever is being sold.
A VW comes up for bid? Their comments dry up, and to keep from being completely silent, they say things like “That’s one of those foreign jobs with the engine in the back”
“Back in the day, those were everywhere!”
Once interest in muscle cars dries up, Mecum is going to have a tough row to hoe.
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 ...?
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).
Another fan of Carmax here. Over the years, Mrs. Higgins and I have sold nine cars to them. Their process is quick, and their offers have generally been solid for what we were offloading. We just made a point not to conduct our transactions on weekends, when things get super busy there.
On two occasions, we sold cars to Carvana. This was prior to the pandemic, when they were building up their inventory, and were being more generous than Carmax with their offers. Carvana had a physical location that was about an hour away (under ideal traffic circumstances) in a different state, so the ease of them sending a flatbed to our house was nice, but we preferred being able to unload a car whenever we had the availability (like selling to Carmax) versus scheduling a pickup ahead of time, where we both had to make an effort to be at home. One of the cars we sold to Carvana was a manual 2018 124 Spider Abarth, which I still regret selling. Carvana sold it right away.
And I’ve sold two cars privately. Those are not experiences I want to repeat anytime soon. Both cars sold for what I wanted, but those sales required a lot of time and patience.
(I’m not even going to mention the # of cars I’ve traded in, as you all don’t need to hear everything about my serious “Car A.D.D.”)
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.
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.
Apr 6, 2023·edited Apr 6, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
"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.
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!
Your comment on consumer protection reminded me of a situation from a few years ago. A wealthy guy on the West Coast bought a 23 window 1959 VW bus at a Mecum auction. He paid over $100k for it, and the bus turned out to be a “fugazi”
He posted it on thesamba.com out of excitement for his new purchase, and to share pictures with that community. Forum members there looked at pictures of this guy’s acquisition, and analyzed them like the Zapruder film. They collectively determined that it could not be the genuine article. A lawsuit against Mecum followed. If anyone has the time and curiosity, you can read all 30+ pages about that situation here:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=694683&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
As to Mecum, that is the last auction I would buy a foreign car from. Though plenty of foreign classics go through their auctions, their bread and butter seems to be American cars from the ‘50s - ‘70s. I’ve caught a few of their auctions on TV when nothing else is on, and the people doing the commentary have a deep knowledge of muscle cars, and will prattle on at length about whatever is being sold.
A VW comes up for bid? Their comments dry up, and to keep from being completely silent, they say things like “That’s one of those foreign jobs with the engine in the back”
“Back in the day, those were everywhere!”
Once interest in muscle cars dries up, Mecum is going to have a tough row to hoe.
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 ...?
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.
Another fan of Carmax here. Over the years, Mrs. Higgins and I have sold nine cars to them. Their process is quick, and their offers have generally been solid for what we were offloading. We just made a point not to conduct our transactions on weekends, when things get super busy there.
On two occasions, we sold cars to Carvana. This was prior to the pandemic, when they were building up their inventory, and were being more generous than Carmax with their offers. Carvana had a physical location that was about an hour away (under ideal traffic circumstances) in a different state, so the ease of them sending a flatbed to our house was nice, but we preferred being able to unload a car whenever we had the availability (like selling to Carmax) versus scheduling a pickup ahead of time, where we both had to make an effort to be at home. One of the cars we sold to Carvana was a manual 2018 124 Spider Abarth, which I still regret selling. Carvana sold it right away.
And I’ve sold two cars privately. Those are not experiences I want to repeat anytime soon. Both cars sold for what I wanted, but those sales required a lot of time and patience.
(I’m not even going to mention the # of cars I’ve traded in, as you all don’t need to hear everything about my serious “Car A.D.D.”)
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.
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.