TCG Stories

One claim we hear an awful lot about these days is the prospect of money laundering on Bring a Trailer, especially in the case of auctions wherein a car or truck sells for far more than expected. Like any entity that becomes the top dog in a given market, it's not long before the lines in the sand are drawn and the knives are sharpened. It's part of the human condition; we must go after the people or things sitting in the position we wish to occupy. 

I am not an expert on how the truly wealthy spend or hide their money. I am confident there's some aspect of money shuffling or money hiding that helps them escape some level of tax burdens the rest of us sack up and pay each year. But a commenter on a recent auction wherein a W124-chassis Mercedes-Benz E320 sold for an eye-watering amount (north of $150,000) made a prolific point I'll not soon forget:

"I’m happy for the result and for all parties involved and viewing. It helps to provide any casual observer that passion is not dead for these cars! Well done by all. A few points to consider… There are several banks paying 5% on CDs today. There are 3300+ billionaires in the world now. 10 times more than in the year 2000. $1,000,000,000 x 5% = $136,986 interest income for ONE DAY! Do you think none of these individuals have and drive cars? Everyone reading this post could have wood or linoleum countertops in their kitchens. But you don’t, do you? It’s all relative. Don’t be quick to judge others under your own circumstances."

I don't think I live under a rock but I'll be honest - I never considered just how much money a billionaire makes while their money sits in the bank. Collecting enough interest in one day that easily outpaces many annual salaries is a truly impressive spectacle, but it also happens far more than we think - and that says nothing about the "mere" millionaires who still clear a very respectable amount in interest, certainly enough to warrant more than the occasional fun money purchase on Bring a Trailer. 

For years, two things happened: we only saw car auctions through the lens of Mecum and Barrett-Jackson, and we never gave non-collector cars in outstanding condition an opportunity to shine in an auction-style format. Bring a Trailer made the large auction house result possible for non-collector cars and trucks and opened up the specialty vehicle marketplace to anyone, any time, anywhere. 

While it's tempting, and perhaps, comforting to think that these auction results are the stuff of financial hijinks, there's an equal possibility that we're simply peeking behind the curtain for the first time of how the world's elite spend their money. 

Tell us we're right without telling us we're right. The need for documentation, particularly among high-end collector vehicles, is more important than ever - especially as the premier vehicle auction services move to increasingly digital formats. You're buying a car that potentially costs north of six figures, so leaving any stone unturned is a major risk. 

Porsche recently announced the debut of its Porsche Vehicle Documentation service. This is a two-pronged offer, which focuses on the Porsche Product Specifications (PPS), which contains "....your vehicle's original production card specifications, including optional equipment, exterior and interior color, engine and transmission type, production completion date and manufacturer's suggested retail price when available."

The second tier of the service is Classic Technical Certificate (CTC). The CTC "....includes original vehicle data at the time it was delivered, such as date of production, exterior and interior color, interior material, and option equipment."

Porsche is addressing the fact that owners want to know more about their cars, and they want it in an electronic format. While the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) has been offered for years, it's a fairly manual process. By taking the simple step to move these services into an online, all-digital format, Porsche is signaling how critical digital documentation is to the future of collector and vintage vehicles. 

As a startup, we routinely have to come face-to-face with limitations: time, money, and energy, among other finite resources. There are only so many hours in the day; only so many ways to discuss the problem we are trying to solve. But one thing is clear: you're not going to simply "CarFax" the vintage car records problem. 

I spotted a sponsored post on Facebook from a company going by the name of "Bumper." The ad made it sound like you could simply punch in your VIN number (while also providing a credit card after your free trial runs out) and unlock years' of mystery surrounding your 1976 Chevy Nova. There's even an antique car from the 50s in the Facebook ad. 

Of course, you can imagine the firestorm in the comments. Everyone with a VIN number from a car older than 1981 finds out at the same time that no, a magical solution still doesn't exist for vintage vehicle histories. The simple fact is it takes a lot of work to build a digital history for a vehicle over a certain age. Or even for vehicles tracked by CarFax but serviced by a specialist shop that doesn't use CarFax, the same problem exists. 

We espouse an approach that is driven by the owner of the vehicle in question, or from The Common Gear itself, as we'll come out and document your entire collection. Once we have a significant number of end users, we'll begin to build a nationwide repository of significant, milestone events in the lives of vintage cars and trucks. 

It's hard work - and time intensive - but we'll all be glad it exists once the heavy lifting is done. 

When we talk about the importance of receipts and invoices in the world of collector and vintage cars, we often hit on the value these records provide when proving you've made a certain level of investment in a vehicle. However, there's also a side to this that provides some comfort your shop of choice is performing the work as promised, or as described. I have a tale of caution that comes from a shop relationship that went sour, and how the lack of invoices for work performed was a major red flag.

The vehicle in question was a 1986 Isuzu Trooper that, quite honestly, was a bit of a fright pig. It ran, drove, and stopped, but it needed plenty of fine-tuning. I had a shop in Jamestown, Rhode Island with a small vintage/hobby car operation lined up to install a lift kit and fine-tune the jetting on the carb. Your first red flag is how long it takes the shop to actually pull your rig into the garage; in my case, it was about six months after it arrived on their property. 

The first wave of work focused on the lift kit install, which was nothing ridiculous. Now, the truck did run decently, but it would occasionally cut out and stall. So, once the suspension was sorted out (and this occurred without issue), they turned to the carb issues. Supposedly, all was resolved and I paid my bill. However, I didn't receive an invoice of any kind; I was simply told that the carb needed some new O-rings or other miscellaneous hardware and the suspension install was clearly done based on visual inspection. 

Here's when things get screwy: when I went to pick up the truck, I was told the stalling issue had come back and I likely needed new valve seals. At the same time, it was suggested that they do some paintwork to preserve the unique patina on the roof (clear-coating it, essentially.) I didn't care about the paintwork but it seemed like a reasonable thing to do given the shop had an excellent reputation for bodywork. But I ended up paying another bill - with no invoice - and the truck supposedly still didn't run right. All told, for someone who prides himself on being astute in my record-keeping, I was blinded by the fact that no other shop wanted to work on this truck. I willingly gave the shop quite a bit of air cover and should have been demanding printed records if for no other reason than to have them stand behind the work they claimed they were doing. 

Invoices and shop receipts are not just a nice-to-have when it comes time to sell a car. They are also critical for having your shop in question put some skin in the game to confirm both parties agree with the quoted work being completed to a satisfactory level. 

For a short time, the impressive reach and results of Bring A Trailer auctions made some pundits question whether the large, booze-fueled in-person car auction was dead. Mecum, Barrett-Jackson, and all the rest were immediately seen as dinosaurs in a tech-laden age, no doubt helped by co-mingling restrictions ushered in by COVID-19.

That's all but done now, and as the upcoming Amelia Island exhibit shows us, those same pundits were a little too quick to begin pouring the dirt around the gravemarker they made for the showy auction circuit attended by well-heeled collectors, who show up in force both to buy cars and to rub elbows. In fact, it may be more of the latter that is meaningful for a larger portion of attendees who never actually come home with new garage art.

Amelia Island looks to return in force, and Hagerty Insurance once again appears to have threaded the needle perfectly, as their online auction platform known as Broad Arrow Group will have a sizeable, in-person presence at the event. That's a claim Bring A Trailer cannot make, and as such, many collectors don't see the digital upstart as a lifestyle brand as Hagerty is quickly becoming. 

Does it matter? It's hard to say, but I don't think it's possible for BaT to have the same sort of cache as a week-long event in a gorgeous setting like Amelia Island and surrounded by beautiful millionaires and billionaires. When Hagerty bought Broad Arrow and launched its auction business, I didn't necessarily see the point given they were entering into a now-crowded space. A year later and with a significant presence in an arena BaT cannot play, I feel differently. 

While the auction landscape has certainly changed, the number of colleagues that are attending Amelia tells me that the in-person auction is far from dead, and in fact has plenty of room to mature into a week-long escape that rivals the likes of the parties depicted in The Great Gatsby. And if your auction platform only exists in the digital world as opposed to the real one, the playing field may be more level than we thought. 

Adam Levine, frontman for the pop-rock band Maroon 5, is learning the hard way how a classic car can be misrepresented at even the highest levels of the hobby. Various outlets reported this week how Levine is suing a renowned collector dealer for selling him a Maserati Ghibli drop-top with fudged ID numbers in exchange for two very-real Ferraris, a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4 and a 1968 Ferrari 365 GTC.

Of course, the internet sneered at Levine, seemingly basking in the afterglow of a rich guy getting screwed (guess what - he has more than enough money to weather the indignity of driving a doctored Maserati.) The bigger issue is that the selling dealer provided authentic documentation that matched a real-deal factory convertible living overseas; the obvious fly in the ointment was that Levine noticed after the purchase transpired that the VIN, build plate, and various stampings on the car had been altered after the fact to match the documentation. The devil was in the details as the font style on the stampings and plates didn't match what Maserati used in 1971, but Levine took the seller's word that the car was a genuine, factory-built convertible without checking those details against what the factory was using. 

The real oversight here was that the Maserati was apparently pulled from an auction in 2015 over concerns that it was misrepresented. This, to me, is where Levine and his people should have aborted the transaction, or at least greater due diligence when a high-profile car like this which would undoubtedly have many suitors leaves a major auction circuit under a cloud of suspicion. 

We see time and again how a lack of digitization and deep paper trails of high-dollar cars can lead to unfortunate situations like these. As collectors and enthusiasts, we should all have higher standards, especially of dealers that make a good living selling cars like the one in question. 

As you likely have figured out, we love documentation here at The Common Gear. The idea of documentation, of course, goes well beyond just maintenance records; documentation also includes details like build sheets, competition history, and of course, the official invoice from AMG when you fork over the cash to turn your sedate W124 sedan into a real-deal Hammer. 

The upcoming Amelia Island auction will feature one of the elusive AMG "Hammer" sedans based off of a standard Mercedes-Benz 300E. In addition to plenty of cosmetic tweaking to make the car look quite a bit more aggressive than the standard production model, the biggest transformation came under the hood. The silky inline-six was removed and a 5.5L V8 from the S-Class was dropped in, albeit with a twin cam, four-valve setup good for 355 horsepower, and just under 400 lb-ft of torque. 

In addition to being completely restored by renowned Mercedes tuner Renntech, the one-of-30-made 300E "Hammer" also comes with supporting documentation that shows how these special cars are ordered by high net-worth customers with the means to have the likes of AMG build the exact car of their dreams. The original owner of this Hammer was Don Byerly, who owned a food manufacturing and distribution operation in Minnesota. The invoices from AMG reveal that after spending roughly $40,000 in 1987 money for the standard 300E, Byerly coughed up an additional $98,000 for his car to receive the high-performance treatment. With a tick over 32,000 miles on the clock, the car is fresh out of reconditioning by RENNTech, the North American service facility for AMG cars, to the tune of $79,000. 

The best part about the history file of this special German performance sedan is four simple words on the sales invoice: Build into a Hammer. The 1980s were special times, indeed. 

In 2022, Barrett-Jackson organizers heralded a return to normalcy as one of the highlights of the first major in-person event held by the famed auction house. The numbers suggested attendees were riding high as well, as Barrett-Jackson notched record total sales to the tune of over $203 million in automobile and automobilia sales. 

Early reports seem to indicate 2023 was a year for cooling, as total sales rang in at just over $184 million. You can always tell when the results aren't what was expected, as there's next to no news coverage about the total sales. Just three cars eclipsed the million-dollar mark, with those honors going to a modified Ferrari F40, a Porsche Carrera GT, and a Ford GT, the latter two cars being among the soundest investments you can make on four wheels these days.

Now, I don't know if this was a big year for automobilia - metal signs and such - but generally speaking, if the results for automobiles are off, people buying garage art are likely to run cooler as well. 

Like Bring A Trailer, the big auction houses will continue to see strong money among the most well-heeled of collectors, so I don't expect to see much of a drop among buyers who can swing a seven-figure purchase. The concern is the middle of the market and "upper middle" where you suddenly see folks pulling back. Low six-figure cars and upper fives were a very meaty part of the pack over the last two years, and I suspect those buyers are going to keep the brakes on until some level of confidence returns across the overall economy. 

For the top-tier earners, however, there's likely to be some big-ticket bargains coming as the buying power shifts in their favor. 

Recently, a sale on the enthusiast auction site Bring A Trailer raised a few eyebrows - namely, almost the entire internet. A high sale price on the digital auction platform is not all that unusual; after all, Bring A Trailer has a long waiting list because of the above-market numbers cars routinely hit. But sometimes, a number is so batshit crazy that it causes every armchair quarterback to hold onto their La-Z-Boy armrest for dear life.

Money laundering. Shill bidding. Fake bidders. The accusations ran long and hot when a very clean (but certainly not showroom condition) MK2 Volkswagen GTI 16-valve sold for a ridiculous $87,000. No MK2 VW in recent memory - or possibly, ever - has hammered home for that kind of price. It simply doesn't happen, with top-shelf examples barely cracking $50,000 for the time being. 

The internet has been ablaze with comments about this car, ranging from keyboard warriors defending the mega-rich ("Money is no object, the price paid is nothing to them") to seemingly low-rent private eyes who have spent years studying how the car hobby is a den of thieves looking to wash dirty money. Now, there is precedent for this, as you don't have to Google too hard to find evidence of car dealerships being fairly popular targets for money-washing operations.

But the question remains: is that what happened here? 

The simple math says it makes no logical sense why the bidding went the way it did, especially since either buyer could have likely bought the car for less had it been allowed to end up as a no-sale given there was certainly a reserve on it. Let's say the reserve was $40,000 and they both sat on their hands; could it have been bought for $45,000, post-auction? 

The other part of this is the uncomfortable one for a lot of people, which is that some folks - and good for them - simply have enough money to burn that "wasting" it on a dream car is fairly meaningless. I do not live in that world, nor do most of my car-loving friends. But the last few years have been wonky, with everything from BitCoin millionaires to suburban housewives starting a COVID-19 testing clinic and raking in millions in government contracts. If anything, it shows us that there are seemingly myriad ways to earn a buck, and in this case, several bucks. 

And bottom line: if this was a shill operation, we'll never know. Bring A Trailer is extremely protective of its reputation, especially given the company it now keeps with high-dollar clientele. From where I'm sitting, $87K buys several other vehicles I'd rather own. 

One of the rarer vehicles on the north Georgia property - and really, it's legitimately rare - is a 1962 Chevrolet Impala SS Golden Anniversary edition. Like so many other General Motors special edition models, it was purely cosmetic in nature, but with less than 330 examples made, it seems likely there are fewer than 150 still on the road. 

Contributing to the obscurity is the fact that the Golden Anniversary Impala wasn't marketed as a standard production model. Dealers were allowed to order them as part of their standard allocation, but customers didn't know about it as Chevy didn't list it in the brochures as an option. Since it was literally just a paint job, it also seems likely that actual Golden Anniversary cars were repainted some non-factory color as they became just another used car, especially since the Golden Anniversary option wasn't limited to high-spec models like an SS. In other words, a dealer could order a base-model Impala sedan with the Golden Anniversary paint - a car that would almost certainly become disposable after a few years on the road. 

This car is perhaps the most desirable spec: an SS two-door, and believed to have originally had a 327 under the hood. The car suffered a rear-end impact back in the day, which is what sent it to a salvage yard. The VIN and tag on the firewall confirm this is a Golden Anniversary car, as does the unique interior trim and paint. This is a car that absolutely should be restored given its rarity and equipment, and there's a second Impala SS on the property with tree damage to the roof that could easily offer up the necessary body panels to repair the ancient accident damage on the Golden Anniversary car.