The Daily Vroom

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

The No Reserve Temptation

Spend enough time watching auctions and you start to notice patterns.

Over the last few weeks, I've been paying particularly close attention to no reserve listings across multiple platforms. Not one platform, not one seller, just a broad cross-section of the market. The pattern I've noticed is surprisingly consistent. A car is sitting at what feels like a very low number, bidding is relatively quiet, and then a bidder with little or no visible history suddenly appears and makes a much larger jump than you'd normally expect. Instead of moving the auction forward by a few hundred dollars, the bid jumps significantly more.

Now, that doesn't mean anything improper is happening. The bidder could be completely legitimate. They could be new to the platform, not care about bidder history, and simply want the car. The reality is that nobody outside the platform truly knows. But when you see the same pattern repeat often enough, it's difficult not to wonder about it.

Before going any further, it's worth acknowledging that the major auction platforms take this seriously. They investigate suspicious activity, review accounts, and flag bidders when concerns are raised. No platform wants buyers questioning the integrity of its marketplace because trust is ultimately the foundation that makes the entire model work.

At the same time, I understand the temptation.

Selling a car at no reserve sounds great when bidding is strong and the market is doing the work for you. It's much less enjoyable when you've spent years owning a car, improving it, maintaining it, and preparing it for sale, only to watch it sit at a number that feels miles away from reality.

Experienced sellers will tell you not to worry because the real bidding happens in the final minutes, and more often than not they're right. But human beings aren't always rational when money is involved, especially when they're staring at a screen and watching an asset they've invested heavily in sitting at what feels like a giveaway price.

I've also heard plenty of stories over the years about sellers refusing to complete transactions when no reserve auctions end lower than expected. Platforms can't force someone to hand over a title. Usually the seller gets banned, their reputation takes a hit, and everyone moves on. Again, I'm not defending it. I'm simply acknowledging that people are risk averse, and no reserve auctions require a level of trust and emotional discipline that not every seller is comfortable with.

It's also worth remembering that none of this is unique to online auctions. Auction controversies have existed for as long as auctions have existed. Last year, a Mecum sale generated widespread attention after bidding was accepted after the hammer had fallen and the vehicle had effectively been declared sold. Whether you agreed with how it was handled or not, the reaction showed how sensitive buyers are to anything that appears to compromise the integrity of the process.

That's really what this comes down to. I've watched enough auctions over the years to know that not every suspicious-looking bid is suspicious. New bidders enter the market every day, and sometimes people simply bid differently than we'd expect. But I've also watched enough auctions to know that not every bid is necessarily what it appears to be.

Personally, I don't think the question is whether this happens. Every marketplace in history has dealt with some version of the same issue. The more interesting question is whether bidders simply accept it as part of the game. Is a certain amount of attempted manipulation inevitable in any competitive marketplace? Should platforms be doing more? Would additional transparency help? Or is this simply the tradeoff we accept in exchange for the excitement and opportunity that no reserve auctions create?

Because at the end of the day, auctions only work when buyers believe the process is fair. The moment that confidence disappears, the entire model starts to break down.

I'd be interested to hear where you stand on this one.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

Good Morning Vroomers,

What a week. More than 1,300 cars changed hands across the major auction platforms, generating over $51.3 million in sales. At this point, seven-figure results are becoming a weekly occurrence. Last week it was a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder that sold for just under $3 million. The week before, it was a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTS.

As fun as those headline-grabbing sales are, they aren't really what this market is about. The average enthusiast car still trades hands for somewhere around $33,000, with that figure moving up or down depending on the platform. That's where most of the action happens.

What's been interesting lately is the number of people who want in. I've had two different groups reach out recently, both pitching new auction platforms and explaining why they're going to do things differently. Whether either of them actually launches remains to be seen, but it says something about the state of the market when new players are still looking for a seat at the table.

Today, we're taking a look at a handful of auctions that are flying under the radar as they head toward the finish line.

Auction of The Day

There are certain cars where the final few hours of an auction feel a little different. This Fairlady Z432 is one of them.

Cars like this simply don't come up very often. Nissan built only a few hundred Z432s between 1969 and 1973, and for many enthusiasts it's the ultimate version of the Z. Not because it's the fastest, but because it's the one that got the engine everyone wanted. The legendary S20 straight-six from the Skyline GT-R, complete with triple carburetors, four valves per cylinder and a 7,500-rpm redline.

What I've always loved about the Z432 is that it feels like the version Nissan built for itself.

The standard 240Z was the car that conquered America. The Z432 was the car that showed what Nissan's engineers could really do when they weren't worrying about volume sales, emissions regulations or keeping the price competitive.

Today we talk about halo cars all the time, but that's exactly what this was. A low-volume, high-performance flagship that cost nearly twice as much as an entry-level Fairlady Z when new.

The other reason this auction caught my attention is because opportunities to buy one are so rare. Most enthusiasts can go years without seeing a Z432 offered publicly, let alone one presented to this standard. That's why I expect the bidding to get a lot more interesting as the clock winds down.

At the time of writing, the car sits at $123,456, which feels more like the starting point than the final destination.

Whether you're a Nissan enthusiast or not almost doesn't matter. This is one of those cars that reminds you why people fall down automotive rabbit holes in the first place.

No Reserve Auctions To Keep An Eye On

Every week there are a handful of auctions that get all the attention. This isn't one of them.

At the time of writing, this 1989 Ford Bronco II has just one comment, 11 bids, and a high bid of $3,600. Most people scrolling through Cars & Bids will probably spend more time looking at the latest GT3 RS or G-Wagen than they will this old Ford. And that's exactly why it caught my attention.

The seller claims to have spent more than $10,000 bringing it back to life, and unlike a lot of restoration claims online, this one actually seems believable. Suspension work, steering components, fuel system work, brakes, ignition components and more have all been addressed recently. It sounds like somebody bought an old truck they genuinely liked and simply started fixing things. Not because it made financial sense, but because that's what you do when you want to keep something on the road.

I've always had a soft spot for vehicles like this. They're not valuable enough to be collectibles. They're not new enough to be practical daily drivers. They just exist in that sweet spot where somebody cared enough to save them when most people wouldn't have bothered.

The other thing working in this Bronco's favor is that it's a no-reserve auction. At $3,600, we're already in the territory where finding a decent running, driving, four-wheel-drive truck for the money is becoming increasingly difficult. Add in the five-speed manual transmission and suddenly this starts looking like a lot of truck for not a lot of money.

Sometimes the most interesting opportunities aren't the cars everybody is watching. They're the ones nobody is.

This is one of those auctions that reminds you how much work goes into building a proper track car. Not a track-inspired car. Not a car with a few bolt-ons. A real one.

This 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo has spent years being developed into a PCA SP3 racer, and the spec sheet reads exactly how you'd want it to. MOTON three-way coilovers, full cage, BRAID wheels, Recaros, data acquisition, upgraded suspension throughout, and a logbook showing a genuine competition history.

What I like most is that nothing about it feels accidental. Every modification points toward the same goal. Faster laps.

The comments tell part of the story too. A former driver of the car calls it an "absolute treat" on track, while another notes the logbook records roughly 26 PCA events.

Sure, it's not perfect. The body shows the scars of doing what it was built to do, and a few commenters raised the usual 944 Turbo questions about chips and engine longevity. But that's almost part of the appeal. Nobody is pretending this is a garage queen.

There are always buyers looking for clean, stock 944 Turbos. This one is for the person who wants to skip years of development and go straight to the fun part.

There was a time when a supercharged Range Rover Sport would have been one of the hottest things on any enthusiast auction site. Today, it feels like buyers see the mileage, see a few known issues, remember every Range Rover horror story they've ever heard, and keep scrolling.

That's what makes this one interesting. Underneath all the scary headlines is still a supercharged 4.2-liter V8 Range Rover Sport, arguably the most desirable drivetrain ever offered in the model. The seller has also been surprisingly forthcoming throughout the auction, openly discussing the air suspension issues, explaining why the truck sat, and volunteering additional faults that weren't even in the original listing. Whether you're interested in the truck or not, that level of transparency is becoming increasingly rare.

No, this isn't the sort of auction where you're buying perfection. The next owner will almost certainly have a list of things to sort out, and anyone expecting Toyota ownership costs should probably look elsewhere. But that's also why these auctions can get interesting. Most bidders spend so much time thinking about what could go wrong that they stop looking at what's actually being offered.

With the auction winding down, this feels like one of those listings where the conversation around the vehicle is far more negative than the vehicle itself. Latest bid at time of writing is just $1,300. Seems like a good opportunity to me…

The Daily Vroom

Sale of the Day

There are certain cars where the hammer price almost doesn't matter.

This 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Coupe sold for an impressive $162k on Cars & Bids yesterday, but the interesting part wasn't the final number. It was watching so many people (including myself) collectively fall in love with the same car.

I've already said it in the comments, but I genuinely can't imagine this car in any other colors. Moss Green over Cognac isn't just a good spec, it's the whole reason the car works. Change either one and I don't think we're talking about a $162k sale today.

What's always fascinating with cars like this is how many people don't realize what they're looking at initially. One commenter admitted they thought it was a $30,000 car before seeing where the bidding went. That's the thing about the 280SE 3.5 Coupe. On paper it's an old Mercedes. In reality it's one of the most elegant cars Mercedes ever built and one of the few classics that seems to appeal equally to seasoned collectors and people who simply appreciate beautiful design.

The bidding got serious once it crossed six figures, eventually turning into a battle between three bidders before settling at $162,777. Was it a big number? Absolutely. Was it surprising? Not really. Exceptional examples of exceptional cars tend to find their level eventually.

The lesson here isn't that W111 values are suddenly exploding. It's that when the right car shows up, the market still knows exactly what it's looking at.

Nearly Sale of The Day

I spent far too much time watching this Saleen S7 Twin Turbo auction, it was enjoyable though.

Going into the final few minutes, I wasn't convinced it was going to sell. The same car crossed the block at Mecum in 2020 and failed to meet reserve after reaching $750,000, so there was always a question mark hanging over this auction.

What surprised me wasn't that it ended as an RNM. It was where the bidding stopped.

For a while, this felt like one of those auctions that was about to completely take off. There were multiple bidders throwing around serious money, tens of thousands of views, and the kind of engagement you normally associate with a car that's heading somewhere special.

Instead, the bidding stalled at $715k. Maybe that's the market speaking. Or maybe it's simply a reminder that finding two people willing to spend serious money on a Saleen S7 is one thing. Finding two people willing to spend the seller's number is something else entirely.

What's fascinating is that almost everyone seems to agree the car is special. The Saleen S7 isn't just another supercar. For a lot of enthusiasts, it's the American supercar. The poster car. The video game car. The car they dreamed about when Ferrari and Lamborghini felt almost ordinary.

That's why I thought this one had more room to run. A one-owner, Beryllium Orange S7 Twin Turbo doesn't come around very often, and when multiple bidders started pushing the number higher and higher, I genuinely thought we were heading toward a result that would make the reserve irrelevant.

We weren't. The big question now is whether the market has spoken twice, or whether the right buyer simply hasn't shown up yet.

Personally, I'm not convinced we've seen the final chapter of this story. Also not a bad car for the seller to ‘have to keep’.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

The most interesting thing about this Cars & Bids auction isn't the car.

It's what happened when the notification hit people's phones.

A 2000 BMW M5 listed by Kennan appeared on the app and for a brief moment the E39 community thought the unthinkable had happened. Kennan was finally selling his M5.

The comments were immediate.

"Anyone else see the notification and spit out their water."

"That notification scared me lol."

"Almost jumped out of my skin."

"I thought this was the end of an era."

In reality, this isn't Kennan's personal car. In fact, he addressed the panic in his opening comment:

"Haha sorry to startle you - my personal M5 isn't going anywhere!"

Think about that for a second.

How many people in the online auction world have become so associated with a single car that an auction notification creates genuine concern among enthusiasts? That's actually what I find fascinating here.

Over the years, Kennan has probably become one of the biggest ambassadors for the E39 M5 anywhere on the internet. The fact that dozens of people immediately assumed he was selling his own car tells you just how closely the two have become linked.

As for the car itself, it's exactly the sort of example you'd expect to carry the Kennan stamp of approval. Just 45,000 miles, extensive service records going back decades, original documentation, and the kind of ownership history enthusiasts spend years looking for.

The auction still has a few days left to run, but one thing is already clear.

The day Kennan actually decides to sell his own E39 M5, the notification might just break the internet.

What fascinates me about this Porsche isn't the car itself, it's the process.

The previous owner spent over 45 years turning a standard 356 into his vision of a Carrera GTL Abarth-inspired coupe. Forty-five years. Just think about that for a second.

Today, if you want to build something like this, you open Google, find a few photos, watch a YouTube video and ask ChatGPT a few questions.

This project started long before any of that existed. The seller included letters sent to Porsche Germany, homologation papers, hand-drawn sketches and decades worth of research material. Back then, finding the information was half the battle.

I also think this car is a reminder that not every collector car needs to be original. In fact, I suspect the reason this car resonates with so many people is because it wasn't built for an auction. It wasn't built for Instagram. It wasn't built because someone thought it would be worth more money one day.

It was built because one owner became obsessed with an idea and spent decades chasing it. Whether you love the modifications or hate them almost doesn't matter. The commitment alone is worth admiring.

There are plenty of first-generation Mustangs online. There aren't many that have spent their entire lives in the same family.

This 1965 Mustang Convertible was purchased new by the seller's father, a Pan Am pilot, who traded in his 1949 Chevrolet for one of Ford's brand-new Mustangs in late 1964. More than sixty years later, it's still in the family's hands. That's the part of the story I find fascinating.

Think about how easily this car could have disappeared.

It could have been sold in the 1970s when it was just an old used car. It could have been scrapped when it stopped running. It could have been abandoned after sitting for years while mice moved in and the tires dry-rotted in the garage. Instead, it somehow survived all of it.

My favorite detail is that the seller and his brother would occasionally sneak the car out for short drives while it was in storage, keeping it alive just enough to maintain the connection. That's the sort of thing you only do when a car means something more than transportation.

Eventually the family decided to bring it back properly. A 289 V8 replaced the original six-cylinder, a four-speed manual was fitted, the suspension and brakes were upgraded, and more recently the car was stripped to bare metal and repainted. By the seller's estimate, roughly $50,000 has gone into the project.

What's interesting is that none of those upgrades are really the story.

The story is that this Mustang has remained part of one family's life since Lyndon Johnson was President. Most classic cars eventually become someone else's problem, someone else's project, someone else's memory.

This one never did. And that's becoming increasingly rare.

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast — but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Following on from their $2.9m sale on Monday, DuPont Live had another stellar sales day with the Porsche Speedster top of their list of sales yesterday.

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Cars & Bids After Sonoma

Coming down from the excellent weekend Cars & Bids had at Sonoma is a bit like coming back from vacation and heading straight back to work. It's never quite as exciting.

Still, the first two days back weren't bad at all.

Across the last two days, Cars & Bids sold 77 of 106 listings, good for a 72.6% sell-through rate. That's a strong number by any measure and a reminder that the platform has no problem selling cars. Some days are better than others, but buyers are clearly still showing up.

The more interesting question is whether Sonoma will help Cars & Bids attract more high-dollar inventory.

Of course, there's a catch. The listings that closed over the last two days were largely live before the Sonoma event even took place. High-end consignments don't appear overnight. Owners need time to make decisions, submit cars, go through the process, and get scheduled. If Sonoma is going to have an impact, we probably won't see it immediately.

That's why the real test comes later. We'll need to revisit this in a month or two and see whether the platform starts attracting a larger number of six-figure cars.

There were signs of both opportunity and challenge in these results.
A few listings crossed the six-figure mark in bidding with only one selling, a beautiful no-reserve Porsche 911 Carrera T Club Coupe that brought an impressive $293,000.

Overall, the average sale price across the 77 sold vehicles came in at just under $26,000.

That number highlights the long-term opportunity for Cars & Bids. The platform has already demonstrated that it can sell more than 70% of its inventory. The bigger challenge is increasing the value of the inventory itself.

And let's not feel too sorry for them. Based on the results from these two days alone, Cars & Bids likely generated around $100,000 in buyer's premium revenue. That's not a bad couple of days at the office.

But imagine what those numbers look like if the average sale price rises meaningfully. That's where the real upside is. The sell-through rate is already there. The audience is already there. The question is whether Sonoma helps convince owners of more expensive cars that Cars & Bids is a place worth selling.

It's still early days.

We'll check back later this summer and see whether Sonoma was simply a successful event or the beginning of a shift toward higher-end inventory.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

I love a good old Defender.

Not because they're particularly good. They're noisy, slow, uncomfortable, and about as aerodynamic as a brick. Yet somehow, that's exactly why people love them.

This 1995 Defender 90 NAS is the kind of truck that reminds you why these have become so collectible. Just 29,000 miles, a clean history, and perhaps most importantly, it still looks like a Defender rather than a restoration project gone wild.

The spec doesn't hurt either. Portofino Red, soft top, five-speed manual, and a V8 under the hood. If you asked most Defender enthusiasts to build their dream NAS truck, they'd probably end up with something pretty close to this.

What makes these trucks special isn't speed or luxury. It's the experience. Every drive feels like an adventure, even if you're only headed to the grocery store. That's something modern SUVs, no matter how capable or expensive, struggle to replicate.

The funny thing about old Defenders is that everyone who owns one complains about them. Then they refuse to sell them. That tells you everything you need to know.

I'm not sure there's a better way to spend a few minutes than watching an old Porsche 356 drive through the countryside.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and watch the video.

Modern cars are objectively better at almost everything, but they rarely make you feel anything. A 356 is the complete opposite. It's slow by today's standards, the steering wheel looks oversized, and the cabin feels charmingly simple. Yet somehow that's exactly what makes it special.

This 1962 Porsche 356B Cabriolet has all the ingredients enthusiasts look for. A wonderful color combination, an interesting ownership story that begins with a U.S. serviceman purchasing it through SonAuto in Paris, and a long history of careful refurbishment and maintenance. The rebuilt 1,720cc flat-four and recently overhauled transaxle should make it even more enjoyable to drive than when it left the factory.

But for me, the highlight isn't the paperwork, the restoration, or even the hardtop that comes with the car.

It's that video. The winding roads, the sound of the flat-four, and the view over those beautiful front fenders are a reminder that some cars aren't about numbers at all. They're about the experience.

And few cars deliver that experience better than a 356.

There are certain cars that instantly transport you back to a specific era. The Audi UR Quattro is one of them.

Before all-wheel drive became standard on everything from family crossovers to luxury SUVs, Audi shocked the automotive world by proving that putting power to all four wheels could create a genuine performance advantage. The result was the Quattro, a car that didn't just win rallies, it changed the sport forever.

That's why cars like this still matter. This 1984 UR Quattro looks exactly how you'd want one to look. Black over black, boxy fender flares, those unmistakable proportions, and of course the legendary turbocharged five-cylinder under the hood. Even standing still, it looks fast.

What really caught my attention, however, is the mileage. Just 17k kilometers is remarkable for any 1980s performance car, let alone one that spent its life in a country where enthusiasts actually drive and enjoy their cars. According to the seller, it has been carefully stored during their four-year ownership while still being started, moved, and serviced regularly. That's often far better than a car that's simply been parked and forgotten.

The best part about a UR Quattro is that it doesn't need a giant wing, flashy colors, or a million horsepower to get your attention. Its significance comes from what it represents. Without the Quattro, the performance car world probably looks very different today.

Some cars are collectible because they're rare. Others are collectible because they changed history. The UR Quattro happens to be both.

Dreaming about parking this Quattro in your garage? Our free Import Calculator will tell you exactly what it could cost to get it from Japan to your driveway.

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast — but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

Good Morning Vroomers,

If you didn't know by now, Cars & Bids held its Velocity Invitational sale at Sonoma over the weekend. They've been marketing this heavily for months and I imagine spent a small fortune putting it all together. So how did they do?

Overall, I'd say pretty well. If there was a report card, it would probably read something like "Good work, now do it again."

First, the positives. Cars & Bids will no doubt be delighted with some of the headline results. The beautiful 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec sold for a record $375,000, while the 2008 Ferrari F430 Scuderia brought an incredible $653,000, making it the fourth-highest sale in platform history. Not far behind was the 2019 Porsche 911 Speedster at $525,000, good enough for the eighth-highest sale ever on Cars & Bids.

Buyers were extremely happy.

It's also worth remembering how much work goes into a sale like this. Finding the cars is one thing. Convincing owners to consign them is another. Then you have transportation, event logistics, photography, marketing, staffing, and everything else that comes with putting cars in front of thousands of enthusiasts at a major event. None of that happens by accident.

What I found most interesting wasn't necessarily the headline prices, but what happened beyond the online bidding. Several cars were purchased by bidders attending the event in person, while additional deals were completed the following day with attendees who had seen the cars at Sonoma. That's exactly the type of activity Cars & Bids was hoping to create by bringing the platform into the real world.

When you add it all up, the event generated nearly $4 million in sales and ultimately achieved a 71% sell-through rate including post-auction transactions. For a first attempt, that's a very strong result.

The record R34 sale certainly grabbed the headlines, but I actually think the bigger takeaway is that Cars & Bids proved it can successfully bring special cars, buyers, and sellers together in a live event environment.

That said, this is probably where the hard work begins.

One successful event doesn't suddenly make Cars & Bids the destination for every six and seven-figure collector car overnight. Building that reputation takes time. Owners of high-value cars want to see a track record, and the best way to create that track record is to keep delivering results like the ones we saw this weekend.

Because ultimately, that's where the real opportunity lies. Every additional six-figure sale that comes onto the platform drives revenue, attracts more consignors, and makes the next high-value owner more comfortable listing their car there.

This was an excellent start. The challenge now is turning a successful weekend into long-term momentum. If they can do that, this weekend may end up being remembered as more than just a successful event. It may be the weekend Cars & Bids took another meaningful step upmarket.

Speaking of events, DuPont Registry Live quietly pulled off one of the more interesting experiments of the weekend.

They ran what they called a "DuPont Drop," a three-hour flash sale for a 2024 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 3LZ.

Yes, three hours. The email went out during the morning of May 30th and a few hours later the car was sold for $104,000, which is actually a pretty solid result. I have to admit, I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly how the mechanics of the sale worked, but selling a six-figure car in a three-hour window is impressive regardless.

We've seen limited-time drops work in other industries for years. Whether it can consistently work for collector and enthusiast cars is another question entirely, but DuPont deserves credit for trying something different.

I'll be watching closely to see if they do more of these.

Two Free Tools Every Reader Should Know About

Since it's Monday morning and we have loads of new readers joining every day, I wanted to give a quick reminder about two free tools we've built at TDV that have already been used thousands of times by enthusiasts.

The first is our Import Calculator.

One of the questions I get asked all the time is, "What will this car actually cost me once it lands?" The purchase price is only part of the equation. There are duties, freight, insurance, port fees, compliance costs, taxes, exchange rates, and plenty of other expenses that can catch buyers by surprise.

Our Import Calculator was built to solve exactly that problem. Enter the car, the country it's coming from, and where it's going, and you'll get a detailed estimate of the total landed cost before you buy. Best of all, it doesn't ask for your email address, phone number, or any personal information whatsoever.

The second is our Domestic Shipping Calculator.

This one was built for a much simpler reason. I hate having to hand over my email address, phone number, and life story just to get a shipping quote.

With our calculator, you simply enter the route and get a live shipping quote instantly. No forms. No sales calls. No waiting around for someone to contact you later.

If you like the quote, you can go ahead and book directly through our integration with RunBuggy. If you don't, that's fine too.

Both tools are completely free, and you can run as many quotes as you want.

If you haven't tried them yet, they're linked above and might save you a lot of time, money, and frustration on your next purchase.

And as Steve Jobs famously said, "one more thing..." We've got a few more tools in the pipeline that I think you're going to like.

More Than Just a Cadillac

At first glance, this 1968 Cadillac Coupe DeVille looks like exactly the kind of car you'd expect to see cruising through Southern California. Black paint, red interior, air ride suspension, a big-block 472 V8 under the hood, and enough presence to make modern cars disappear in the background.

Then you discover it's the same Cadillac that appeared in Justin Bieber's Peaches music video.

I'll be honest, I'd never seen the video ( not exactly my type of music) until this auction landed in my inbox. Apparently I'm in the minority because the video has been viewed more than 865 million times, which means this Cadillac has probably been seen by more people than just about any collector car currently listed online.

I guess that gives it some sort of provenance, although I'm not entirely sure what the correct collector car term is when your claim to fame comes from a music video rather than Le Mans, Hollywood, or a famous owner.

But that's not really what caught my attention here. What did was the reason the car is being sold.

The seller created the No Name Necessary Foundation following the loss of his wife Deborah Waknin and her friend the actress Shannen Doherty to cancer, and the proceeds from the sale are intended to help launch the foundation.

Regular readers know I'm usually writing about values, market trends, bidding strategies, and whether a car sold for more or less than I expected. That's the business we're all in.

But every now and then a listing comes along where the final number almost feels secondary.

Whether you're a Justin Bieber fan or not, whether you care about celebrity provenance or not, and whether this Cadillac ultimately sells for a huge number or not, it's hard not to appreciate someone trying to turn something deeply personal into something positive.

I have no problem supporting a cause like that. In fact, I'd love to see more of it.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

Yesterday we featured this 1988 Porsche 959 Sport and wondered whether it would actually cross the line. It didn’t, with bidding stalling at $3.03m, and judging by the lack of late action it probably was not especially close to the seller’s real number either.

The branded title chatter clearly did not help, but sometimes it just the right bidders are not in the room. And the right bidders were in the room for the 2013 Ferrari GTS that sold on SOMO yesterday for $600k, their highest sale this month, congrats to them and they’ve already sold more cars this month than the previous. Talking of high sale prices, Cars & Bids will be hoping their Velocity sale ending this weekend could produce their highest sale of the year.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings?

Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Sale of the Day

Yesterday it was the 959 Sport dominating the conversation on Bring a Trailer. Today, it was nice seeing PCarMarket remind people they can still put together a seriously strong enthusiast sale too.

This 2022 Porsche 992 GT3 Touring sold for $277k after 66 bids, and honestly it is hard to build a much more universally appealing modern Porsche right now. Shark Blue, six-speed manual, Touring Package, just 1,700 miles and no giant rear wing hanging off the back.

The Touring market remains fascinating because Porsche somehow turned the “understated” GT3 into the cool one. Same engine, same experience, same 9,000 rpm insanity, just without screaming at everyone in the Starbucks parking lot that you watched Nürburgring onboard videos before bed.

What stood out here though was the bidding itself. Multiple serious bidders, proper late action and a final number that actually felt believable in today’s market rather than completely detached from reality one way or the other.

And honestly, good to see PCarMarket getting these kinds of sales again because competition matters in this space. The enthusiast market is better when multiple platforms are capable of producing strong results on high-quality cars.

Does This Interest You?

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is that there’s just so much noise around the online auction market now.

Hundreds of listings ending every day, constant re-listings, bidder games, weird pricing swings, hidden bargains, cars quietly sitting under market, and genuinely interesting stuff that most people simply never see because everything moves so quickly.

The Daily Vroom will always stay exactly what it is now. A quick read. I don’t think most people want a 45-minute market report landing in their inbox every morning.

But at the same time, there is only so much I can realistically share in that format, and one thing newsletters naturally miss is the back-and-forth discussion side of things. A lot of the best conversations I have around this market actually happen privately through emails and DMs with readers.

So I’ve been thinking about potentially building something additional alongside TDV. Maybe a smaller and more in-depth community built around auctions of course, ending-soon cars, deeper market dives, “would you buy this?” discussions, bidder behavior, and more real-time conversations around the enthusiast market.

Not one of those communities that turns into memes and spam after a week. Something genuinely useful.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

Having had a Grand Wagoneer back in the day, people have been sending me photos of this thing for years.

And today, this absolute monstrosity of a Newport Convertible Engineering Porsche Cayenne finally sells on Cars & Bids as a no reserve.

Honestly, this is exactly why online auctions are still so entertaining.

Nobody would ever sit down and say this is a “good” car. The comments section spent the entire week comparing it to everything from a PT Cruiser to a Chrysler LeBaron, yet somehow the thing ended up with over 1,200 watchers and nearly 200 comments.

And weirdly, I kind of get it. The whole thing is so unbelievably committed to the bit that it almost becomes cool again. Convertible conversion. Painted wood trim. White over black. California car. It looks like somebody gave a Grand Wagoneer and a Cayenne Turbo too much tequila in Newport Beach circa 2008 and just let things happen.

The funny thing with cars like this is that normal market logic completely disappears. Nobody cross-shops this against another Cayenne. Nobody cares about mileage, bore scoring fears, or resale graphs. At that point you’re just buying a rolling inside joke that somehow became internet-famous.

And honestly, seeing a car like this create more engagement than half the six-figure exotics online this week tells you a lot about where enthusiast culture actually is right now.

People don’t just want perfect cars anymore. They want stories.

II’ve always thought the Citroën SM is one of those cars that makes absolutely no sense and complete sense at the exact same time.

French luxury coupe. Maserati V6. Hydropneumatic suspension. Front-wheel drive. Single spoke steering wheel. Covered headlights. And somehow the whole thing ended up looking like it arrived from about 25 years into the future.

And honestly, that’s why I love seeing cars like this come up for auction.

Because in a world where so many collector cars are starting to feel a bit predictable, the SM still feels genuinely weird. Not “quirky for Instagram” weird. Properly strange. The kind of car where you assume the engineers were either complete geniuses or completely insane.

Probably both.This one is particularly interesting too because it sounds like the hard part has already been done. Long-term specialist ownership, years of maintenance by Citroën SM experts, strong colors, good documentation, and no obvious horror-story needs being flagged.

And yet despite all that, these cars still sit in this weird zone where people admire them massively but relatively few are brave enough to actually buy one.

That’s what makes the market for them fascinating. Everyone says they love unusual cars until unusual cars actually appear. Then suddenly everyone wants another air-cooled 911 instead.

Another week, another genuinely interesting collection landing on Hagerty.

And honestly, this one stands out because it feels real. Not “assembled by an advisor and parked under covers for 20 years” real. Actual enthusiast real.

Doc McAdam was apparently the kind of guy who would pull into the hospital parking lot in GT350s, Cobras, and high-performance Mustangs before heading in to perform neurosurgery. Which, frankly, is one of the cooler collector car backstories we’ve had in a while.

And the best part is the collection reflects that mindset too.

There’s a genuine mix of serious metal, driver cars, weird projects, and stuff that clearly wasn’t bought because some market report said it would outperform the S&P 500.

The standout for me is obviously the ’65 Shelby GT350. Not because it’s some untouched concours museum piece, because it absolutely isn’t. In fact, the comments section is basically one long debate about how much of the car is still original at this point.

But that’s almost why I like it more. The thing has lived an actual life. Drag raced early on, restored in the ’80s, modified by Doc for real driving, fitted with a 302 and five-speed, and then properly used for decades instead of sitting inside a humidity-controlled bubble waiting for auction week in Monterey.

And honestly, collections like this are becoming more important to the online auction world.

People are getting a little tired of perfectly curated investment-grade inventory with the exact same formula every single time. These kinds of collections feel more human. More personal. More connected to how enthusiasts actually use cars.

Also, a no reserve TVR Griffith project sitting next to a six-figure Shelby is exactly the kind of chaos I fully support.

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast — but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

I wanted to give you a quick update on our Shipping Calculator, which a lot of you have already been using. It’s completely free to use, there’s no sign-up wall, and you don’t need to hand over your phone number or personal details just to get a shipping quote.

We’ve also just added a new feature that lets you generate a shareable link for any quote instantly.

It’s been really cool watching how many people are already using both tools, and shoutout to Feridanis, who we’ve been working with behind the scenes. They’ve put an absurd amount of time into helping us build and improve these platforms over the past few months.

SBX Cars: As Expected…

A few weeks ago we said SBX Cars had closed online auctions (still no official word on anything) and toward private brokerage, even if the website itself had not fully caught up yet.

Now it has.

The messaging is now fully centred around private sales and off-market access:

And honestly, my two cents is this: clearly Supercar Blondie and the wider SBX team have access to some genuinely interesting cars and a huge audience around them. That part was never really the question.

But once you move into the broker world, you also become another broker. Or someone on your team does.

And anyone who has spent enough time chasing “special” cars knows the funny reality of that world. You speak to five different brokers and somehow all five seem to have access to the exact same “exclusive” car!

That does not mean there is not a place for brokers because there absolutely is, especially at the very top end where discretion and relationships matter more than public listings. There are just a lot of them already operating in that space.

Regardless, I genuinely wish them the best.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

One thing I spotted while scrolling BaT this morning genuinely made me smile for a second.

A seller out of Amsterdam linked directly to The Daily Vroom Import Calculator inside the auction comments for this 1956 Mercedes-Benz 190SL to help foreign bidders understand what the car could actually cost landed before they start bidding.

Honestly, that is the entire reason we built it.

Importing a car still feels weirdly opaque for most buyers. Everyone gets excited about the hammer price, then three days later reality kicks in with shipping, insurance, port fees, customs, unloading charges, duties, brokers and exchange rates. Half the time people do not actually know what they are getting themselves into until after they already emotionally committed to the car.

That hesitation stops a lot of buyers from even considering genuinely interesting overseas listings.

The calculator has now processed thousands of estimates already because people simply want clarity upfront. Not marketing fluff. Not “contact us for quote.” Just a realistic ballpark of what the car could actually cost sitting in your driveway.

And honestly, this 190SL is exactly the kind of car where understanding the all-in picture matters. Because once you get past the shipping conversation, the car itself is seriously attractive.

Factory black over cream leather with the brown soft top is an incredibly elegant combination, especially compared to the white respray the car reportedly wore before the refurbishment started. The seller says the car underwent a bare-metal repaint back to its original factory black along with an engine overhaul, interior retrim and rebuild of the Solex carburetors, with the carbs alone reportedly costing around €5,600 to sort properly in late 2023.

That matters on a 190SL because these cars live and die on presentation.

A mediocre 190SL can feel like an expensive styling exercise. A properly sorted one suddenly makes complete sense. And this one looks like the seller understood exactly where to spend the money.

I also really like how transparent ImageStreetClassics has been throughout the comments. They are not overselling the process, not pretending importing is frictionless, and not hiding behind vague answers. They openly explained the shipping side, the refurbishment details, the factory data card, even the chassis-year discussion around the car being one of the last 1956 production examples delivered in early 1957.

That kind of engagement goes a long way on international listings because confidence is half the battle.

Most buyers are not scared of the car itself. They are scared of making an expensive mistake after winning it.

And honestly, that is why I think we are going to keep seeing more global enthusiast buying over the next few years. Once people actually understand the real all-in costs upfront, the market suddenly becomes much bigger than whatever happens to be sitting locally on Facebook Marketplace that week.

A Porsche 959 Sport doing over $3 million still feels slightly surreal.

Not because the car isn’t worth it. If anything, the opposite. This is one of the most important performance cars Porsche ever built. The technological moonshot of the 1980s. The car that completely changed what a supercar could be.

But there’s still something wild about watching a car at this level trade publicly on an online auction platform.

And then I clicked into the bidder history. The current high bidder isn’t just chasing one of the rarest Porsches on the planet. He also previously bought a 1997 Tahoe Z71 and a 1995 Acura NSX-T.

Honestly, that might be my favorite part of the whole auction.

Because it perfectly sums up what these platforms have become. The same collector who can spend over $3 million on a 959 Sport can still get excited about a clean GMT400 Tahoe or an NSX they probably dreamed about 25 years ago.

A Dodge Magnum R/T with 114,000 miles, cracked trim, faded paint, and a dead head unit might end up being one of the best buys on Cars & Bids this week.

Because these things just refuse to die. Every Magnum auction turns into the same comment section. Somebody knows one with 300k miles. Somebody regrets selling theirs. Somebody else still daily drives one today.

And honestly, I get it. The Magnum always felt ahead of its time. A rear wheel drive Hemi V8 wagon with ridiculous road presence and enough space to haul basically anything. People didn’t fully appreciate them when they were new, but the market is finally starting to catch up.

This one has also had a ton of recent work done. Suspension, brakes, radiator, alternator, belts, spark plugs, valve cover gaskets. Somebody actually maintained this thing instead of just driving it into the ground.

Meanwhile the current bid is still under $4,000.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if this thing has another 200,000 miles left in it.

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast - but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

My entire feed is people absolutely killing the new Ferrari Luce and honestly… I’m struggling too.

Forget EV vs gas for a second, this just doesn’t feel like a $600k+ Ferrari to me. And maybe I’m old fashioned, but having actual car designers design the car feels like a good starting point.

What’s interesting though is Ferrari usually gets this stuff right. They understand emotion better than almost any car company on earth and people buy Ferraris emotionally first, logically second.

The challenge now is EVs completely change that conversation.

With a normal Ferrari, nobody cares if it’s rational. The noise, engine, drama and occasion are the whole point. But once you remove that, people suddenly start comparing charging, range, weight and tech against everything else on the market and that’s a much harder game to dominate at $600k.

Still, betting against Ferrari has historically been a terrible idea. I just can’t remember the last time I saw a new Ferrari get almost universally slammed this quickly.

The Ferrari 360 Market Just Broke

There are auction results that make sense immediately, and then there are the ones where everyone collectively stops and starts doing mental math in real time.

This 2000 Ferrari 360 Modena absolutely falls into the second category.

Because less than a year ago, this exact car sold for $89,000.

Now it’s a $172,000 Ferrari.

Not a concours example. Not a delivery-mile museum piece. Not some celebrity-owned halo car with a Classiche binder thicker than a phone book. This is a 32k-mile driver-quality gated 360 with some honest imperfections, a lifting dash, older tires, paint touch-ups, and the exact kinds of details buyers used to nitpick when these were still “affordable” Ferraris.

And yet by the end of this auction, none of that mattered.

The bidding story alone tells you everything about where the market psychology currently sits. At $140k it still felt ambitious. At $150k people started realizing something unusual was happening. Then two bidders completely detached from prior comps and just kept swinging. $155k. $160k. $165k. $168k. $169k. $172k.

That’s not “someone accidentally overpaid.”

That’s conviction. Or speculation. Or FOMO. Or all three at once.

And that’s what makes this result so fascinating because the car’s recent history almost reads like a case study in how quickly markets can reprice once sentiment changes.

First listed on Bring a Trailer in June 2025 where it stalled at a $97k high bid and failed to sell. Then it went almost immediately to Cars & Bids where it RNM’d again at $91k. A couple months later it finally sold back on BaT for $89k.

At that point the market had effectively spoken three separate times.

Or at least everyone thought it had. Now suddenly the same car nearly doubles in value in under a year and the comments section turns into a full blown debate about whether gated 360s are entering permanent blue-chip territory or whether everyone is watching a speculative frenzy happen in real time.

Honestly, both sides make compelling arguments. The bullish case is easy to understand. Factory gated 360s were already rare, but buyers suddenly seem to have collectively realized just how finite these cars actually are. Seller comments throughout the auction repeatedly referenced that only around 500 factory gated coupes came to the US market, with far fewer remaining in genuinely clean condition today.

Then you zoom out further.

Manual F430s are already out of reach for most enthusiasts.
Gated 355s exploded years ago.
Manual Lamborghinis are on another planet.
Analog Ferraris are disappearing.
Modern Ferrari interiors and interfaces increasingly feel more digital and isolated.

Meanwhile the 360 still offers exactly what buyers now romanticize: naturally aspirated V8, open gated shifter, hydraulic steering, mechanical feel, manageable size, and enough usability to actually drive the thing.

The market suddenly seems to have decided these were underpriced all along. But the skeptical side is fair too. Nothing fundamentally changed about the 360 in the last 12 months. The same arguments existed years ago when these were sitting comfortably around six figures or below. Suddenly the market wakes up and prices double almost overnight? That’s exactly why some commenters started comparing the run-up to everything from meme stocks to Ferrari bubbles of the past.

And honestly, when a car fails to hit reserve at $97k, then fails again at $91k, sells at $89k, and becomes a $172k car less than a year later, people are naturally going to ask questions.

But maybe the most important part of this story came from the winning bidder himself.

“I couldn’t be more excited about this car.”

That was the comment after spending $172,000 on a Ferrari the internet thinks was worth half that last year.

And honestly, maybe that’s all that really matters here.

Because markets are emotional before they are rational. Poster cars matter. Nostalgia matters. Generational buying power matters. The people who grew up with the Ferrari 360 on their bedroom walls are now entering peak earning years, and unlike previous generations, many of them don’t want touchscreen supercars filled with driver aids and software layers.

They want the click of the gate.

And right now, they seem willing to pay almost anything for it.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

Coming off one of the strongest collection runs on Bring a Trailer this year, Mohr Imports already looks like it may have another six-figure hammer incoming.

The LeVett Collection was a huge win for them. The headline result was the 1969 Ferrari Dino 246 GT that sold for more than $305,000, but honestly the bigger takeaway was how professionally the entire collection was handled from start to finish.

Now they’re right back on the front page with this 7k-mile BMW Z8 already sitting at $200,000 with days still left in the auction.

And what’s interesting here is this exact car already sold on BaT in August 2024 for around the same number.

Normally that creates hesitation. Buyers start wondering why someone’s already moving on from it, whether the market has topped out, or if someone is trying to cash in too quickly.

Instead, this auction feels like buyers are lining up to justify the number before the auction has even finished.

Part of that is the spec. Titanium Silver over black is still the Z8 combo, 7k miles puts it in the upper tier immediately, and the whole formula just works. S62 V8 from the E39 M5, six-speed manual, factory hardtop, Henrik Fisker design, analog BMW halo car from an era the company probably can’t recreate anymore.

But honestly, the bigger story is the seller. Mohr Imports understands BaT better than most dealers because they understand that at this level buyers are not just bidding on the car. They’re bidding on confidence.

Look through the comments and they’re answering everything. Paint meter readings, soft top seams, radio issues, the Performance Package, prior ownership, why the owner is already selling it again. No dodging, no vague dealer answers, no disappearing for days while bidders speculate.

That stuff matters massively once cars cross into six-figure territory. And the timing here is also perfect because the market seems to have shifted toward analog halo cars from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Buyers want the stuff that still feels mechanical. Manual gearboxes, naturally aspirated engines, hydraulic steering, simple interiors, low production numbers, recognizable design.

The Z8 checks every single box. For years people argued these were overpriced at $150k. Then overpriced at $180k. Now one is already back at $200k before the final few days even starts and honestly it still doesn’t feel like the ceiling.

There’s something refreshing about opening Hagerty Marketplace right now and seeing not one but two proper Pontiac GTOs sitting there while the rest of the collector market continues losing its mind over gated Ferraris and low-mile analog European cars.

Because as great as those cars are, sometimes you just want a massive American V8, a four-speed, and absolutely zero subtlety.

And these two GTOs take completely different approaches to that formula.

The 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge is exactly what muscle cars were supposed to become by the end of the 1960s. Loud colors, giant decals, hood tach, Ram Air III, Hurst shifter, rear spoiler, and just enough visual aggression to make it feel like Pontiac designers were actively trying to annoy insurance companies.

What I actually like most about this Judge though is that it feels honest.

The seller openly talks about the family ownership going back more than two decades, the multi-year restoration effort between 2003 and 2005, the replacement crate motor, the imperfections, the bubbling paint, the dash repair, all the stuff many sellers would rather dance around.

And honestly, that makes the car more appealing to me because this feels like the exact kind of Judge you actually want to own instead of one you’re terrified to touch. You can picture yourself pulling into a local show, lifting the hood, talking nonsense with strangers for an hour, then actually driving the thing home instead of loading it straight back into an enclosed trailer.

Even the comments section understood the assignment. One bidder basically summed it up perfectly saying this wasn’t some gold-level concours restoration, just a “smiles for miles” boulevard cruiser, which honestly is probably the highest compliment a car like this can get.

Then sitting right alongside it is the 1967 Pontiac GTO Convertible, and the vibe completely changes.

Where the Judge feels like a guy screaming over a Lynyrd Skynyrd soundtrack, the ’67 convertible feels calmer, cleaner, and way more mature. First-generation GTO, documented 242 car, four-speed, parchment interior, body-off restoration, Rally II wheels, Gardner exhaust, and just enough tasteful upgrades to improve the ownership experience without ruining what made the car special in the first place.

Honestly, this is probably the one I’d want sitting in the garage long term.

The Judge is the attention seeker. The ’67 convertible is the one that quietly gets respect from everyone who knows what they’re looking at.

And I think that’s what makes these two listings so interesting together because they perfectly show the split personality of the muscle car market. One side still wants outrageous graphics, shaker scoops, bright colors, and maximum presence. The other wants clean, documented, well-restored cars they can actually enjoy without feeling like they’re reenacting a Barrett-Jackson commercial every weekend.

Either way, both are a nice reminder that before driving modes, giant touchscreens, and fake exhaust speakers, performance cars used to be wonderfully simple. Big engine, manual transmission, questionable fuel economy, and enough torque to make every stoplight feel important.

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast — but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

BaT are having quite the week to say the least.

Yesterday they recorded their third-highest sale ever with that Bugatti (more on that below). What’s always fascinating with these top-end auctions is how often the winning bidder appears out of nowhere. In this case, the buyer seemingly had no prior online auction purchases before casually dropping $4.4 million before lunch.

And honestly, if someone is comfortable spending $4.4 million online in a matter of minutes, they were probably willing to spend $5 million, $6 million, or even $7 million for the right car.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Sale of the Day

Sale of the Day for me is this E61 wagon selling for just $5,688!

I’ve always had a soft spot for wagons, especially ones like this that were built before everything became oversized crossovers with giant screens and zero personality. Less than 100k miles, unmodified, sport package, panoramic roof, twin-turbo inline-six, AWD, and it even comes with the roof box. That feels like an absurd amount of car for the money.

What’s especially interesting here is how the comments almost perfectly capture the modern used German car market. Half the people are talking about how special these are and how comfortable they are on long drives. The other half are calculating injector indexes, evaporator failures, turbo seals, compressor issues, and mentally preparing for dashboard removal labor before placing a bid.

That’s kind of the entire E61 ownership experience summed up in one auction.

I also think the final price says something bigger about where the market is right now. A few years ago these felt like they were really starting to climb as enthusiasts realized this was one of the last genuinely practical enthusiast BMW wagons sold here. Now you can buy a clean, highly-optioned example for used Corolla money because people are terrified of maintenance.

And honestly? I kind of understand both sides.

But there’s still something incredibly cool about a car designed to quietly devour highway miles at 90mph all day long while carrying bikes, skis, luggage, dogs, kids, or whatever else life throws at you. BMW used to build these kinds of cars unbelievably well.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

As much as I love the seven-figure auction headlines, these are the kinds of listings I actually spend the most time looking at.

A manual 958 Cayenne feels like something Porsche would never approve today. Three pedals, naturally aspirated V6, locking center differential, analog gauges, and enough practicality to be a genuine daily driver. Modern performance SUVs have become so fast and overcomplicated that they’ve almost forgotten how to feel engaging. This still feels mechanical.

And this one has exactly the right vibe. The slightly lowered OEM+ setup, the previous-gen Cayenne wheels, and the Pirelli Scorpions completely change the personality of the truck. It doesn’t look like a generic luxury SUV anymore. It looks like something built by an enthusiast who actually understands these cars.

I also appreciated the seller clarifying the “short shifter” in the comments instead of overselling it. Turns out it’s just a lower aftermarket shift knob, but that kind of honesty honestly goes a long way on auction platforms.

Funny enough, I didn’t even realize who the seller was until after I already liked the truck. Then I saw it was Bid Nerds. If you follow the auction world at all, their YouTube podcast is genuinely worth watching. The enthusiasm for enthusiast-spec oddballs like this definitely comes through in the listing.

Cars like this remind me why I still love browsing auctions late at night. Not because they’re investment-grade trophies, but because they represent combinations manufacturers simply don’t build anymore.

This is one of those Ferraris where the story is almost more interesting than the car itself.

The 599 was already the end of an era: front-engine, naturally aspirated V12, hydraulic steering, and enough torque to completely overwhelm the rear tires whenever it wanted. But the Alonso Edition takes an already special car and locks Ferrari into a very specific moment in time.

Back in 2012, Ferrari was still heavily leaning into the connection between its Formula 1 program and its road cars. Fernando Alonso was the face of the brand, and Ferrari built just 40 of these “60F1” editions to celebrate the company’s Formula 1 success. The result is one of the more subtle and tasteful special-edition Ferraris they’ve done.

I also think it’s interesting how much certification culture now matters at the top end of the Ferrari market. Twenty years ago people mainly cared about mileage and color. Now you’ve got Ferrari Classiche Red Books, Cavallino awards, originality verification, concours history, and paint originality becoming part of the value equation itself.

This car basically checks every modern Ferrari collector box:
Low mileage
Rare special edition
Factory livery
Classiche certified
Award-winning
Original paint
Naturally aspirated V12

And underneath all the collectibility, it still represents Ferrari before hybridization and full digitalization really took over. The 599 still feels like old Ferrari in the best possible way.

Thinking about importing this one? We ran the numbers, see the full landed cost (assuming 200k Euro sale price) breakdown at the TDV Import Calculator

I’m always fascinated by who actually ends up buying cars like this?

Does someone wake up one morning and specifically search “Dio Cars S-40 converted GMC Jimmy” on the internet? Or does the car just randomly find the exact right person at 1am while they’re deep into an auction rabbit hole?

Because realistically, this isn’t competing with normal collector cars. It’s competing for attention against every 911, Bronco, Defender, and square-body truck on the market. And somehow it still has this weird charm to it.

The backstory honestly makes it even cooler. According to the seller, this was the first Dio Cars kit built by the factory itself and used as a display vehicle at events. That immediately changes the way you look at it.

And the thing I actually appreciate most is that it doesn’t feel over-restored or over-serious. It still has the slightly strange proportions, the retro front clip, the American Racing wheels, the cassette stereo, the old GM interior, even the seller casually mentioning the tiny puff of smoke after sitting too long. That honesty weirdly makes it more likable.

Cars like this remind me that the auction world isn’t just about blue-chip collectibles and investment-grade Ferraris. Sometimes it’s just about stumbling across something so odd, specific, and period-correct that you can’t stop looking at it.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

First of all, huge thanks to everyone who reached out yesterday regarding the launch of the TDV Domestic Shipping Calculator. The launch itself didn’t exactly go to plan after the website decided to crash for two hours first thing in the morning, but thankfully everything is now running smoothly again.

And honestly, seeing the reaction confirmed exactly why we wanted to build this in the first place.

As a reminder, if you want a shipping quote, you can now get one instantly without giving away your email, phone number, or life story beforehand. One quote or one hundred quotes, completely free. And if you do decide to book, we’ve made that process incredibly straightforward too.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Also have to mention the 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster below because supposedly the car had covered well over 300,000 miles over its lifetime, which makes the result even more impressive. Just another reminder that great photos, strong documentation, and proper listing management can make a material difference to bring a big price.

But honestly, one of my favorite parts of the sale was seeing the winning bidder who had his first purchase on the platform. It never ceases to amaze me how many serious car people still don’t fully know some of these online auction platforms, so it’s always refreshing seeing someone jump in for the first time and do it with a purchase like that.

Why The Velocity Collection Matters for Cars & Bids

A few weeks back we talked about the next major challenge facing Cars & Bids. Increasing listings is great. Increasing daily sales is great too, and to their credit they’ve clearly done both. Cars & Bids is now regularly running north of 50 live auctions a day, which is a huge number when you stop and think about how quickly the platform has scaled.

But eventually just adding more cars only gets you so far. If you want a real jump in revenue, especially when private equity is involved, the bigger lever is not simply more sales. It’s higher-value sales. That’s what makes this new Velocity Collection so interesting because on the surface it looks like a cool enthusiast event partnership, but underneath it feels like one of the clearest signs yet that Cars & Bids is actively trying to move further upmarket.

And not quietly either. Just look at the cars. Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ1, Ferrari F50. Ferrari 430 Scuderia, Porsche 911 Speedster, Porsche Carrera RS America, Lamborghini Huracán Performante, Lancia Delta Integrale 16V, Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec, A Lola T212, and even a Formula One car.

Suddenly Cars & Bids does not just look like the internet auction site for modified Audis and clean E46 M3s anymore. The perception starts shifting, and perception matters enormously in this business.

Because the reality is Cars & Bids has already proven it can do volume. The next question is whether it can consistently sell expensive cars.

That is the entire game. Cars & Bids caps its buyer fee at $7,500, which means once a car crosses a certain threshold ($150k) the platform has already maxed out the commission on that sale. So yes, selling more cars matters, but selling more expensive cars matters a whole lot more.

Last week, just over 6% of Cars & Bids sales crossed six figures. That’s not criticism by the way. It’s completely understandable given where the platform started and the audience it built. But if that number moves from roughly 6% to 15% or even 20% over time, the economics of the business start looking very different very quickly.

That’s why this Velocity Collection matters. At least 12 out of the 17 cars here could plausibly be six-figure sales. Some already are. A few could go significantly further than that. If Cars & Bids can show sellers that this was not just a one-off experiment but a repeatable way to sell higher-end inventory, it changes the perception of the platform entirely.

Because the question high-end sellers ask is not simply “does this site get traffic?” Cars & Bids already has traffic. The real question is whether the right buyers are actually in the room.

A $40,000 enthusiast car can sell on energy, presentation, comments, and momentum. A $400,000 or $1 million car requires something else entirely. Confidence. Provenance. Documentation. Trust. The belief that serious bidders are paying attention.

Velocity helps Cars & Bids make that argument. It places the platform in a physical environment surrounded by exactly the type of audience it wants more of. Collectors. Owners. People who understand the difference between a cool car and an important car. This is not just digital inventory sitting on a website anymore. It’s Cars & Bids trying to attach itself to a more premium collector ecosystem, and none of that comes cheap.

Because this partnership goes far beyond sticking a logo on a banner somewhere.

Cars & Bids now has physical auction integration, live auction endings at the event, display inventory, branded Velocity Collection marketing, content production, staff on site, consignor acquisition, hybrid online and offline bidding, and all the logistics that come with trying to merge an internet auction platform with a major live enthusiast event.

Velocity obviously benefits too because Cars & Bids brings eyeballs, inventory, digital reach, and energy to the weekend, but if we’re being honest Cars & Bids probably needs this partnership a little more right now than Velocity does.

Velocity already has the atmosphere. The lifestyle angle. The motorsport credibility. Cars & Bids is borrowing some of that credibility and trying to convert it into a new seller story.

And strategically, I actually think it’s a smart move. Most of these cars are actually being represented by the owners themselves rather than simply handed over by dealers, which is important because it shows Cars & Bids is trying to prove an individual seller can launch a genuinely high-end sale with the right support around them.

Cars & Bids is clearly investing heavily in process. More support for sellers. More content. Better partnerships. More hand-holding around expensive inventory. That is exactly what they have to do if they want to win this next phase because the higher you go in the market, the less a listing can rely on vibes alone.

Which brings us to the Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ1. This may quietly be one of the most important auctions Cars & Bids has ever run.

Not necessarily because it could become the highest sale in platform history, but because of what the car represents psychologically. A TZ1 is not a normal internet auction car. One of 117 built. Zagato body. Tubular chassis. Genuine European racing history. This is the kind of car you expect to see at RM Sotheby’s, Gooding Christie’s, or Broad Arrow, not sitting on Cars & Bids next to modern enthusiast metal.

And that’s exactly why it’s fascinating. If this car performs well, it gives Cars & Bids a trophy-case example. A proof point. Something they can point toward when talking to future sellers of serious cars. But it also immediately shows the different level of scrutiny that comes with operating in this territory because unlike a normal enthusiast listing where great photos and seller engagement can carry an auction, provenance becomes enormously important once you move into six and seven-figure territory.

The listing notes that the tubular chassis and engine were replaced under prior ownership while the original chassis and engine are included with the sale. Naturally, that has already sparked debate among serious Alfa enthusiasts in the comments, with questions surrounding documentation, certification, and historical verification. But with over 10 days still remaining in the auction, and the seller being the Petersen Automotive Museum, there is obviously still plenty of time for additional detail and clarification to emerge around the car.

And despite the early back-and-forth, bidding strength across the entire Velocity Collection has already been impressive. That’s really the bigger point here.

Cars & Bids is stepping into a part of the market where the expectations are completely different. Bigger cars bring bigger attention, but they also bring bigger scrutiny, more knowledgeable buyers, and far higher standards around presentation and documentation.

That does not mean Cars & Bids shouldn’t be taking swings like this. Honestly, I think it makes the platform far more interesting. But it does mean the company now has to prove it can successfully bridge two very different worlds at once: the speed and energy of internet-native auctions, and the seriousness expected in the blue-chip collector market.

Bring a Trailer already crossed this bridge years ago. At one point a million-dollar car on BaT felt almost shocking. Today nobody even blinks (just lookabove this article at the top sale yesterday). That shift didn’t happen overnight. It happened because over time the market slowly became convinced the buyers were there and the platform could handle serious inventory consistently.

Cars & Bids is now trying to build its own version of that credibility.

Velocity is a very smart place to attempt it because the event creates the right theater. The collection looks strong. The cars get physical presence. The content gives them visibility. The live auction endings create drama. And the inventory mix tells sellers that Cars & Bids wants to be considered for more than just traditional enthusiast internet-auction fare.

Ultimately, this whole Velocity Collection feels less like a one-off event partnership and more like Cars & Bids testing how far upmarket it can realistically push the platform.

Because if these cars perform well, the message to future sellers becomes very simple:

“Maybe our million-dollar car belongs here too.”

`

Love The Daily Vroom? Tell a friend.

We're growing fast — but your word of mouth is what fuels the engine.
Know someone who lives for cars, auctions, or just great stories? Send them to thedailyvroom.com to hop in.

It’s free. And it helps us keep doing what we do.

The Daily Vroom

The Shipping Quote Experience Is Broken

For years now, one of the most frustrating experiences in the collector car world has had nothing to do with auctions, dealers, or pricing.

It’s shipping. Not the actual shipping itself. The quote process.

You go onto a website thinking you’re about to get an instant quote, fill out the route, enter the car, hit continue… and suddenly before you can even see a number they want your phone number, your email, and half your life story. Then the real fun starts. Endless calls. Endless emails. Ten different brokers. Ten different prices. Half of them sounding like a guy with a pickup truck and a Gmail address.

And somehow the experience still feels broken even after all that.

Prices vary wildly from site to site. You have no idea who is actually transporting the car. Some companies tack on huge commissions or surprise charges later. Others make the whole thing feel like a lead generation funnel disguised as a quote tool.

It’s annoyed me forever.

Last week’s newsletter about how automotive websites have destroyed the reading experience with ads clearly struck a nerve because a lot of you agreed with the broader point: bad user experiences have become normalized online. And honestly, shipping quotes are another perfect example of that.

At The Daily Vroom, we’ve always tried to do things a little differently. No ads. No popups. No paid “top picks.” Just impartial news, market trends, pricing analysis, tools, and information that actually help enthusiasts make better decisions.

So eventually we came to the conclusion that if we’re going to constantly complain about terrible experiences in this industry, we should also be willing to build better ones.

That’s why today we’re launching the TDV Domestic Shipping Calculator.

Now to be clear, we are not trying to become a shipping company or a shipping broker. We have zero interest in doing that. What we wanted was a cleaner, more transparent way for enthusiasts to get real shipping prices without the nonsense that normally comes with it.

So we went out and looked at nearly every major option in the space.

And after comparing the technology, professionalism, pricing consistency, and overall experience, one company consistently stood out to us: RunBuggy.

Some of you may already know them. Some of you may have even used them yourselves. We recently shipped a Dodge Demon using their platform and the entire experience was smooth, professional, transparent, and exactly how this process should feel.

So we partnered with them, but not in the usual way.

The biggest thing I wanted to solve was the problem I mentioned above: I want to see the quote before giving away personal information.

So with the TDV Domestic Shipping Calculator, you simply enter the route and the vehicle details and instantly see live pricing for both open and enclosed transport. No email gate. No phone number wall. No waiting for callbacks. No broker bidding wars.

One route. One real quote.

And importantly, the price you see is the price unless there are unusual circumstances involving oversized vehicles, non-runners, restricted access locations, or something outside a standard shipment.

We also wanted the experience itself to feel trustworthy because not all shipping is equal. Cheapest is not always best. Some companies make it nearly impossible to understand what level of service you are actually getting.

With this setup, you know exactly who is handling the shipment, exactly who contacts you, and exactly how the process works.

Once you’re happy with the quote, you can submit a shipment request directly through the calculator. From there, RunBuggy contacts you directly to confirm pickup and delivery details, arrange scheduling, and handle payment securely. No endless broker calls. RunBuggy works with a vetted network of professional carriers and manages the process end to end.

We’ve also included a simple “How It Works” section directly inside the booking flow because we wanted the process to feel as transparent and straightforward as possible from start to finish.

And because transparency matters, we’ll also tell you exactly how this works commercially.

We are not running this as a traditional profit center or trying to build a brokerage business around it. We take a flat $50 per completed booking to cover our technology and operating costs. That’s it.

In fact, because the calculator is ungated, feel free to compare quotes against anyone else you want. Run ten routes. Compare open versus enclosed. Cross-check pricing elsewhere. We actively encourage it because we think the difference in experience speaks for itself.

It’s very similar to why we built TDV Import Calculator in the first place. That tool is completely free, costs us money to maintain, and exists because we were tired of how confusing the import process had become for enthusiasts trying to understand the real landed cost of a car.

This is the same philosophy. Cleaner tools. Better information. Less friction.

And just like the Import Calculator, this is only the beginning. We’ve got more tools coming that we think will make buying, selling, shipping, importing, and understanding the collector car market a whole lot easier.

And as always, if you have ideas, feedback, or things you think we should improve, reach out. A lot of the best features we’ve built so far have come directly from conversations with readers.

Try the TDV Domestic Shipping Calculator here.

The Daily Vroom

MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc… All online auction sites are analyzed to put this leaderboard together.

I only include websites that have sold 5+ vehicles in the chart below.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Sale of the Day

This 2012 Audi A8 L 4.2 just sold on Cars & Bids for $8,315.

And honestly, I had to double check the final number when the auction closed because that feels ridiculously cheap for what this car actually is.

This wasn’t some completely neglected disaster-spec luxury sedan either. Florida-owned since new, naturally aspirated 4.2-liter V8, Quattro, long wheelbase, massage seats, adaptive air suspension, Bose audio, rear sunshades, over $100k MSRP when new, and backed by 32 Carfax service entries.

Yes, every German luxury sedan auction eventually turns into the same discussion online. Air suspension. Timing chains. Electronics. “Nothing more expensive than a cheap German car.” Fair enough.

But at $8k what are you realistically buying instead these days?

For similar money you’re usually staring at rebuilt-title crossovers, exhausted commuter cars, or something designed purely to get from point A to point B with absolutely zero sense of occasion. Meanwhile someone here just bought Audi’s flagship sedan with a naturally aspirated V8 and one of the best interiors the company was building at the time.

What stood out to me almost as much as the final price though was the presentation.

I see this constantly on auction platforms. Lower-priced enthusiast cars get treated like lower-priced inventory. Weak photos, vague descriptions, no seller engagement, minimal effort in the comments section, then surprise when the auction struggles to gain momentum.

This seller treated an $8k Audi the same way someone would present a six-figure collector car.

Constant responses. Honest flaw disclosures. Service explanations. Follow-up videos. Even explaining why the DRLs appeared to flicker in the driving footage instead of just ignoring the question entirely.

That stuff genuinely changes how people bid because online auctions are built almost entirely around confidence. I was quite surprised it didn’t get to 5-figures.

And judging by the final comments, most people watching this one seemed to know exactly how good of a buy this was.

“Steal of a price.” Hard to disagree.

Supercar Blondie - What’s Next?

I’ve written extensively about SBX Cars over the past year and honestly thought I probably wouldn’t be writing about them again anytime soon.

But seeing what’s happened since then has become a genuinely interesting case study in how quickly things can start feeling directionless when a company pivots without clearly communicating what’s actually going on.

We all know the Supercar Blondie story by now.

Alex built one of the biggest automotive social media brands in the world, pulled in hundreds of millions of views, built a real media company around it, hired a serious team, landed major partnerships and proved that automotive content online could scale far beyond what traditional media companies ever thought possible.

Then came SBX Cars. Build an auction platform around the audience, start at the very top of the market with exclusive inventory, create a premium feel around the brand and try to build something bigger beyond media itself.

That first version clearly didn’t work the way they hoped, so the company pivoted. A new team came in, the platform started moving more toward enthusiast and more affordable cars, and for a while it honestly looked like things were starting to gain at least some momentum. But as you know they abruptly stopped their auctions with no announcement and now the whole thing just feels messy.

Not because the business struggled. That happens all the time. Good companies launch products that fail. Good people lose jobs. Businesses pivot. There’s nothing shocking about that.

What surprises me more is how unclear everything has become publicly.

Right now the SB Media website still talks about auctions under SBX Cars.

The embedded SBX YouTube videos are still on the website too, except now they literally just show “this channel was recently deleted.”

At this point, SBX is basically just an Instagram bio saying “DM us if you want to buy or sell a car.”

And maybe that’s the new direction. Maybe they’re moving toward private brokerage. Maybe there’s another relaunch coming. Maybe something bigger is happening behind the scenes.

But from the outside looking in, the messaging just feels completely disconnected right now.

Especially for a company that built such a polished media empire everywhere else.

That’s the part I don’t really understand. If something doesn’t work, own it. Say the model didn’t work the way you expected. Say you’re pivoting. Say you’re restructuring. Most people actually respect honesty in situations like this.

But trying to quietly transition into something else while old auction branding, deleted YouTube channels and outdated messaging all remain live publicly just makes the whole thing feel confused.

And to be clear, obviously none of us know the full story behind the scenes. But from the outside looking in, this increasingly feels like a case study in how quickly things can unravel when the messaging isn’t handled properly.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

The online auction world just keeps getting bigger. For the second straight day, Cars & Bids listed 50 vehicles and, as you’ll see below, managed to sell 38 of them for a 76% sell-through rate. Interestingly BaT and C&B reserve sell through rate was exactly the same yesterday at 63%. But this market is far bigger than just Cars & Bids and Bring a Trailer. There are dozens of smaller auction sites out there, along with government seizure auctions where some seriously strange stuff shows up.

One of the wildest examples this week was a 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS that somehow sold yesterday for $710,000 despite the listing clearly stating: “Starts?: Yes, with battery boost. VEHICLE RUNS, BUT DOES NOT SHIFT INTO GEAR TO BE DRIVEN.” Either there’s a story nobody knows yet or something very strange is going on here. Honestly, I have no clue, but if any of you know the backstory, I’d love to hear it.

MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc… All online auction sites are analyzed to put this leaderboard together.

I only include websites that have sold 5+ vehicles in the chart below.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Your Feedback

The other day we asked you: are modern automotive websites ruining the reading experience with excessive ads, autoplay videos and endless pop-ups?

The response couldn’t have been clearer. Judging by the comments below, this is something many of you feel strongly about. And honestly, I get it. This problem goes far beyond the automotive world at this point, but car websites seem to have become some of the worst offenders.

There has to be a better way to do this without destroying the user experience. If I wasn’t completely heads down building tools for this industry already, I’d probably be trying to build an ad-free automotive site myself with the reader experience coming first, not fifth behind programmatic ad revenue.

Here’s a selection of your comments.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

There’s something endlessly fascinating about these giant prewar luxury cars because they represent an era where automakers built automobiles with absolutely no concern for efficiency, practicality or restraint. This 1935 Packard Twelve Seven-Passenger Limousine is over 20 feet long, powered by a massive V12 and even has a functioning Dictaphone intercom system so rear passengers could talk to the chauffeur. That alone tells you everything about who this car was built for.

What stood out to me here is how this Packard seems to avoid the over-restored look that can sometimes strip the soul out of these cars. The listing says the front leather remains original while the car also received an estimated $150k in refurbishment work including a rebuilt V12, rebuilt brakes, new wiring and fresh glass throughout. It still feels like a real 1930s automobile rather than something turned into a museum prop.

The Harold Lloyd ownership story also genuinely fits the car instead of feeling like a random celebrity name attached to help sell it. You can actually picture this thing carrying a Hollywood family around Los Angeles during the Depression while most Americans were struggling to survive. That contrast is part of what makes these cars so interesting today.

The reality with cars like this is the restoration costs almost never make financial sense, but nobody buys a Packard Twelve limousine because it’s rational. They buy it because nothing remotely like this will ever exist again.

I’ve always had a soft spot for these old Mercedes sedans because they represent a version of Mercedes-Benz that barely exists anymore. Simple, elegant, overbuilt and designed with this quiet confidence where they didn’t need giant grilles, aggressive styling or screens everywhere to feel special. This 1967 Mercedes-Benz 250S Sedan is exactly that kind of car.

What makes this one interesting is the story and the honesty around it. It started life as an Italian-market car, came over to the US in 1986 with a Navy officer and stayed in the same family for nearly four decades before changing hands last year. The seller is also refreshingly transparent about the imperfections, from the bouncing speedometer to the slightly crooked front bumper and patina underneath. That kind of detail always gives me more confidence than listings pretending a nearly 60-year-old car is flawless.

The other thing I like here is that the money seems to have gone into making the car usable rather than over-restoring it into something sterile. Over $20,000 was spent recently on mechanical work including brakes, steering, carb rebuilds, ignition, suspension and fuel system work. That is exactly what you want on a car like this because these old Mercedes are at their best when they’re actually driven.

At $4,500 right now, this feels like one of those auctions where people may be sleeping on just how charming these cars really are.

Freshly listed with zero bids and zero comments at the time of writing is this no reserve AM General M1097 HMMWV, and honestly I cannot decide whether this is one of the coolest things on the site right now or one of the most ridiculous.

There’s something hilarious about seeing a military troop carrier sitting on the same platform where people argue for three days straight over paint meter readings on a Porsche. This thing does not care about any of that. The windshield wipers work intermittently, the fuel gauge has a mind of its own, it is not even registered for road use, and yet I can almost guarantee somebody is already convincing themselves they absolutely need it.

What I love about vehicles like this is how unapologetically functional they are. Portal axles, inboard disc brakes, a diesel V8, soft doors and what basically amounts to a rolling military tool box with seats. There’s no attempt to make it luxurious or refined because the entire point was simply to survive abuse in places most vehicles would not last an afternoon.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

The Modern Car Website Problem

I know this is a little off topic, but hear me out and then I’d leave to hear your 2 cents.

Over the weekend I spent some time doing something I honestly rarely do anymore, which was visiting a few of the major automotive media websites just to see what the landscape looks like today. MotorTrend, Car and Driver, the usual names that most of us grew up with and still recognize instantly. These are legacy automotive brands with decades of history behind them, huge audiences, massive resources, and every opportunity in the world to create an incredible online experience for enthusiasts.

And yet within minutes I found myself closing tabs out of frustration rather than sticking around to actually read anything.

It wasn’t because the topics were bad or because there wasn’t interesting content there. In fact, there were several articles and videos I genuinely wanted to spend time with. The problem was that the experience of trying to consume any of it felt exhausting. Before I could even properly settle into an article, ads were firing across the screen from every direction. Videos auto-playing somewhere on the page, sticky banners following you as you scroll, popups interrupting halfway through reading, layouts shifting around while more ads loaded in, giant takeovers covering portions of the article, and enough movement on the screen that it became difficult to focus on the actual content itself.

At some point you stop reading the article and start fighting the website.

Now to be clear, I completely understand why this exists. These companies are expensive operations to run. Writers, editors, photographers, video production, long-term road tests, travel, hosting, salaries, studios, all of it costs real money, and advertising has obviously been the backbone of automotive publishing for decades. Clearly the model still works financially well enough because almost every large automotive media company continues to lean heavily into it.

But just because something works financially does not necessarily mean it creates a good experience for the audience you are supposedly trying to serve.

Maybe I’m old school here, but this is honestly one of the reasons I still enjoy publications like so much. If there’s an ad in a magazine, fine, I turn the page and continue reading. It doesn’t suddenly blast audio at me, shift the layout of the article while I’m halfway through a sentence, or throw three signup boxes in my face before I’ve even decided if I care about the topic. The ads exist alongside the reading experience instead of actively disrupting it, and that difference matters more than I think a lot of media companies realize.

And honestly, this is probably a big reason why I spend far more time on YouTube nowadays than I do reading traditional car websites online. Yes, YouTube has ads too, obviously, but if I get a 10 second ad every 10 minutes while watching a well-produced car video, I can live with that. It feels predictable. It feels manageable. More importantly, it doesn’t completely destroy the experience of consuming the content itself. I’m not constantly battling moving layouts, popup windows, autoplay videos fighting each other, and ads layered on top of ads while trying to focus on what I originally clicked for.

What surprised me most over the weekend was not even the amount of advertising itself, but how quickly it pushed me away from spending time on the sites altogether. I genuinely wanted to engage with the content. I wanted to read reviews, watch videos, and see what these brands are doing today. Instead, after a few minutes, the experience became so distracting that I simply moved on.

That should concern the industry far more than whether they squeezed out one extra ad impression from a visitor.

Because enthusiasts today have endless alternatives. If someone feels overwhelmed on a traditional automotive website, they can instantly jump to YouTube, Reddit, forums, newsletters, auction platforms, podcasts, Instagram, TikTok, or independent creators who often provide a cleaner and more direct experience. The competition is no longer just another magazine or another website. The competition is every possible way someone can spend their attention online, and attention is becoming harder to earn every year.

What makes this even more interesting is that these big automotive brands are built almost entirely on trust and loyalty. People return to them because they believe the brand understands cars, understands enthusiasts, and delivers an experience worth coming back for. But trust is not only about the quality of the journalism. It is also about how the reader feels while consuming it. If every visit feels like an obstacle course designed primarily to maximize impressions and engagement metrics, eventually readers start associating the brand with frustration instead of enjoyment.

And honestly, I think there are far better ways to make money than overwhelming readers with constant interruptions. I actually have plenty of ideas on how these sites could create strong revenue streams without making the user experience feel chaotic. (an article for another day)There are a lot of opportunities that don’t require turning every article into a battlefield for your attention.

Because right now it often feels like the short-term spreadsheet wins are coming at the expense of long-term loyalty.

The irony is that standing out in automotive media today might not require more content, more videos, or more traffic at all. It might simply require creating an environment where people can calmly sit down and enjoy reading about cars again without feeling constantly interrupted every few seconds.

Maybe that sounds old school, but judging by how quickly I found myself leaving these sites, I have a feeling a lot more enthusiasts agree than the industry probably thinks.

No Reserve Auctions To Keep An Eye On

This 1971 Porsche 914 is a great example of how presentation can completely change the perception of a car online, especially a model like the 914 that spent years sitting in the shadow of more expensive air-cooled Porsches.

The Gold Metallic paint absolutely makes the auction because the car instantly jumps off the screen, and while some of the purists in the comments would rather see the original 15-inch wheels fitted back on the car, I actually think the 17-inch Klassiks give it a far more aggressive stance without ruining the overall character. The result is a 914 that feels far more special than most people probably remember these cars being.

What really stood out to me though was the amount of effort behind the listing itself. Over 900 photos, restoration documentation, cold start and driving videos, constant seller engagement in the comments, transparency around the replacement engine and even small details like the hood fitment from the replacement seal all help create confidence for bidders. So many sellers still underestimate how much that matters online, especially with enthusiast cars where buyers are trying to build trust through a screen.

This is the kind of listing that reminds you online auctions today are not just about the car itself. They are about how well you present it, how much confidence you create, and whether you can actually make people care about the story behind it.

The W204 C63 AMG Estate really is becoming one of those cars that enthusiasts look back on and wonder how manufacturers were ever allowed to build something like this in the first place.

A naturally aspirated 6.2-liter AMG V8 stuffed into what is essentially a practical family wagon feels almost impossible by today’s standards, especially when you remember this was still from the era before every performance car became turbocharged, filtered, softened, and overloaded with screens pretending to create emotion.

What makes this one interesting though is how honest it feels.

The seller is not pretending it’s a delivery-mile museum piece. They openly mention the mixed tyres, the small blemishes, the rear wiper issue, the service history confusion, and even corrected themselves publicly when the listing accidentally referred to a timing belt instead of the auxiliary belt on the M156 engine. That kind of transparency actually builds confidence because it feels like someone talking about a car properly rather than trying to oversell it.

And honestly, the spec works really well here too. Palladium Silver over the rare Designo Sand interior gives it that understated old-school AMG look where the people who understand the car will notice it immediately, while everyone else just sees another Mercedes estate.

That is part of the appeal with these. They are discreet until you start them.

Then suddenly you remember why enthusiasts are becoming obsessed with this generation of AMG. The sound, the drama, the fact Mercedes somehow signed off on a huge naturally aspirated V8 wagon that can comfortably haul a family one minute and sound like a touring car the next. Cars like this are the reason many enthusiasts still chase older performance cars instead of newer ones.

This E30 convertible is a good reminder that you do not need an M3 badge for an E30 to feel special anymore, because the right color, the right stance, and the right modifications are often enough to completely transform these cars.

The M-Tech II kit really makes the car here because a standard E30 convertible can sometimes look a little soft, whereas this actually has proper presence. The Bilsteins, H&R springs, and BBS-style wheels give it that classic old-school enthusiast look that somehow feels cooler now than it probably did twenty years ago.

And honestly, I almost like that this is a 318i instead of trying too hard to be something else. Not every E30 needs to be a full M3 clone or a garage queen nobody wants to drive. This feels more like the kind of E30 people actually want to use. Manual gearbox, top down, lightweight feel, simple analog driving experience, and just enough tasteful modifications to make it interesting without ruining the character of the car.

The seller also deserves credit because the listing feels honest. They openly mention the dash crack, A-pillar rust, soft top wear, repaint work, and answer questions directly instead of pretending the car is perfect. That matters because E30 buyers know exactly where these cars can go wrong.

I also think the seller understood exactly what kind of buyer this car appeals to because the whole presentation leans into the look and feel of the car rather than trying to oversell performance numbers. The reality is most people looking at an E30 convertible today are buying into the experience, the styling, and the nostalgia just as much as the car itself.

The Daily Vroom

MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below only count vehicles - we don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc… All online auction sites are analyzed to put this leaderboard together.

The Leaderboard only include websites that have sold 5+ vehicles 

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

It’s always interesting to dive in to see who’s buying these cars. The Senna buyer has bought 33 vehicles from 2021 onwards, a real eclectic mix.

Crazy Purple Ferrari

This 1999 Ferrari 360 Modena Koenig Specials Twin Turbo is currently live on BaT. It is one of the most unhinged things I have seen on a car auction platform in a long time, and I mean that as a compliment.

Koenig Specials was a Munich-based tuner that looked at Ferraris in the 1980s and 1990s and thought the factory had not gone far enough. They were right. This 360 got twin KKK turbochargers, upgraded pistons, a carbon roof intake, a fire suppression system, and a revised exhaust. Then somebody took it to Italy in 2006 where it currently resides, added an N-GT body kit and a rear wing, and had it resprayed in Viola Hong Kong purple with gold accents and matching purple Alcantara everywhere in 2024.

The BaT comment section is predictably excellent. Prince references. Barney the Dinosaur. Liberace. One person said it would be the hit of the elementary school drop-off line. Another said it is mandatory to wear a white Adidas tracksuit or the ignition will not work.

Here is the thing though. Underneath the theatre is a 25-year exempt Ferrari with a Koenig twin-turbo setup that reportedly makes around 600hp, Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes, a 360 Challenge clutch, and 48,000 km. The modifications are documented with a Koenig Specials plaque and build records.

We ran it through our import calculator at EUR 90,000, a reasonable estimate of where it might land. Italy to United States. Total landed cost came back at just over $113k. Import fees of just 7%, mainly because the 25-year exemption removes Section 232 tariffs entirely. You are paying just over $8k on top of the car to get it to your door.

One important caveat. This is a heavily modified vehicle. We have now added a modified vehicle checkbox to the calculator for exactly this reason. Customs brokers have more latitude to challenge the declared value on modified exotics, and CBP can reclassify the vehicle in a way that changes the duty picture entirely. The numbers look clean on paper. Get a broker who has imported modified exotics before, not just someone who handles standard cars.

At around $113,000 all-in (if final bid is 90k euro) you are getting a one-of-one twin-turbo 360 with full Koenig documentation and a story that writes itself. The colour is either the best or worst thing you have ever seen depending on who you are. Either way it is absolutely one the most interesting cars on all the auctions platform this week.

Talking of the import calculator, it just got better.

After thousands of calculations and some great feedback from readers, here is what changed.

Lighter background. You asked, we listened. Cream now. Much easier to read.

A lot more cars. We have added tons of new models across makes. G-Wagen W463 models are in across all years. RUF is in. Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Toyota, Nissan and a dozen others have been significantly expanded. If your car was missing before, try again.

Modified vehicle flag. New checkbox at the bottom of the form. Tick it if the car has been tuned, converted, or substantially changed from factory spec. The calculator will flag the additional customs risk in the TDV Take.

Dubai currency fix. If a UAE car is listed in USD, it now calculates in USD. Simple, but it wasn't working before.

A note on EU tariffs. Trump announced last week that tariffs on European cars are increasing to 25%, up from the current 15%. This has not been confirmed in the Federal Register and the legal situation is contested. We are monitoring it closely and will update the calculator the moment it is official. If you are running numbers on a European import right now, treat the current figure as a floor, not a ceiling.

Clicking ‘New Calculation’ scrolls back to the top. It didn't. Now it does.

Now tell us what you want next. We have four features on the table. We are building whichever one or maybe two you prefer.

Vote below.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

Up for grabs here is a straightforward, honest Saab, the kind of older, usable car that sits firmly in the lower end of the auction market and usually flies under the radar unless something about it pulls you in.

I see this all the time with cars in this price range, and it’s something most sellers still don’t get. Because it’s not a big number, the effort drops off. Photos are rushed, the description is thin, comments are quiet, and then the result comes in softer than expected. It happens again and again.

The reality is it’s usually the opposite. These cars need more care, not less, because buyers are coming in expecting something to be off. If you actually put a bit of elbow grease into the listing, clean photos, a clear story, and some proper engagement, it makes a much bigger difference than people think.

That’s exactly what’s going on here with this No Reserve listing.

This Saab isn’t being overplayed or dressed up as something it isn’t, but you can tell the seller has taken the time to present it properly. The photos are composed, the write-up gives you what you need, and it feels like a listing you can actually trust rather than scroll past in a second. That alone already puts it ahead of most cars it’s competing with.

That’s really the takeaway. Not anything to do with the badge or where it ends up, just a reminder that presentation still moves the needle in a big way at this level of the market. Sellers don’t need to do anything revolutionary, they just need to care a bit more, and when they do, it shows immediately.

This is a different conversation entirely. It’s a documented, numbers-matching 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, finished in the classic Cameo White over blue with the Ram Air III 400 and a four-speed, and more importantly, it’s one of just 505 built with that exact drivetrain combination . That alone puts it in a category where buyers already know what they’re looking at before they even open the gallery.

And that’s really where this gets interesting. Because unlike the lower end cars we talk about where presentation has to do the heavy lifting, here the car is doing most of the work. When you’re dealing with a first-year Trans Am, documented properly, original engine, correct setup, all the right boxes ticked, the market tends to snap into focus pretty quickly. You don’t need to convince anyone this is desirable, you just need to not get in the way of it.

This one seems to understand that balance. The listing leans into the strengths without trying to oversell it. You’ve got the documentation, the matching drivetrain, the right options, and the kind of provenance buyers in this space care about. The seller even notes the possibility of a repaint, which is exactly the kind of detail that builds credibility rather than detracts from it, because at this level, buyers aren’t expecting perfection, they’re expecting honesty.

What stands out here is how complete the package feels. It’s not just the car, it’s everything around it. Paperwork, history, equipment, all aligning in a way that gives confidence before the bidding even really gets going. That’s usually what separates the strong results from the average ones in this tier of the market.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

Sale of the Week

There were so many candidates for sale of the week, but this one stood out to me for a number of reasons.

Firstly $444,444 for a 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nür is the kind of number that immediately grabs you, but the more you sit with this one, the less it becomes about the headline and the more it becomes about everything underneath it.

Everyone will talk about the ending, and rightly so, because watching an auction climb into the low $400s and then suddenly jump to $444,444 is always fascinating, especially when it happens in one clean move that effectively shuts the door. It’s what we all call a knockout bid, but that label almost oversimplifies what’s actually going on. At that point in the auction, the bidder isn’t trying to edge the other guy out by a few thousand dollars, they’re trying to remove the decision entirely and force a completely different kind of response, one that most people aren’t comfortable making at that level.

And that’s what makes that moment interesting, but it’s not the whole story.

Because what that bid really does is lock in everything about the car itself at that number, and this is where it gets more nuanced. On one hand, you’re looking at one of 285 M-Spec Nür cars, showing just 5,300 kilometers, already in the U.S., which is a bigger deal than most people give it credit for, and positioned exactly where you’d want it if you’re chasing one of the best R34s out there. On the other hand, this isn’t a frictionless asset you can just buy and forget about. It’s still under Show or Display, which means restrictions, approvals, mileage limits, and just enough administrative weight to keep this firmly in collector territory rather than something you casually enjoy.

Then you start layering in the smaller details that don’t dominate the listing but absolutely matter at this level. The S-Tune front bumper, the exhaust and airflow changes, the discussion around the rear bumper finish, all things that on a normal Skyline might barely register but here become part of the broader question of originality versus usability, especially when the car is trading at a number that puts it into serious collector territory.

So when you come back to the price, it’s not as simple as saying it’s high or low.

From the seller’s side, this is exactly what you want, a very decent price, a final number that now sits there as a public reference point for one of the best-spec R34s to trade in the U.S. market. That’s a strong result, full stop.

From the buyer’s side, this wasn’t about getting a deal. This was about not losing the car. At this level, the last $20k–$30k is noise if you think you’re looking at one of the best examples that’s going to come up for sale in the near term.

And that’s really where this lands. Big number today, yes.

But more importantly, a buyer who decided this was the car to own, not just another R34 and paid the number required to make sure there was no second chance.

Whether that proves expensive or obvious in a few years is the only part that’s still open.

Interesting Auctions This Week To Keep An Eye On

Some Camaros are great. Some are just more of the same and you don’t think twice. Then one shows up where the spec actually makes you pause.

This 2024 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE is that car. Supercharged V8, 650 horsepower, rear wheel drive, and a proper 6-speed manual, which already tells you everything about who it’s for. Then you’ve got the 1LE package, and that’s where it really changes. The suspension, the aero, the way it sits and grips, it’s built to handle properly when you’re actually on it, not just feel fast in a straight line.

I’m a manual guy, so it’s already a yes in my head before I even get into the details. Add in the spec and how focused it is and yeah, it’s something I’d seriously consider. Just comes down to where it ends, because at the right number this is a seriously fun one to own.

This one isn’t just about spec, it’s about understanding what you’re actually buying. A 2024 Porsche 911 Turbo S in Paint to Sample Viola Purple Metallic sounds like an easy win at first glance. Big color, big options, and then a long list of upgrades on top. Öhlins suspension, titanium exhaust, full carbon kit, aftermarket wheels, plus all the original parts included. It’s not a subtle car, and it’s not trying to be.

But the real story sits underneath all of that. Branded title from a manufacturer buyback tied to a chassis system issue that’s been addressed. That changes how you look at it straight away. You’re not comparing this to other Turbo S cars on the market like-for-like, even if it looks just as good, because buyers, lenders, and insurers won’t treat it the same.

And here’s where it gets interesting. This already got to $230K last time before the deal fell apart, which basically tells you the level the seller was willing to transact at. So as a buyer, you’re not starting from zero. You’ve got a reference point. The job now is simple. Go look at what clean-title Turbo S cars are actually trading for, factor in the title, factor in the mods, and decide what that gap needs to be for you to feel comfortable.

That’s the play here. Not chasing it because it looks good, but understanding where it sits in the market and buying it right if the number makes sense.

Some modified cars are a mess. Bits thrown together, story doesn’t add up, and you move on. Then you get something like this 2001 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG and you actually stop, because the story is doing most of the work here.

This isn’t a stock E55. It’s been completely reworked around a supercharged M113k pulled from an SL55 with the P30 package, paired with the matching AMG transmission. So instead of the original setup, you’re looking at something pushing around 600 horsepower in a W210 chassis. That alone changes the car. Then you layer in everything else, suspension overhaul, brakes from an SLK55, fresh repaint, interior retrim, and over $30K in receipts.

But here’s where you need to be honest with yourself as a buyer. This is a build, not a factory car. Even if it was done by a Mercedes master technician, you’re still buying someone else’s vision. 160k miles on the chassis, swapped drivetrain, custom work throughout. That’s not for everyone, and that’s exactly why it’s sitting where it is early on.

That’s also where the opportunity is. Because you’re not paying to build it, that’s already been done. You’re deciding what that work is worth to you today. If you tried to recreate this, you’d be deep into it, way past where this will likely end. So the question isn’t “is this cheap,” it’s “do I trust the work, and do I actually want something like this.”

For the right buyer, this is a ridiculous amount of car for the money. For the wrong buyer, it’s a headache waiting to happen. That’s the whole trade.

There’s always that debate about the most beautiful car ever made, and the 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is always in it. But once you get past that, this specific car is where it actually gets interesting.

On first look, white over red just works. It suits the shape and it’s easy to see why someone would choose it. But it didn’t start life like this, it was originally black and repainted later on, along with some interior work. That’s the first thing you need to clock. This isn’t a fully original car, so you’re already into a different category of buyer.

Then you get into the details. Around 85k miles, long-term ownership, some refresh work done decades ago, and now it’s coming back to market as-is. That’s really the decision. Are you buying this because you want a Gullwing to use and enjoy, or are you chasing a top-tier, fully correct example. Because this sits somewhere in between, and that’s exactly how you need to look at it.

The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

A lot of you have been asking for the daily numbers again, who’s selling what and where things actually sit across the market. We’ve always tried to avoid turning this into just a scoreboard because that’s not really the point of The Daily Vroom, but when enough people ask for something it’s usually a sign it’s worth bringing back in some form. It won’t be every day, but it will be frequent enough to give a proper sense of what’s going on.

To put things into context, earlier this week we wrote about Cars & Bids running an 80% sell-through rate, which is strong but also very difficult to maintain consistently. Yesterday they came in at 60% with 24 cars sold, the day before 65% STR, which is completely fine as it’s the ying and the yang of the market. Overall this year they’ve had impressive growth.

Bring a Trailer yesterday, ran at roughly 75% sell-through and sold an incredible 152 vehicles, and that’s really where the gap in the market shows up right now. It’s not just about sell-through, it’s about the volume they’re able to push through on a daily basis, and even at that level there were still around 50 cars that didn’t sell, which suggests there’s still room for them to go higher over time.

At the same time, measuring the rest of the market directly against BaT misses the point. Not every platform needs to operate at that level of scale to be a very successful business, and in many cases trying to chase that comparison ends up being more of a distraction than anything else. There are a number of platforms that have built strong positions by focusing on their own lane, their own audience, and executing consistently rather than trying to replicate something that took years to build under very specific conditions.

The more interesting thing in the market right now isn’t who’s closest to BaT, it’s how each platform is actually defining what success looks like for them, and whether they’re building towards it in a sustainable way.Let’s be real, there’s more to the online car auction world than just C&B and BaT.

Here at TDV we try to cover all the platforms, and a new one that just popped up on our radar is buythecar.com. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the kind of cars they start bringing to market.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Collectors Edition

Back in March we talked about the marketing Car & Classic put behind their collectors edition auction night, and they’re back at it again for June.

They haven’t released the cars yet, but the video they dropped is extremely well done, so I thought you’d enjoy it.

If you’re in the UK and have something special, it’s definitely one to submit.

Auctions Ending Today To Keep An Eye On

Collectors chase the roadster. Always have. The open two-seater is the poster, the icon, the Enzo quote. But the 2+2 is quietly the more usable car, longer wheelbase, actual headroom, same 4.2 XK six under that endless bonnet, and it trades at a discount because of the stigma.

This one above on Collecting Cars right now is worth your attention. 1968 Series 1, Opalescent Maroon over cream, family owned since 2004. The seller's late husband bought it, she's been custodian since 2024, and in that twenty-year stretch the family put real money into it. Engine rebuild, new floorpan, full rewire, stainless exhaust, diff and brakes done. Thirty pages of paperwork to back it up.

It's not a trailer queen. The listing is honest about front-end damage at some point, a 1997 restoration before they bought it, and mileage that can't be verified. Someone has clearly been maintaining it rather than sitting on it though.

If you're in the US and this is making you think, I ran it through the TDV import calculator and a 1968 car is about as friendly as it gets. 25-year exemption, 2.5% duty, none of the tariff ugliness hitting modern UK imports right now. Fees came out at 11% on top of whatever you pay at auction.

This 912 Targa project on PCarMarket is stupid cheap right now. And I mean that as a compliment.

It's a basket case. Fully stripped interior, drivetrain out, rust present, been sitting outdoors for years, rear paint stripped back to bare metal. The seller isn't dressing it up, the listing says exactly what it is and the photos back that up.

But here's the thing. It's a 1968 soft window Targa, one of around 2,500 built before Porsche switched to the fixed glass rear window in 1969. Zip-out plastic rear screen, stainless Targa bar, removable roof panel. It's the earliest form of the Targa concept and the rarest configuration. Restored examples carry a real premium.

You get the shell, all the original removed parts and trim, and a period correct 1.6 flat-four with a 5-speed transaxle. Not numbers matching but era correct.

Three bids at $1,250 with hours left and no reserve.

If you have a shop, a plan, and patience this is the kind of entry point that doesn't come up often on a car this specific. If you don't have all three, my advice is leave it alone.

The first year of the most important sports car ever built, feel free to disagree, but you’d be wrong :)

1965 was the first full production year of the 911. A 0-Series car, completed July 1965, one of 3,154 built that year. Champagne Yellow over black leatherette, which is exactly right for the period. Porsche Certificate of Authenticity included. Known history back to 1982.

The current owner spent $62k on a full engine and transaxle rebuild in 2017. Everything came apart, everything was inspected, worn parts replaced. Period correct 2.0 flat-six, 5-speed, Weber carbs. Since the rebuild the car has covered 550 miles.

That number will go higher. These 0-Series cars are genuinely rare and the ones with documented history and a fresh drivetrain are rarer still.

If you've ever wanted a first-year 911 this is the kind of listing you don't walk past twice.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings?

Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Your Cars & Bids Feedback

Yesterday we asked you what matters most for the growth of C&B, here’s how you answered the poll.

The comments were pretty consistent. There’s clear recognition that Cars & Bids is growing and trying new things, but there’s still a perception gap, especially around the quality of cars on the platform.

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.

As an example, Bring a Trailer sells a huge number of cars every day, and when you actually look at the full mix, it’s not all pristine, top-tier inventory. There’s plenty of higher-mileage cars, modified cars, and average examples that just get lost in the volume. C&B’s mix isn’t dramatically different, it’s just more visible.

The bigger question is whether that actually matters? As long as everything is presented transparently and buyers know what they’re bidding on, there’s a car for everyone. Not every platform needs to be curated at the very top end to work. (we all saw how that worked out for SBX)

Where it does start to matter is on the revenue side. If most of the cars trading are lower value, you need a lot more volume to generate the same fees, and that’s where moving upmarket becomes vitally important. Higher value cars bring in more revenue per transaction, attract a different level of buyer, and help shift perception at the same time. Their highest sale this year was a 2015 Ferrari 458 Spider at $381,000, and that can’t be the outlier if they want revenue to really move.

Got a lot of interesting responses on this - dropping a few of them below.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

This is one of those listings where the photos pull you in, but it’s the spec that keeps you there.

Finished in Tropical Turquoise with the correct two-tone interior, it looks exactly how a ’57 Bel Air Convertible should. But what separates it is everything underneath that first impression. This wasn’t a quick restoration or a one-and-done build. The owner spent years adding to it, stacking options, accessories, and details that most cars like this lost decades ago.

And it shows. The options list is almost excessive, in a good way. Power features, period-correct accessories, the kind of small touches you rarely see all together on one car anymore. It feels like someone set out to build the most complete version possible and actually followed through.

There are plenty of nice ’57s out there. Not many with this level of completeness. That’s what bidders are going to be reacting to at the end.

This Triumph is one of those cars where the spec sheet almost reads like a list of everything people complain about on a standard TR6, and then fixes it one by one.

The original formula is great in theory, simple British roadster, good looks, plenty of character, but in reality they can feel dated pretty quickly once you actually try to use one regularly, whether it’s the brakes, the fueling, or just the general lack of refinement that comes with driving on of these.

What makes this example interesting is that it doesn’t pretend to be a perfect, original car, and it doesn’t really try to live in that world at all. Instead, it leans fully into being a sorted driver, with fuel injection, modern braking, suspension upgrades, and all the small details that make it something you’d actually want to get in and use without thinking twice.

That’s where the trade starts. Because the more you improve a car like this, the less it appeals to the traditional buyer who wants originality and period correctness, and the more it shifts toward someone who just wants the experience without the compromises. There isn’t a right answer there, but it does change how you look at it.

And in this case, it’s done in a way that feels thought through rather than thrown together, which is harder to find than people think, especially on cars that have been modified this heavily over time.

So you’re not really comparing this to other restored TR6s anymore, and you’re definitely not comparing it to untouched cars either. You’re just asking whether this version of the car, with all the modern fixes baked in, is closer to what you’d want than the original ever was.

Because for the right buyer, this is probably a better TR6 than Triumph ever built. And for everyone else, it’s exactly the reason they’d keep looking for a stock one.

This is one of those listings that doesn’t really hook you because of the spec, but because of what it represents once you look a little closer.

On paper, it’s a 1975 911S with a Sportomatic, finished in Desert Beige with a comfort-focused spec that reflects exactly how the original owner wanted to use it. But once you realize it’s Keith Martin’s car and read his piece in Sports Car Market, it stops being about the configuration and starts feeling like a story most people in this space recognize immediately.

He didn’t overthink it when he bought it, the opportunity came up, the spec made sense for where he was at the time, and he went for it. Then he did what people always say they’re going to do but don’t always follow through on, which is actually sort the car properly and then use it. Suspension refreshed, engine work handled, all the small things that turn a car from something you own into something you trust, and then real miles put on it, not just short drives or occasional outings but proper use.

And that’s where the story really sits, because once you start using a car the way you always imagined you would, you also start to understand it properly. The same rawness and feedback that make an older 911 so engaging begin to define how and when you actually want to drive it, and over time that matters more than the idea of the car ever did.

So the decision to move it on isn’t about the car falling short, it’s almost the opposite. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, it delivered the experience, it became part of his routine, and then at some point it stopped fitting that routine as well as something else might.

That’s the part people don’t always talk about, because the narrative is usually about finding the perfect car and keeping it, but the reality is that a lot of ownership is just timing. The right car at the right moment, used the right way, and then let go when that moment passes.

That’s what this feels like. Not a spec play or a market exercise, just a car that was bought, sorted, driven, and now passed on, which is probably closer to how most people actually experience these cars than they’d like to admit.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.

The Daily Vroom

Good Morning Vroomers,

Here at TDV, we get a lot of questions and one recently we’ve had more than a few times is what’s going on at SBX Cars, since our article last week about them shutting down auctions.

From what I understand, and based on how this is playing out, this is the final week of auctions before an announcement is made. This week alone they have 14 auctions ending, which is likely the highest weekly volume they’ve ever run and feels like a deliberate push to clear the board before anything is said publicly.

There’s still been no official communication, which isn’t surprising. When auctions are live and money is still moving, you let that process run its course and deal with the messaging after. From the outside, nothing suggests this is the end. The site is still active, the promotion hasn’t changed, and everything continues as normal.

That feels deliberate, and it ties back to the bigger point. SBX as a brand is not the issue here.

What they built on the content side is significant. A 120 million–plus audience, real reach, real engagement, and access that most platforms in this space simply don’t have. That doesn’t go away, and it’s likely what gets protected in how this is positioned next.

The issue, as we’ve already covered, is that attention doesn’t automatically convert into transactions.

And ultimately they ran into the one constraint that matters here. Attention is easy. Getting people to actually buy is not.

At the same time, things are already shifting internally. The CEO has been removed from the team page, which lines up with everything else we’re seeing.

What comes next is how they choose to frame this. Whether it’s positioned as a pivot, a reset, or something more final will determine how much of that brand carries forward.

And to be clear, there’s no real shame in how this played out. They went after something ambitious, made adjustments along the way, and ultimately ran into a very real constraint in this market.

For now, it comes down to this week. 14 auctions, likely their biggest push, and one last chance to finish cleanly before everything becomes official.

Cars & Bids Is Working. Now Comes the Hard Part

For a while now we’ve been banging on about the same thing with Cars & Bids.

Can they actually scale this properly? Can they get to 30+ sales a day consistently, not just on a good week but as a baseline? Can they increase volume without killing sell-through? And more importantly, can they build something that feels bigger than just the listings themselves?

Over the past few weeks, you can start to see a bit of an answer forming.

Listing volume is pushing toward 200-250 a week, and last week they ran at around an 80% sell-through. That combination is not easy to hit because most platforms can push volume or protect sell-through, but doing both at the same time is where it starts to mean something.

At the same time, the shift isn’t just happening on the site. We’ve talked a lot about how the best platforms don’t live purely online, and Bring a Trailer and others built a lot of its trust through events and real-world presence. Cars & Bids has always felt more digital in comparison, which worked, but also limited how far the brand could stretch.

Now you’re seeing them lean into that side with more intent, and the clearest example is Velocity Invitational in Sonoma, one of the bigger car weekends in the U.S., where Cars & Bids will have auctions ending live at the event with cars physically on-site while the full online audience bids alongside. From what it looks like, bidding will still be fully online, which is a bit disappointing because having people in the room actually bidding would add a completely different level of energy and urgency to it. That said, it’s an easier format to control and probably the right first step, especially when others have shown that blending live and online can work if it’s executed properly.

If they keep pushing this, the next logical step is obvious. Let people in the room participate. It’s more complex to run, but it’s doable, and it changes the atmosphere entirely from something you watch to something you’re part of.

At the same time, they’ve moved away from Doug’s Takes. Those worked, people liked them, even if they hadn’t been written by Doug for a while, and they didn’t have to change it. Choosing to move on from something that already worked and try something new, especially around live auctions, tells you they’re at least willing to experiment rather than just protect what they already have.

For now though, the focus isn’t on how far they can push it. It’s much simpler.

Can they do this again next week? Because that’s the part that matters. One strong stretch is interesting, but if they can hold volume around these levels and keep sell-through in that range week after week, then you’re no longer looking at a spike, you’re looking at something repeatable.

After that, the next layer opens up. Can they push toward 50 listings a day without ‘flooding’ the platform? Do they finally start using weekends properly, which we know works, or do they keep leaving that gap? Does the live auction format actually translate into better results, or is it just a brand exercise?

Those are the questions that decide what this becomes. Right now, they’re at the point where things are working. Now they have to prove it wasn’t just a moment.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

We’ve been spending a lot of time recently building out the TDV Import Calculator, mainly because one thing keeps coming up again and again. People think they understand what a car costs until they actually run the full numbers.

This 1990 Porsche 928 GT is a good example of that. It’s a manual car, RoW spec, originally delivered to Japan and now sitting in Canada with a long ownership history and recent service, which makes it interesting but not perfect, and exactly the kind of car where the price has to make sense.

At a glance, it feels straightforward. It’s over 25 years old, it’s relatively close, and there’s nothing about it that immediately signals complexity, which is usually where buyers stop thinking.

Once you run it through the calculator, the picture sharpens. Bringing a car like this into the U.S. adds roughly 16% on top of wherever it lands, and that number is consistent enough that you can treat it as part of the price, not an afterthought.

That’s where the real question comes in, because this isn’t about whether the cost exists. It’s about who actually absorbs it.

A U.S. buyer is effectively bidding on the landed number, not the hammer price, which means they either adjust their bid to account for that 16% or accept that they’re paying above what the car might otherwise justify. A Canadian buyer doesn’t have that problem, which creates two very different views of the same auction.

What looks like a fair result on paper can be a stretched one in reality depending on where you’re sitting, and on cars like this, right in the middle between perfect and flawed, that difference actually changes behavior.

That’s the gap the calculator is meant to close, not by telling you whether to buy the car, but by making sure you’re making that decision on the real number, not the one you see on the listing.

We’ve made a number of updates to it in the background over the past few days, and one small but useful change on the front end is that you can now input the purchase price in any currency rather than being limited to the car’s origin.

I’ve always liked cars that have actually been used, properly used, not just kept around for weekends or preserved for the next owner, but driven day in and day out to the point where the mileage stops being something you apologize for and just becomes the story.

This 1991 Nissan 300ZX has 372,000 miles on it, and you can feel that in the right way. It spent 30 years with the same owner, commuting, being maintained, fixed when it needed to be, and just kept on the road, which is really the whole point of a car like this. Somewhere along the way the original engine was replaced, which almost adds to it rather than taking anything away, because it shows the car didn’t get parked when things got difficult, it just kept going.

And to a certain extent, I trust something like this more than a car showing 50,000 miles. At this point, everything that was going to break probably has, and more importantly, it’s been fixed and driven again. You’re not guessing how it behaves or how it’s been treated, you can see it.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not trying to be. There’s been paintwork, the air conditioning doesn’t blow cold, there are small issues that come with a car that’s lived a full life, but none of that really changes the appeal because this isn’t about condition in the traditional sense. It’s about durability, about what it takes for a car to get to this point and still be here, still running, still something someone can get in and drive.

We spend a lot of time focusing on low-mileage examples and originality, and those matter, but cars like this are a different kind of proof. They show what happens when a car is actually used the way it was meant to be used, and more importantly, what happens when someone cares enough to keep it going.

And the fact it’s no reserve just makes it cleaner. There’s no narrative being forced onto it, no number it has to justify. It’s just the market deciding what a car like this is worth, knowing exactly what it is.

At some point, mileage stops being a negative and just becomes the story, and this is exactly that kind of car.

Following on from that 300ZX, here’s the same idea, just done differently.

You know I love a wagon, and this is exactly my kind of car. A 1995 Mercedes-Benz E320 Wagon with just over 150k miles, not low, not extreme, but right in that range where you know it’s been used properly and not just kept around for show.

What really matters here isn’t the mileage, it’s the work that’s gone into it. There’s over $8,000 in recent mechanical refresh, and not the usual vague “sorted” description, but actual, meaningful items like the head gasket, suspension, steering, and cooling system, all the things that determine whether a car like this is something you can actually rely on or just something that looks good in a listing.

That’s what separates it. Most cars get to this point and either get neglected or passed along without being properly addressed, but this one didn’t. Someone took the time to go through it properly and make it right, which changes the entire equation, because instead of trying to work out what might need doing next, you’re looking at a car where that process has already happened.

This is also exactly what these wagons were built for in the first place. They’re meant to be used, to carry people, to carry things, and to just keep going without turning into a project, and when you find one that’s already been driven and then properly sorted, it becomes a much clearer proposition.

The Daily Vroom

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

The Chicken Tax Is Why This $13K Hilux Costs $21K to Land

In 1962, European farmers were furious about cheap American chicken flooding their markets. West Germany led the pushback. Tariffs went up. US chicken exports collapsed.

President Johnson decided to hit back.

In 1964 he imposed retaliatory tariffs on four European imports: potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks. The other three got dropped within a few years. The truck tariff never did.

Sixty-one years later, it's still sitting there. And it's the reason a 1994 Toyota Hilux that's been sitting in the UK for thirty years walks into the United States paying the same 25% duty it would have paid the day it rolled off the production line.

Nobody named it after trucks. Nobody named it after tariffs. They named it after the thing that started the argument. The Chicken Tax!

And it matters a lot more than most people importing cars realise.

There's a 1994 Hilux on Car and Classic right now. White, five-speed manual, 106k miles, one of the cleanest fifth-generation examples I've seen. The kind of truck that gets used hard and falls apart, except this one didn't.

Most people see something like this and assume the 25-year rule handles everything. It handles a lot. No EPA conversion, no DOT compliance paperwork, no grey market headaches. For a car that's exactly right.

But the Hilux isn't a car. It's a light truck. And the Chicken Tax doesn't care how old it is. Most people assume the 25-year rule means 2.5% duty. For a pickup truck, it doesn't. You still pay 25%. The age exemption and the tariff are completely separate things.

I ran it through our import calculator at £10,000, a reasonable landing point for a truck in this condition.

Total landed cost: $21,595. Import fees of $8,094. About 60% on top of the purchase price.

That $3,900 tariff line in the breakdown isn't a modern invention. It's a 1964 retaliatory measure over poultry that nobody ever bothered to repeal, quietly making itself felt every time someone tries to bring a pickup truck into the United States from anywhere in the world, crazy!

You're not bidding on a £10,000 truck. You're bidding on a $21,595 truck with a sixty-year-old chicken dispute baked into the price.

The calculator is there if you want to run your own numbers.

Interesting Auctions

The P30 E63 wagon in RWD is the one people describe when they explain why they got into AMGs. Not the sedan. Not the base wagon. This exact configuration. Someone always has a story about the first time they heard one pull away from a light, or the moment they realized a family car could do that.

Mercedes built the E63 wagon in a way that made no logical sense and every emotional kind of sense. Five-point-five liters, twin turbos, hand-built, 550 horsepower, driving the rear wheels through a limited-slip differential in a car with a liftgate and rear entertainment screens. The P30 package piles on another 32 horsepower and 74 lb-ft, the adaptive air suspension, the 19-inch AMG wheels, and the red calipers. It is, on paper, completely unnecessary. That's the whole point.

This one is 34k miles, bone stock, West Coast its entire life, never seen snow. Two owners, clean Carfax, service records from new. November 2025 Service B. Fresh Pilot Sport 4S tires dated mid-2024. Nothing has been touched that shouldn't have been touched.

Cars like this are easy to talk about and harder to actually find in this condition. The ones that have been driven hard, modified, or just quietly neglected are everywhere. A stock, low-mile P30 wagon with paperwork is a different thing.

Also worth noting, it’s listed on the thembmarket, so will have less eyes on it and more opportunity for those that are interested.

A 1967 Chevelle with a 454 and a four-speed should be an easy car for the market to figure out.

This one isn’t. The headline works. Big-block, manual, classic shape. But underneath that, it’s a different story. The VIN points to a six-cylinder Malibu, so everything that defines the car now, engine, transmission, even the SS look was added later. You’re not looking at a factory-built package, you’re looking at someone else’s version of one.

That shifts the entire question from what it is to how well it’s been done.

There’s clearly been effort here. The setup isn’t basic, and it reads like more than a casual swap. But the presentation doesn’t fully carry that same level of confidence. Small details start to stand out. Gauges that don’t work, minor cosmetic issues, unfinished touches inside, and even a simple request for a data plate photo that couldn’t be answered.

Individually, none of that is a dealbreaker. Together, it creates just enough uncertainty to slow people down.

And that’s where cars like this get stuck.

It doesn’t fit cleanly into any one category. It’s not original enough for someone chasing factory correctness, and it doesn’t present tightly enough to feel like a fully sorted build. What’s left is a car that people like in theory, but take longer to commit to in reality.

That doesn’t make it unappealing. It just makes it something you have to understand before you chase.

Toyota built 100 of these. Not 100,000. Not 1,000. One hundred, total, ever. None of them were sold in America new.

The backstory matters here. 1996, Toyota turns 60 years old as a car company. To mark it, they go back to the beginning, the Model AA, their first mass-produced car from 1936. They commission Toyota Technocraft, their in-house coachbuilder, to build a retro sedan in that spirit. Hilux underpinnings, 2.0-liter four-cylinder, rear-wheel drive, leather, woodgrain, Nardi wheel, a two-tone black and burgundy exterior that looks like it rolled out of a 1930s Chrysler showroom. They call it the Classic. They build exactly 100 and sell them only in Japan.

This one has 4,500 miles on it. It's been sitting at Duncan Imports in Christiansburg, Virginia, which if you follow the Japanese domestic market import world, you probably already know. The dealer has had it a couple of years and added minimal miles. Clean Tennessee title. One key. The only thing worth noting is 2013 date codes on the tires, which need to be dealt with regardless of how it looks.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.