Is This Concept Cool?
Hi Friends!
I oftentimes find myself in a little bit of a quandary with all this of stuff. On one hand, the further along that I get in this business, the more I find that I appreciate certain traditions and certain ways of doing things. On the other, I also get bored way faster than I used to and find some of those same traditions to be confining. I like that there’s ways in which we do things that are tried and true, make sense and work, but I’m always supportive of innovation within those confines too. GAA Classic Car Auctions recently announced a unique idea that sort of straddles these lines, but I’m not sure it’s all the way there.
For those not familiar with GAA, they are a largely regional auction company located in Greensboro, North Carolina. They do three sales annually from their 8-acre building downtown and generally host between 750 and 1,000 cars. Their auctions can be viewed via MAV TV on DirecTV, many cable providers across the United States, as well as from their app and on streaming services like Roku. They are kind of a neat outfit and they get a lot done up there for sure.
Their next sale, running from February 20th through the 22nd features an interesting idea that I haven’t seen executed before. Labeled as “Bidder’s Choice” GAA is offering three low mileage 2006 Ford GTs, but allegedly, they’re only going to sell one of them. Packaged as one lot, these cars will not be crossing the block in the typical manner per se with the winner getting a car. What’s being auctioned is the opportunity for the winning bidder pick which car they like the best while the remaining two go back home with the consigner.
These aren’t slouchy offerings either. As anybody who’s driven one knows, Ford GTs of this generation are exceptional. Great fun to drive, outstanding styling, highly collectible and probably the best all-around throwback type cars ever produced, these are some of the best sports cars from the last 30 years at least. The examples offered here deliver as well. The lucky winning bidder will get a chance to choose between a Tungsten Silver stripe delete car with 828 miles, a Mark IV Red example with 837 miles and a rare Canadian market example in Centennial White with just 13 miles.
On paper, this is definitely a cool concept (and for the record, I’ve always been partial to these cars in Centennial White), but the question that keeps running through my head is why? Why run the risk of transporting the cars to the venue, why put these cars in an auction environment and run them across the block and then why turn around and endure the cost of sending two of them back home that you know aren’t going to be sold? If you’ve got a consigner who needs to get rid of one and can’t decide, I guess it makes sense. It also might make sense that maybe these are seed cars (for those who don’t know what a seed car is, it’s when an auction company goes out and purchases a feature vehicle for marketing purposes in order to generate other consignments. As we say in the auction marketing business, “cars get cars” and despite what anyone may tell you, every auction house does this), but then if these were seed cars, you still have to get rid of the other two somewhere.
I’ll admit, I deliberately didn’t reach out to GAA prior to writing this. I want to approach this from the same perspective as anyone else might have, with as little inside information here as possible here. I don’t want to see how this sausage is made (for now anyway) and if there’s slight of hand happening here (which is always highly likely), I don’t want to know about it yet either. I think this is an interesting idea, I love when people try new things and I kind of don’t want to ruin it for myself or anyone else prior to seeing it executed this first time.
I’m not necessarily sure that this emphatically kicks open any new doors here as I suspect there’s probably some isolated situations at play, but I would love to see more auction companies try more things like this when these kinds of opportunities present themselves. I’m not sure this idea is all the way there, but I certainly applaud GAA for trying it and I definitely hope it works.
I’ll certainly be watching next week, so if the idea was to get eyeballs, it’s already a success.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge