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.

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