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.
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