There was a lot to like about the Willow Springs collection, but I suspect Cars & Bids will come away from it with one slightly frustrating thought: they still haven’t broken their all-time sales record.

That record still goes back to 2023, when a Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 sold for $710,000. Since then, Cars & Bids has now had two bids over $1 million and neither one actually turned into a sale.

The latest was the Singer. It reached exactly $1 million, which would have comfortably become the highest sale in Cars & Bids history, but the reserve stayed in place and the car went unsold.

The other was the McLaren P1, which was bid to $1.475 million and also failed to sell.

That has to sting a little. Not because the bidding wasn’t there, because clearly it was. Cars & Bids has now proved more than once that buyers will show up with seven-figure money. The problem is simply getting one of those deals over the line.

And the Singer is probably the best example yet. A million dollars is not exactly the market failing to show up. If anything, it is the opposite. The platform found the bidder. The seller just wanted more.

The rest of the Willow Springs event was actually pretty strong.

The Cayman R did very well. The Lexus LC 500 Inspiration Series also finished ahead of where comparable recent sales have generally landed. The SLR McLaren was another strong one, and the GT500 Heritage Edition was interesting because the auction itself didn’t quite get there, but the seller held firm and was rewarded with a better post-auction deal. ($17k more)

Then there was the 993 Turbo at $188,000, which to me looks like the buyer got a great buy. That is one of the things that can happen with a no-reserve auction. Sometimes the seller catches a great day, sometimes the buyer does. That is the trade-off when you genuinely let the market decide.

Doug’s Ford GT was interesting for a different reason.

For the third time in a very recent run, one of his cars seems to have had a lot of the real action early, with relatively little drama at the end. Someone is clearly chasing some of these cars hard early in the auction, and that is starting to become a pattern worth watching.

Normally we are so used to online auctions doing very little for days and then suddenly waking up in the final few minutes that when a car finds most of its price early, it stands out. Doug’s GT still moved at the end, but it wasn’t one of those auctions where the final minutes completely transformed the result. That being said, it was a strong result for a GT that has plenty of mileage. The Doug factor certainly helped this one.

A few of the no-sales were also interesting because the bidding itself was not necessarily weak. The Ferrari 360 was bid to $131,500, the McLaren 750S Spider to $323,555 and the 1975 Carrera to $89,901. In each case, the market put a meaningful number on the car. The seller simply did not agree.

Which brings us back to the Singer. Overall, I thought Willow Springs was a great event for both Cars & Bids and Willow Springs. It put a lot of eyeballs on both brands, created some genuinely interesting results and showed again that Cars & Bids can bring serious bidders to serious cars.

But I imagine there is still that little lump-in-the-back-of-the-throat feeling.

They’ve had the $1 million bid. They’ve had the $1.475 million bid.

They just haven’t had the $1 million sale.

And that matters because once they finally get one over the line, it changes the perception of Cars & Bids. It stops being a platform that can attract bids on high-end cars and becomes one that has actually proven it can sell them.

This is one of those cars where the story is almost as good as the car.

A 1976 Jensen Interceptor Mk III Convertible, just 11,000 miles, bought new by James G. Robinson and kept in his collection for nearly five decades. Robinson later founded Morgan Creek Productions, but before Hollywood he was already deeply involved in the car business, and by the time he died he had built a collection of more than 140 cars.

And this Jensen was one of the really special ones.

It remained on its original Manufacturer’s Statement of Origin until just two months ago, when the estate finally titled it. Think about that for a second. A 50-year-old car that was effectively never conventionally owned outside the collection.

Then there’s the car itself. Italian styling, British build, a huge Chrysler 440 V8, and one of only a few hundred Interceptor Convertibles ever made. This one also comes from the very end of Jensen production, which only adds to it.

It isn’t flawless. Robinson had it repainted in Pine Green with more metallic flake than original, there’s visible surface corrosion underneath, and the exhaust is no longer factory-spec. But this is not some tarted-up mystery car either.

A Jensen owner inspected it in person and described it as a genuine time capsule, saying the interior looked barely used and that the underside actually presented better in person than in the photos.

Even the auction itself has been interesting. The convertible top stopped working, commenters suggested the reset, the seller’s mechanics checked it, and it’s now working again. That kind of back-and-forth is exactly what these platforms do well when the right people get involved.

It’s sitting at $51,000 right now. That feels very very cheap for a car of this calibre.

Because when do you get another shot at an 11,000-mile, one-owner Jensen Interceptor Convertible with this sort of provenance, from the final days of Jensen production, that has spent almost its entire life in one serious collection?

This one could get very interesting today.

A manual S-Class with crank windows. Of course I love it. This 1986 Mercedes-Benz 260SE is one of those wonderfully strange European-spec cars that almost feels like Mercedes built it by mistake.

It’s a short-wheelbase W126 with a 2.6-liter straight-six, factory 5-speed manual, crank windows, steel wheels with full covers, blue over blue and just 24,000 miles.

Most of us picture a W126 as a big automatic V8 filled with every luxury Mercedes could throw at it. This is basically the opposite, and that is exactly why it’s so cool.

It was delivered new to Tenerife, stayed with its first owner until 2022, then moved to a dealer near Bilbao before eventually coming to the U.S. The mileage is backed up by Spanish inspection paperwork, and the seller says it still wears its original Diamond Blue paint.

There are things to do. The Michelin tires date from 2004, and with so few miles over nearly 40 years I’d certainly want to go through it properly before setting off across the country. But the seller says it drives beautifully, the A/C blows cold and the underside is remarkably clean.

I genuinely have no idea what the market does with something like this. It isn’t the fastest W126, the most luxurious or probably even the one Mercedes expected many people to order.

But a 24,000-mile, manual, short-wheelbase S-Class with crank windows?

That is exactly the sort of weird specification that suddenly becomes very desirable 40 years later.

This is sitting at $10,000, and I keep coming back to it because I’m not quite sure why there is so little action.

It’s a proper U.K.-spec 300Tdi with a 5-speed manual, right-hand drive and 115,000 miles. It isn’t restored or trying to pretend to be some $100,000 NAS Defender. There are scratches, tired trim, a wrinkled headliner and some corrosion underneath. Basically, it looks like an old Defender that has actually been used.

There are reasons bidders may be cautious. It’s an import, Connecticut doesn’t issue a conventional title on something this old, and the current owner only bought it earlier this year. Someone in the comments also pointed out that the previous owner apparently didn’t have it very long either.

But here is why I think it gets interesting.

A very similar 1996 Defender 90 sold recently with the same RHD, 300Tdi and 5-speed setup. That truck had a rebuilt engine, unknown true mileage and plenty of modifications. It reached $26,000 in the auction, missed reserve, and a deal was then done at $30,000.

That one also wasn’t exactly setting the auction on fire early. Most of the bidding came very late.

So I’m not saying this Defender is worth $30,000. The underside matters enormously on these, and I’d want a very good look at the chassis, bulkhead and rear crossmember before getting too excited.

But at $10,000? There is a long way between where it sits now and where similar trucks have actually changed hands.

If the reserve is sensible and this somehow lands in the high teens or low $20s, I think somebody may have found themselves a pretty cheap Defender.