On Ferrari Friday’s, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace will be discussing all things Ferrari and interviewing people that live and breath the Ferrari brand. Topics range from road cars to racing; drivers to owners, as well as auctions, private sales and trends in the collector market.
William goes over his trip to the Amelia Island Concours and everything he checked out. He visited the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta, and checked out some high end dealers, and hit all the auctions.
Episode 16
Hello everyone, and I’m back. So I’ve been a couple weeks, but hey, I’m back. I was doing a little traveling and today’s episode is what we are going to talk about in my travels. I was down at Amelia Island. For one, went to the concourse. Two, went to a bunch of auctions. Um, so we’re going to kind of discuss the auctions.
We’re going to discuss the concourse itself. Hagerty has, uh, taken over. So, you know, [00:01:00] obviously they’re kind of gaining some ground. But, you know, there’s a few other events they got going on. I just appreciate everybody listening and like I said, Hey, you know, share this, put it out there in the world. We have to try and spread the word and let’s try and grow this as much as we can.
And, uh, we got some exciting stuff coming up. Uh, I don’t know if any of you have gone on to the website, the Ferrari marketplace. com or if you go to exotic car marketplace. com, uh, we have some exciting things coming up. We’re partnering up with a few other entities. I do a bunch of stuff with and we’re going to kind of create this big, I want to say conglomerate, but big media type company that, you know, parent company oversee everything.
We’re going to kind of combine all this stuff and help everybody out. We’re going to try and create more content, more articles, um, you know, have a lot more fun with this and see what we can do with everything. Uh, and from exotics to classics to garage style, you know, people, you know, that’s big thing.
It’s happening now is, you know, [00:02:00] people, I mean, people always have, you know, personalized their home garage, but you know, the big thing now is everyone’s purchasing these garage condos or getting these, you know, garage condos at these private racetracks. And if you’re the 1 percent or 1 percent or whatever that can afford to do that, God bless you.
Uh, some of these ones, I mean, they’re doing some fantastic stuff and these, uh, private tracks and whatnot are popping up all over the country. Um, I don’t know if it’s all over the world, I don’t know about over in Europe and whatnot, but. I’m sure they are too, but I know over here in the States, there’s a bunch popping up here in the next couple of years.
There’s gonna be quite a few opening up. Uh, I know there’s the one down in Columbus, Ohio, um, the Resolute, uh, down in Tennessee itself. There’s actually two. Uh, there’s a really nice one. If you go down to our website, you’ll see it’s Flat Rock, uh, Motor Club. They have a, that’s gonna be an outstanding facility.
Uh, there’s one down in Florida. Uh, I believe it’s just outside Ocala, something like that. Uh, a good friend of mine, uh, Mike Pipitone is kind of, [00:03:00] uh. Helping out there heading up some sales and marketing for them. So check that one out. I’ll have you know more info I can get I will pass it along to everybody.
So but anyway, let’s dive into this So my travels they started on Tuesday of Amelia Island week weekend or whatever I call it So on Tuesday, I traveled down to Atlanta very early in the morning I got one caught one of the first flights here out of Cleveland and got down there and I actually met up with my good friend Mike, uh, he lives in the Atlanta area and we went and checked out the Porsche Experience Center down there.
So I, something I highly recommend, now I will say this, there’s an awesome restaurant that overlooks the test track or track or however you want to call it, uh, the food I had, I had this salad with this chicken breast on it and the chicken breast basically was like shoe leather. Um, I don’t know if the cook was having or the chef was having an off day with mine.
Uh, food or what, but [00:04:00] from what I’ve told, you know, the other stuff’s pretty good. If you get a big heap of portions of it, uh, the wiener schnitzel or the chicken schnitzel or whatever the heck it’s called, um, I highly recommend and you get a big, huge ass piece of meat on your plate. Um, but I will say this, it is not cheap to eat there, uh, for two people, especially if you’re having a couple of cocktails or you have one beer each or something like that.
With tip and everything you’re gonna be pushing probably if you get main meals close to probably 80 to 100 bucks You know with including tip so I mean it is not cheap, but you can’t beat the view so anyways They have some really cool things. You know it’s not like There’s not anything crazy. It’s not like this massive museum.
Um, but what they have is they have the heritage centers. I definitely recommend. Hey, when you go there, it’s, it’s free to go. It doesn’t cost anything. Um, I don’t forget to set up an appointment or what, um, you know, to schedule to go through there and do everything. [00:05:00] Um, but you can just do the tour and walk around and they have, they have this really cool wall.
It’s got all from the beginning to current day. Of all these, like, uh, what say one 18 scale models, one 14 scale models of all the race cars and cars, uh, that Porsche is built throughout the years. So basically starting from the first one all the way to the most recent one. Uh, so I have this big wall.
What’s on there? If you check out my YouTube channel, uh, I got it. Some great video from being there. Uh, but so you go in that they have a cool gift shop. Now if they, one thing they have and I, why I didn’t test it out. I don’t know. I just. We were going there and I was waiting on Mike and I told him, I said, Hey, you got to come back and check it out, but he didn’t do it.
But they have this awesome simulator room that has got, I think it’s like six or seven simulators that you can test out and try out different tracks, everything like that. You can race against your buddy or just, you know, race against yourself, try and set, you know, best time against, against ones that have already, people have already gone.
So, um, I want to say [00:06:00] it was like 50 for like 30 minutes or for 45 minutes. It was a good deal actually for what you got to do, um, you got to spend a lot of time doing it so actually it wasn’t that bad price to do it, um, but for whatever reason it’s kind of, I didn’t go back and do it, why I don’t know, but hey, that’s just me, so, but, you can test it out, they have a cool little gift shop, again, stuff’s not cheap, uh, they got some really cool merchandise, uh, it’s not a lot, it’s not a big gift shop, you know, it’s not like you’re gonna have like Porsche overload, uh, but they have some really cool stuff, but again, hey, the stuff is not cheap, You’d always hit on the sale, hit up the sales rack.
They have some stuff that’s usually on sale. Uh, they had some like cool shirt stuff like for like, you know, 30, 40 bucks. So it wasn’t too bad, but, uh, majority of the stuff was you’re closer to a hundred, starting adding that. So jackets, shirts, t-shirts, button down shirts, polo shirts, everything like that.
So now the one thing I was kind of surprised is they did not have that many newer model cars. You know, the 20, 23 miles on the floor. They had a couple, uh, but they [00:07:00] normally, they have more, but I don’t know if they’re just in a transition or what, but they were lacking. New model cars on the floor area where you come walking in at so I was a little bit surprised by that now They also have this really cool interactive wall That kind of goes through the history and stuff you pull some off pictures videos stuff like that.
That was really really neat They have this really cool sculpture up in the air like you stand underneath it. You look up. It’s a kind of a cutout So it’s really neat stuff But again, the one cool thing was the heritage centers where they got all the cool old cars older cars race cars, you know 959, um, yeah, 917, um, 904, 908, um, which I remember off the top of my head some of the stuff they had a 959, um, older 911s, 911 RS, um, they had a Carrera GT, you know, so they had some really, really cool stuff, but again, not massive, you know, not like they had hundreds of cars there, you know, I think they had maybe 20 cars, 15 to [00:08:00] 20 cars in total, but, you know, significant stuff, and they all had kind of displayed very nice, everything like that, so it’s really neat to check out.
But I mean, the thing you’re going there to do, and again, it’s, again, on the cheap side, but hey, it’s an experience. I just didn’t have time to do it that day. As you go take a car on test track. Now they have various different levels of cars you can try out. Uh, and so the price varies. It starts, I 300 and you actually get a lot of time.
You get like 45 minutes or something like that, or over an hour. Um, if not, maybe a little bit longer. So, I mean, you get your values with money worth and you can just do as many as lap as you want. So it’s just timeline. So, you know, they have the. The one track going, you know, on the outside and they have like a skid pad, um, they have the other one where it kind of kicks you sideways, you know, the wet track.
So they have really, really cool stuff. And, like I said, you can do everything from, you know, a Boxer or a Cayman all the way up to, uh, a GT3. So, I mean, it goes all the way up, the Turbo S. So, I mean, you can have a lot of fun and do it. [00:09:00] So, now they also, it’s opening up April 1st, so it’s coming up. Uh, they actually expanded the track, basically doubled the size of the track.
So now, I don’t know if that means they’re going to double the amount of spaces that are open that you can go and do this. Now, because when I was there, it seemed like you could probably just walk in and just, you know, get, you know, hey, can I do some driving and you can go do it. Now, normally I say, hey, you got to call ahead, set up your time, make a register, you know, register for it and everything like that, make a reservation.
And so, I don’t know, because from looking at it. I wouldn’t say it was identical, but it was pretty close to, it was very, very similar to what the current track offers. Now the design and the layout, they have a cool carousel turn that mimics the Nurburgring carousel, which is really neat. Um, and it’s got more undulations and more heights and stuff like that to it.
So it’s really, really neat track. Um, so I, again, I don’t know if they’ll let you do it where you can, Hey, you can do the long [00:10:00] course where it takes you, you know, it’d be. Couple miles long or you know, hey, they’re just split in half where they can have they can double them out of people They’re out on the track doing it.
So again, it’s all about that So but anyways, I know one kind of just a side I know we’re talking about Porsche’s a Ferrari podcast, but I’m just telling you about my jet ventures down a million I so we checked it out and did that so that was a lot of fun. It was cool We kind of you know hung out there for the day, but then from there we went to check out one of these cool There’s a lot of cool little dealers down there to land it because obviously it lands a massive market I mean Land is big, so if you’ve ever been to Atlanta and tried to drive around Atlanta, it takes you a long time to get anywhere because it’s pretty massive.
I mean, it’s spread way out, so I mean, it’s pretty damn big. Uh, and they have a lot of construction going on, so it kind of takes you a little bit to get anywhere. But anyways, we went to check out this other dealer, uh, and kind of, let’s say a, kind of like I say a boutique dealer. Because, you know, you go in, um, there’s Miller Motor Cars, um, And you go, you walk through and it’s [00:11:00] appointment only to go in.
So fortunately Mike, you know, knows people there. So we’re able to just kind of go in and call the head. Um, so yeah, it’s not like you just walk in off the street and just, Hey, I want to look at some cars. Anyway, so you walk in and show them four there. I mean, they got, I think, six cars on the floor there, maybe only five.
Um, so they had a Testarossa 308, um, or 328. Um, so they, you know, and an old Model T, which is a really cool car. Uh, they had their old Model T racer. But like I said, they didn’t have much of a thing, but then they had a massive, you know, uh, shop, you know, doing service work and from what my understanding is, it’s something they just really started expanding into is doing the service work due to the fact is, hey, you know, the demands there, hey, and there’s, you make a lot of money doing service work.
And if you got the guys that know what they’re doing, it’s a great thing to get into to service those cars. So, I mean, you can charge, you know, you charge a hundred some dollars an hour just to labor and then you got your parts and everything like that. So, but the cool thing was is, You know, out back, they had a lot more cars that they had available for [00:12:00] sale, but the owner had his own private vault, as he called it, collection in his barn out back, garage, whatever you want to call it, where he had a whole ton of cars back in there.
Um, now these are all ones that I want to say not bought on speculation, but bought under the, you know, guys that, hey, because they will, they’ll go up in value. I mean, because the majority of them are Ferraris. Um, had Testarossas, had some Vital TRs. Uh, but he has some nice Porsches in there too. Older Porsche, new Porsche, Acura NSX.
Um, you know, he had a lot, a lot of cool stuff that, yeah, they’re going to go up in value. So it’s more kind of an investment thing. And as the kid that was still walking us around said, Hey, the guy’s, the guy’s got some kids headed off to college soon. Right there’s your college paying for your college education.
So, but again, you know, hey, you get a special client. They’re looking for something. You have it in stock. It’s right there. It’s kind of an off market, private sale thing. You don’t put it out there. You don’t advertise much. Again, these guys don’t put all their cars out. And that’s something you’re going to find for all you people out there shopping around and it’s kind of one of the [00:13:00] things, you know, a lot of these boutique dealers and that do not advertise all the cars that they have available for sale.
And that’s where someone like myself comes in. And what I do with finding these off market cars is I know these people, I know these dealers, so I can give them a ring and they’ll, if I ask for something specific or I say, Hey, you know, what do you got good? That’s kind of off market. I got a client.
They’ll let me know. Now, it ain’t just Joe Schmo calls up there and goes, Oh, no, we don’t have anything like that. No, everything’s on the website. Blah, blah. So it’s kind of, you know, it’s a close knit network of individuals that, Hey, you know, we’re looking out for the client and we want to make the client happy.
But the fact is, you know, Hey, you bring more clients, sell more cars. Hey, everyone makes more money. So it’s kind of like a rub my back, rub your back type deal. But anyways, so anyways, that wrapped up the first day. Then Tuesday morning was the big, we went over to Merit Partners. Now, I don’t know how many of you guys, you know, watch on, you know, Shmee150 on YouTube, old Tim.
He was actually there a few weeks ago, did a nice video on it, [00:14:00] but, uh, I know the guy’s there for a little while, so I wanted to go there and meet these guys and just check out the facility. Again, they’re another one where they have a very small amount of cars on their website compared to what they actually have in inventory.
Now, where they’re located, you would not know that that’s where it was there. You would drive by it. A thousand times not realize that there’s an exotic car dealership tucked away back in this industrial corner, uh, where all these buildings are at. You have no clue. I mean, it’s, they have a small sign, but it’s not like they got all these cars parked out front or anything like that.
You’d have no idea. It’s behind the gate. You got to get buzzed in. So you go in and they just spent, God, he told me, it was like, you know, excess of a million dollars in regards to, uh, remodeling and refurbishing this building that they’re in. And it’s. Gorgeous inside and you know, they still had a few little touch up things here to do, but they had to put it into one bar top and everything like that, but absolutely gorgeous.
You know, it’s gonna be perfect. I, I, from my point and what I would do if I was always saying, you know, have events there, you know, whatnot, you know, bring people in, you know, [00:15:00] do kind of stuff like that. It’s gonna be perfect for it. But as soon as you walk in, they had an F 50. You had a couple of Carrera GTs, a Ford GT, a new Ford GT, the newer one.
Um, you know, and just some absolute beautiful stuff. But again, you go out into, I want to say the warehouse, but where they have A little majority of other cars because they also not only the cars that they have for available for sale that they own They also do consignment So they just they have a plethora of cars available and I mean some very very very unique Very rare stuff.
So if you’re looking for something unique and rare Give me a call and I’ll hook you guys I’ll hook you up with the guys at merit and I’ll help you guys out I said they had some really really cool stuff and very rare stuff. So I highly recommend if you’re looking for something unique, something rare, get a hold of me.
I’ll get you hooked up with the guys at Merritt and, um, get you guys, get you taken care of. So that was really cool meeting those guys. So then on Wednesday afternoon, [00:16:00] since I was in Atlanta and Jacksonville, it was only a little over a five hour drive away. I was like, well, screw it. No, I’m just going to drive there.
Why, why fly? I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of the airport because Atlanta airport’s a nightmare. I was a flight through there and at the end of this podcast when I left it was a fucking nightmare. Pardon my French, but. Um, so I had read it, actually, I don’t know if anyone’s, you know, heard of Sixt, S I X T, car rental.
Fantastic. If you’re at a, uh, a major city that has Sixt as a car rental company, use them. They have nice, yeah, BMWs, Mercedes, uh, I mean, they got nice cars and they’re very, very reasonably priced. I was going to rent a 5 Series, but I had got, I got in about 4 hours earlier than I was supposed to be and the car that I was supposed to have, you know, wasn’t back yet or ready or whatnot.
So. The kind lady behind the desk said, well, I got a seven series and you know, it’s supposed to be about another 30 something dollars a day, but I’ll only charge you $20 more a day. And I was like, all right, so what’s my total? Basically for that Tuesday, [00:17:00] all the way to the following Monday, which was basically seven days, cost me $782 for a BMW seven series, unlimited miles, everything.
So it worked out perfect. And what’s better than a seven series to go on a nice little road trip from Ja uh, Atlanta down to Jacksonville and back. So. Wednesday afternoon, I hopped in. Now, unfortunately, traffic was a little bit kind of crap on the way out, but for some reason, I could not get the phone and everything to sync up to work right, so I could talk hands free to the phone while I was driving, so I kept getting a couple phone calls, important phone calls, so I kept having to pull over, turn off the car, and then make my phone call, and talk, and then get back on and go on the road, so five hour driving, I’m taking almost seven hours, and I had to keep stopping.
Now, the one was, you know, a very important one, but there’s a funny one, because At one point, I just pulled off, got off on an off ramp and just as I got to, you know, halfway off the off ramp, I was going down, I, I just pulled off to the end of where the guard rail’s at, you know, so it was nice, out of the way, so one of the AAA guys, like, within five minutes was up [00:18:00] behind me, puts a sign, whatever, I’m trying to wave him, hey, no, I’m, I’m good, I’m just on a phone call, so then I had to get going and I had to go drive, you know, around the thing, so it was kind of, it was kind of humorous, I felt bad for the guy, didn’t know he thought he was going to come and help me and everything like that, but anyways, so I got down to Jacksonville, I got in a day early, so I was able to rummage up a hotel room, actually on Amelia Island.
It wasn’t bad, it was only 130 for the one night. And, you know, if you drove past it, you would think it was some shit box motel. You know, um, it was a decent size, but it was one of those, you know, your, your, uh, entry to your room is outside, so it’s a two story job. One of those, you know, motel six type situations, or red roof inn or something like that, I guess you would call it.
Um, but they, I tell you what, it was completely redone and kudos. My one good friend, Andrew, you know, he’s the one that said, Hey, there’s still rooms available on Amelia actually itself. So, um, I went and checked out now. And the funny thing was, is they had rooms available for the whole weekend. And, but the problem was, is on Friday, [00:19:00] they jumped up to almost 400 a night.
Now, what’s the person behind the desk saying? Look, you have rooms here. Why not? Just give me the room for the 140. I’ll take it. So it’s all the way through till Monday. I mean until Sunday because I got I had to drive back up Sunday night back to Atlanta, but no, no You know, there’s a Concord Square this weekend.
Well, no shit Sherlock. That’s what I’m in town for So my guy fine no money compared to some money. I don’t know. I take some money over no money So hey, then the room sets are empty. No skin off my back So I end up staying, you know out by the Jacksonville Airport because it’s only It’s about 25 30 minutes from, you know, Jacksonville over to Amelia Island to get to where the stuff’s at, you know, because of traffic and I don’t know if I’ve ever been to it.
You know, once you get onto the island itself, there’s a lot of two lane stuff, so, and, you know, there’s a lot of traffic going on, so it takes a little bit to get anywhere. So, anyways, so, but it was really cool because, you know, I got to, uh, you know, I got up early, uh, on Thursday morning, went and watched the sunrise, everything like that, and, you know, just kind of relaxed and chilled and [00:20:00] went to the first auction.
Now, I went to the Gooding Auction, you know, did the preview and everything like that, because it really didn’t start until 3 o’clock that day on Thursday, but they had all the preview stuff, but I got there right at 9 when it opened up, so basically there was nobody there. I think there was maybe 15 of us walking around, checking all the cars, so it was really, really cool.
Now, here’s the stupid thing. So, I go in, I paid to get in, it was 40 to get in. Now, I have my GoPro with me, because obviously it’s a little more, you know, easier to handle, have it on the handle, you know, go around and do it to shoot video. Well Since I didn’t have a media pass, I got asked to not film with the GoPro.
And now here’s, here’s the stupid part. Oh, you can use your phone though. Use your phone. All you want is shoot video. But I just, we can’t have you using your GoPro. You know, you’re looking professional like that. If you don’t have media credentials, I’m like, whatever. I’m like, does that make sense to you? I mean, it’s one half of one or the other.
Either I’m filming with my phone or the GoPro. There’s no difference. So I find, so I broke out my handle for my [00:21:00] phone, mounted on that, and just used my phone to do everything Then. So I shot all the video on my phone. So I was like, fine, you know, don’t use my phone to do it. So now here’s a cool thing.
They had some really nice stuff this year at Goody. Now they’re, you know, they’re David and his crew. They curate quite a nice selection of cars, but this year they did very, very well in regards to, I guess you’d say the selections they had, you know, normally you have kind of a lot of, you know, leaning towards one genre or something like that and you know, in years past, it’s like they had a lot of like more pre war stuff.
Uh, like Duesenbergs, Packards, that kind of stuff. Now, this year, they had like one Duesenberg, they had, I think, two Packards. Um, they didn’t have that much old pre war stuff. Everything else was, you know, from your, uh, 50s on up. They had some 40s stuff like that, but basically everything was, I would say, newer, post war stuff.
But, man, they had some awesome stuff. They had one of my all time favorite cars, a 500E. [00:22:00] I mean, I absolutely love those cars. One of these days, I’m gonna have one of those. I mean, they’re just They’re getting priced ridiculous. I mean, I should have bought one five, six years ago. They were about 40, 50 grand, because now they’re about 80, 90 grand, depending on miles.
Trying to find one with low miles. I just got offered one. I’d love if I had the money. If I have one, it’s got 47, 000 miles on it. It’s a 94, so it’s an E500. It’s the one I want. It’s been the last year for it. Anyone that knows what that car is, you know, it’s a collaboration with Porsche, um, and Mercedes.
It was kind of, you know, you want to have the sports sedan, but it kind of helped out Porsche in a way financially, um, kind of giving that project games, a nice influx of cash, but this, those cars are phenomenal. I mean, they’re just great. I mean, talk about a sleeper. I mean, granted back then, but you know, in the mid early nineties, 322 horsepower was a lot, especially at a sedan like that from Mercedes.
So, I mean, still, but this day to day, 320 horses, it’s not nothing to sneeze at. So that car get up and go, but that’s a little [00:23:00] cruise. At, you know, 90, 100 miles an hour, no sweat. I mean, that thing is a grand, one of these days, I’m going to have one. So, some things come to fruition in the coming months here with some deals I’m working on.
I’m buying one, after I get my Ferrari though. I’m on that hunt for that 430 manual. So, anyways. So, but here’s the interesting thing though. Going through, they had a nice selection of, you know, obviously awesome cars. They had an awesome, cool selection of motorcycles too. You know, not a lot. I think they had like 15 motorcycles, 20 motorcycles maybe.
Um, they had some gorgeous Ducatis. Um, But it’s funny because a, a buddy of mine, Paul Jason, uh, he’s kind of a big time motorcycle guy, motorcycle broker over in the UK. I actually had taken some photos and sent it to him and he was actually, later, he was actually on the phone bidding and one of the bikes came across and I had sent it to him when it came over.
Oh yeah, that was me actually on the phone bidding. I thought that was you. So I was kind of humorous. Here’s the interesting thing. I was checking out the estimates, you know, they, they give you a range, you know, if you’ve ever gone to an auction, you know, they have their [00:24:00] estimated range, you know, they have the low end, high end thing and all right, this car will sell between, you know, 250 to 350, 000, you know, they, they kind of put an estimate to it.
Um, so people can have a general idea what they think it might be going for, uh, to give them an idea. But here’s the crazy thing. I would say not every single auction item, car that went across, you A majority and I mean majority, I’m talking 90%, maybe even a little bit more than that all went for below the low estimate.
So I don’t know if that’s a sign of market adjustment or just what’s going on because of the economy. But this is kind of, this is at all the auctions. Now some of them, a couple of them did a little better in regards to, you know, hitting that, you know, high estimate or going above it. But those are for some very special and very unique, very rare cars, very desirable cars.
So it’s like, hey, that’s understandable. But in a [00:25:00] majority of these auctions, all these cars were going for below the low estimate and not just by a little bit. A lot of them are pretty significant. There was a, a 355 GTS Brunetta that it had the, uh, their price estimated price range on it was, I think it was 220 to 250.
Uh, something like that or 180 to 225, something like that. But anyways, it only had 22, 000 miles or 27, 000 miles, gorgeous silver with this tan interior. You don’t see that often, but silver with tan and I, I, I’m not a fan of light colored interior tan, but this thing looks sharp in that color combo. Uh, a six speed manual, 150 grand.
So all in, you’re about 168, 000 with your fees and everything. That was a steal. And another one at another auction, same thing. It went for around the same price, way below the low estimate. So people were getting deals at the auctions down at Amelia Island. So, I mean, if you had a pocketbook and you had, you know, deep pockets, it was a time to do some [00:26:00] buying and to sit on some of these cars, you know, and come back with them, you know, bring them to market, I don’t know, a year or two, I don’t know, anyways, you know, down the road.
I mean, that’s one of the situations where, so I had a boatload of money or I had won the lotto or something like that. I was one of that, one of that lucky bastards that won like the billion dollars or whatever and walked in 700 million. God, I would have had a hay day down there this year. I mean, they had some awesome stuff.
Um, you know, you had your obligatory, you know, F50s, F40s, um, you know, 280 GTOs. But they had some Bugatti EB110SSs there. They were stunning, absolutely stunning. Um, but they had some just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff and very neat stuff. And then the, um, Broad Arrow had a fantastic, another one of my favorite cars, the RS200 Evolution.
Now you get, you know, the standard RS 200, I believe it had 260, 280 horsepower, something like that. You know, they had to homologate X amount of cars, but they did 24, 26 Evo cars that [00:27:00] were basically the ones they used for the Group B rallying that would have been, but these things pushed out 700 horsepower.
This is a tiny little car, and I don’t know, maybe if you’re Ken Block fans. Uh, he had one that he absolutely loved, you know, I rest his soul. That was such a sad tragedy that he passed. But anyways, uh, that’s another one of my all time favorite cars. Uh, another one, an F40. So, um, my goal, kind of as a side note, cause I said I’m trying to get more content, do these podcasts more frequently, but also I’m trying to grow my YouTube channel.
Now the YouTube channel, the general one is Garage 65. Now you spell 65 S I X T Y and the number 5. So if you look up at Garage 65, you’ll find all my content. Now I do have some of the ones broken down where I’m going to post to it just as Ferrari or just the Porsche Marketplace or the Ferrari Marketplace.
Uh, we’re trying to expand more, but then again, you know, like what we’re doing with our media company. We’re going to have these garage tours. We have a lot of things we’re going to be doing that are going to be [00:28:00] super, super cool. Keep informed keep in tune and hey, you know, we’re gonna have a newsletter coming out that you can sign up for it It kind of keeps you up to date what’s going on because we’re gonna also be doing like events stuff like that So we’ve got a lot a lot of cool stuff that we’re getting in the works here Hopefully by mid and summer we’ll start having some of these and then for 2024 We’re really kind of start rolling out with a lot of cool stuff.
So stay tuned a lot of cool stuff coming But anyways back to the auction Now, like I was saying before, there was some really, really cool stuff. You know, you could have gotten some great deals on some, you know, very, very nice cars, you know, uh, very, very well maintained. Now I am not a big fan of people are buying cars as auction.
Cause here’s my pet peeve is. You can have all the information you want, you can do your research on the car, you got the VIN, everything like that, but you’re basically only getting the description that the auction house is giving you. You can’t get in the car, unless you know one of the people and they’re very kind and say, oh [00:29:00] yeah, go ahead, you can’t start it, you can’t drive it.
So basically you’re going on the word of the auction house and the current owner telling the auction house, hey, yeah, the car’s great, oh, it’s got all the stuff, blah, blah, blah. You know, so you have to really scrutinize the car. As it just sits there, so I mean, the only time you hear it run is when they drive up to the auction block and normally then it’s so far away, you can’t hear it, so there’s no way of knowing, so to me, I don’t think it’s a great way to go about buying and plus, the other aspect of it is the fees you have to pay, now some years ago, they used to crack you on both sides, the buyer and the seller had to pay fees on top of what it costs to put your car in it.
So it was like the buyer, I mean, the seller was having to pay like 10 12 percent of whatever the selling price was, then the buyer was paying like 15 to 18 percent fees. So they were cracking basically almost 25 to 30 [00:30:00] percent on top of what the selling price was that would go on top of fees. So imagine that.
So if you bought a million dollar car, it’s for easy numbers, you were having to pay another 250, 000 just in fucking fees. I mean, that is obscene. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it now with the advent because of COVID came around and all these online auction houses came online. Obviously, BAT was the forerunner of this, you know, they broke the barriers.
So you have all these other ones that have come out now. But you know, they broke it down to okay, like BAT is 5, 000 maximum. That’s what your cap is. And you know, you have to, you know, pay X amount of dollars. I think it’s 100 bucks. They might be free now because I know cars and bids. It’s free to post what not and if there’s is a four and a half percent cap You know the max we pay but the maximum pays 4, 500, but you’ll pay up to 4, 500 It’s four and a half percent of what the selling price is So Doug DeMuro’s [00:31:00] put together a great thing over there now But you have so many other ones out there that are following that pattern or that business model is We’re only going to cap you at a maximum of four to five grand.
That’s it And your fees, you know, up to that are, you know, four and a half, five percent, you know, so, hey, 100, 000 car, hey, you’re capped 4, 500 bucks. So, I mean, it’s fantastic. So, I think these auction houses realize, hey, you know, we’re going to have to cut our fees and do it. You know, they’re trying to say, oh, it’s the atmosphere, oh, this, we have the selection of cars, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, you know what? I don’t buy that. You know, that’s just not me. I just, I’m not going to pay. An extra, you know, 20, 30, 40, whatever it may be in fees, just because of the ambience, you know, that’s your, you put that together. I can go find these cars somewhere else. I don’t need to come out and cap it here.
No. Now, the one thing is these auctions usually kind of sometimes do is kind of set market rates and everything. You’ll have clients and deal with them. They’ll [00:32:00] be like, well, that car just sold for X at, um, Amelia at a, at XYZ auction. And, um, and why are you asking so much more? Well, it’s like, okay, well that car there, which wasn’t disclosed, what not, had been an accident or what not.
You know, again, not knowing the whole story. And this is an uneducated consumer, not doing their homework and not, you know, believing in what something is and not just listening. They just talk. You know, they don’t know the full story behind what that car, why it’s sold for, what it’s sold for, why you’re selling your car, what it’s for, you know, so it’s just, it’s sometimes like pulling teeth and these people just don’t get it, you know, so it can be really, really fricking annoying sometimes with, it’s an uneducated consumer and You know, it’s just, it’s just very, very annoying.
But anyways, back to the options. So, as I stated, there’s a lot of these cars, a good portion of these cars, we’re going for below estimates. So, I mean, again, it was some really nice stuff and it was just kind of a head scratcher. I said, man, some people are getting some great deals and we’re going home with some great cars.
And that was the thing is, normally when you have your low estimates and that stuff, [00:33:00] that’s usually about where the reserves at. So these reserves that these owners had in these cars were very, very low. Because these cars were selling. They were hammered. And which was absolutely crazy. That was the other baffling thing was they had super low reserves on these cars.
Normally, you know, the reserves up there by the low estimate. So if it’s not even getting a little less, but I had a car ain’t moving, but people didn’t either. They needed them cast. They needed the room. They don’t want to take the car back home or what, but these cars were selling. So the transport companies were having a heyday.
That’s for sure. So, and there’s another one that make out either way. Cause Hey, the car didn’t sell. They got to take it back home. Hey, they’re double dipping. So, but I mean, if you’ve never been to Amelia, I highly suggest you go. The auctions are really, really cool. Yeah, it costs a little bit to get in, but it’s really neat because you kind of get up close to the car.
Now, let’s talk about the concourse itself. Now, on Friday, they had the Porsche Works Reunion. It’s a Porsche event, you know, and this year is the 75 years of 9 11, so kind of last year was Ferrari’s [00:34:00] total 75 years. You know, um, the 9 11 was 75 years of, however it is, anyways, of course, I don’t know, anyways, it wasn’t their anniversary years, I could be mistaken, I don’t know, anyways, this is onward and upward, right, but anyways, so it was kind of cool, not very big, but it seemed to be there was more, better action over in the car park where people were parking, you know, all the Porsches were, you know, all the Porsche Club members were parking than actual cars that were out on the lawn.
They had some neat stuff, you know, uh, very interesting stuff, and luckily, we were able to get in for free, cause, you The event is free to get in but it’s 40 to park so there you go So it’s it’s kind of a joke like so basically it’s 40 to get in But anyways, we were able to snag a free parking to get him for free as a volunteer So it pays to know people right?
So we got in checked out. There’s some really cool stuff there. Obviously all Porsches Some really neat stuff some cool booths set up, you know for buying some I guess trinkets and memorabilia and stuff like that They had a really [00:35:00] cool one. We could buy that scale models, you know from Here’s the real small stuff all the way up to some bigger stuff, uh, which is really, really neat.
Then Saturday, uh, they put on and if you buy your ticket for Sunday, it gets you into Saturday’s event also. So you might as well just buy it because if you go on Sunday, buy it. So, but Sunday’s tickets, it’s 175 and it’s gone up dramatically in price, especially since Harry took it over because now they’re about making money.
Now, when Bill Warner was running that, It wasn’t about, I mean, yeah, they needed to make money cause, but it was more about making the money to put the donations to the charities they were supporting. So they’re, they dumped a lot back in and I’ve had some great conversations with Bill and uh, he always tells me you’re nuts.
If you ever want to put that kind of course, I’ll pay him the ass. But I, he had told me, I mean, it was like eight, nine years before he even could like kind of pay himself anything out of it for all his work and effort and doing it. So, I mean, it took a long time. They started that, what, 95, I think it was 96, something like that in the mid nineties.
So it really has been going on. All that long, I [00:36:00] guess you could say I compared to Pebble and stuff like that. But anyways, so Saturday they have the Radwood event, which is, as everyone probably knows, is, you know, your 80’s cars, uh, from my genre, when I, you know, was in my youth driving my cars, you know, when I was 16 in 1986, you know, I had my Fiero GT.
Well, I started with the Mazda GLC, then I went to a Fiero GT, I love that Fiero, I think it was so cool. Then I had a Mustang GT, so, um. I connect well with that stuff. They have some really cool stuff. It’s stuff that you know back from your youth that you see that kind of stirs up old memories and everything like that.
So they have that set up and then you go over to the actual show field where the concourse takes place. You know, that’s where they have a lot of the, I guess you’d say, nicer stuff for the Radwood type stuff. But they have other things set up that are, you know, oriented towards that genre. Uh, they call it Cars and Community.
So it’s kind of bring whatever, you know, what you drove and, and I, I’m not sure how you register that, but you, you come in, [00:37:00] you know, you park your car, check it out. So it’s not no judge or anything goes down, but just walk around. And there’s a lot of people for that because obviously if you’re going Sunday, you’re going to that Saturday because your ticket got you in.
But now if you just want to go Saturday, which actually is not too bad. You just go Saturday because you, you can see a lot of stuff that, you know, they really don’t have to worry about seeing on Sunday, but anyway, it’s only 35 going on Saturday. So if you just go Saturday. You’re fine. You don’t really need to go on Sunday.
It’s all, you know, all personal preference. But, uh, they had some really cool stuff up, you know, which was neat. You know, they had, um, the cars from Jeff Gordon set up. Um, you know, Ed Bullen was there with his stuff. And, uh, the guys, you know, Tavarish was there. Uh, so was, uh, Mr. Tyler Hoover was there. You know, they had brought some stuff.
Uh, what was really cool back over in the one corner they had, on Saturday they had five 9 5 9’s lined up because it was kind of a separate class. Now Sunday they had seven 9 5 9’s parked there, which That’s a rare day itself, seeing 7959s parked all over the place. Now then you go around, you know, [00:38:00] um, Saturday.
Again, a lot of cool stuff, a lot of neat booths set up. You know, it’s a lot more casual. You know, t shirts, shorts, kind of thing. Now Sunday, obviously, is the Concourse event itself. Now that’s when it gets really packed. Um, and obviously you kind of want to dress nice. And now it gets pretty warm, so you kind of got to dress.
But like, I just wore a short t shirt, but I wore some nice pants. You know, got to, got to look to roll. Uh, got to meet Jeff Gordon, which was really cool. Talked to him, you know, uh, briefly. Brought up our Freerback project. Uh, talk to him real quick. Super nice guy. Super nice guy. Very approachable. So if you ever get the opportunity, he’ll chat you up.
He’s a super cool guy. Um, so anyways, go into there, you know, you check out. This is now where they have the judging goes on. They have all the, you know, classes broken down in regards to what cars are which group, everything like that. So they get all judged by their class, you know, their car itself, but then in that class.
Um, gorgeous Ferraris. Oh my god, they have some gorgeous, gorgeous Ferraris. Um, some really cool stuff and they had some old, old stuff. There was a 59 Pininfarina, uh, Cabriolet. Uh, there [00:39:00] was a 195 Inter or was it a 212 MM? Um, I’m trying to remember off the top of my head. Check out my videos on YouTube channel, Grab65.
You’ll see all the stuff in there. Um, they had some gorgeous, gorgeous Ferraris set up. Um, absolute outstanding. They had, you know, Porsche had a really nice set up with a lot of their cars. They had a lot of cool Porsche race cars, uh, going across the years. So it’s a really, and again, what’s nice is you can get right up on these cars.
These things aren’t like behind velvet ropes or anything like that. You know, check. It’s really, really cool. So, but I mean, you get there, you know, does it pay, you know, they have an early entry. It starts at 930, but you can get in for an extra 50 bucks, get in at 830 early entry. They limit it. But if you see how many people do the early entry, I don’t even know it’s worth it because it’s pretty busy as it is then.
So, but anyway, I didn’t do it. I would have read nine 30, but. I need to drive back Atlanta. So I put it down to the right one o’clock. I was leaving and I’ll honestly from 9 30 to about [00:40:00] noon, 12 30. I I’ve seen everything. I walked around, checked out what I think, did all my videos, talked to, I needed to talk to, you know, and you know, got everything done.
So, I mean, the judging and stuff like doesn’t have until later in the afternoon. So, I mean, it goes late into the day. So, I mean, it can be for a long day, you know, but Hey, we’re staying there. God bless you. I had to get back to Atlanta because I had an early, early flight, uh, in the morning on Monday. So, I needed to get to the airport early, uh, and thank God I did because TSA was an absolute nightmare.
It took me over an hour to go through TSA, and luckily I got there early, got an early flight, and got home in time. But anyways, so, but the big thing is, like I was kind of talking about, you know, this is the second year that Hagerty has owned the event. Now, last year going, you know, you kind of see a big difference in regards to the quality of cars, the amount of cars they had there.
And again, this year too. They don’t seem to get the amount of cars that Bill was getting. Because here’s the thing, Bill Warner did not charge you to have your car in the event. Didn’t charge you. [00:41:00] Haggard is charging you to bring your car and have it in the event. So, there’s a big change there, so that’s why a lot of people said screw that.
And, and it ain’t, it ain’t cheap. I’m not exactly sure, but, normal concourse, you’re talking 150, 200 bucks. I think they charge five to six hundred dollars, maybe something like that. And I could be wrong, so if I am wrong, shoot me an email, correct me, you know, I haven’t really looked into it. But it ain’t cheap.
So they’re charging people down to have their cars in the show. So there’s a big change right there So but you notice the big difference is there’s a lot less cars there and I won’t say by half But pretty close to half the amount of cars that um now the qualities there. That’s for sure I mean, there’s no doubt about that but it’s just you don’t have the same amount of cars as you go around look and You know, again, they’re, they’re, they get kind of heavy with the pre war stuff, and those cars were absolutely gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, the craftsmanship and watching what the hell those things, I mean, absolutely beautiful cars, brilliant craftsmanship, you know, you get up and look at these cars, I mean, it’s unbelievable what they did back then with just hand [00:42:00] tools, doing everything by hand, you know, they didn’t have, you know, all this stuff that they have this day and age, everything was done by hand, so absolutely stunning stuff.
So, but I mean it’s getting there. It’s going to take them some time, you know, a few more years I think they’ll get in the groove But I think they’re gonna have to tweak a few things to bring back the amount of quality and quality of cars They got some work to do. But hey, you know, they’re getting you know, they’re doing all right They you know, they’ve acquired a few other events around the country.
So they’re getting a lot of practice. That’s for sure So but anyways, the one other thing I did not mention I forgot to mention because Saturday morning we were gonna go early, but it was raining So we said, well, we were going to go to the Brumos collection. So we did that first and said, now, if you’re ever in Jacksonville, I highly recommend, go to the Brumos collection and check it out.
Absolutely phenomenal facility. Dan Davis, the owner, he, you know, he owned Brumos Porsche in the dealership. He sold them a few years back. He kept the Brumos name. He kept all the [00:43:00] vintage race cars and all that, and stuff like that. He has a lot of them. Uh, so he built this gorgeous facility. And, uh, it’s kind of They took off a reminiscent of the Ford plant that was in Jacksonville.
Super cool. Exposed brick. It’s a gorgeous facility. If you’re in Jacksonville, please go. In a lot, a good two to three hours to go through it. Super nice people to walk you around with. Kind of go over everything, but nice interactive displays. I mean, it’s super cool. Definitely, definitely go to the Brunel’s Collection when you’re down in Jacksonville.
Anyways, that’s a wrap it up. I know this was kind of a thing about talking about everything. Seemed to kind of, you know, talk about some Porsche, talk about some Ferrari, stuff like that. But this is more about, hey, just what I did over in the meal guy weekend. Talk a little bit about the auctions, uh, and that kind of stuff.
So, you know, kind of a mismatch. Hey, this is kind of actually one of the longest episodes I’ve done. I wasn’t sure I was going to even get 10 minutes out of this, but look at that. It’s almost 45 minutes long. Hey, so if you got stuck in traffic, this is a good one to listen to, right? But anyways. Again, I really appreciate [00:44:00] everybody listening and doing the downloads.
Um, you know, we’re getting up there, we’re creeping up there. You know, um, we’re getting there. So I really, really appreciate it. So spread the word, put it out there. Again, check out the websites. TheFerrariMarketplace. com, ExoticCarMarketplace. com We’ve got a lot of new content coming. We’ve got a lot more collaborations coming.
So, um, sign up. I can’t sign you up for the newsletter, but it’s coming. So once we get that kind of up and going, just keep an eye on it. Check out the YouTube channel, uh, Garage 65. Very simple because it kind of just covers everything. Now I got the subset ones for the Ferrari Marketplace, the Porsche Marketplace.
Where those will be, you know, brand specific. I can get that out. But Garage 65, we’re going to do a lot of cool stuff. I want to go check out museums. We’re going to check out fabricators. check out a bunch of stuff and just have some fun with it. And here’s our goal with all this. Now we’re going to acquire cars and whatnot to drive and have some fun with.
Go to Cars Coffee and kind of do, have those interact with it. But and also what we’re going to do is to help support. I’m a big advocate for Make A Wish I’m a wish [00:45:00] granted Make A Wish and also a huge animal advocate. I volunteered a few animal shelters So we’re going to try and coordinate and help do we can with the cars to help these, you know May help Make A Wish help these children, you know, get what they want help them out But also help these animal shelters and find these, you know, these beautiful animals are forever home So we’re gonna try and make this, you know beneficial to everybody involved.
So try and raise money, but Our big goal, we want to buy an F40, because what we want to do with this F40 is we’re going to drive it, we’re going to drive the shit out of it. We’re going to take people for drives, we’re going to go all over the place, we’re going to take these kids from Make A Wish, take them for rides.
So we’re going to do a lot with this car, so if you can, please like and subscribe, pass this around, because the more we can get, we can generate the revenue, we can get up there, we can get this F40, and go and have a lot of fun with it, and just have everyone else enjoy it, and do everything we can to not only Help these kids, you know, have some fun with it or, you know, uh, go into probably, you know, the worst times of their lives, you know, battling these diseases they have, [00:46:00] but also help raise money for these animal shelters and find these animals are new forever.
Again, I really, really appreciate everybody listening. Um, sorry, this is what kind of rambled a bit, but hey, you know what? I hope you guys enjoy it Uh next week new episode coming up. Uh, not quite sure what i’m going to talk about next week I haven’t thought about it. So maybe something fun and exciting.
So we’ll see. So guys, I appreciate it. Everybody. Take care Have a good one and until next time appreciate it.
Copyright William Ross, Exotic Car Marketplace a division of Sixty5 Motorsports. This episode is part of Gran Touring Motorsports, Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.