Exotic Car Marketplace

In this episode of Ferrari Fridays, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace explores the intricacies and challenges of judging at Ferrari concours events. He shares personal experiences and frustrations with the process, particularly around the qualifications and consistency of judges. William emphasizes the impact that awards can have on a car’s value and the dedication required to participate in these prestigious events. Additionally, he highlights the contributions of volunteers, the importance of using cars as they were intended, and promotes various automotive-related sponsors and networks.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Show
• 02:30 Judging at Concours Events
• 04:57 The Importance of Accurate Judging
• 10:40 Challenges and Solutions in Judging
• 16:10 Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts

[00:00:00] As part of Ferrari Fridays, William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace will be discussing all things Ferrari and interviewing people that live and breathe 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.

Never, never.

Hey everyone. William Ross here at the Ferrari Marketplace. We are starting something new for this episode. We’re actually doing video on this as well. This is my third go around attempting to record this episode due to the fact is I’m just not a tech person. Tried it several times, it tell ’em it doesn’t record.

Sometimes it does, and I change a file name and then seems to erase the sound, and then it’s just. Me and no sound and I look like bad lip reading or something like that. But anyways, I wanna welcome to the Far Marketplace Podcast and vlog, I guess you could say now. ’cause we’re gonna post this up on the, uh, [00:01:00] YouTube channel as well.

And, uh, start spreading the word a little bit more. And definitely check out Motoring Podcast Network and uh, check out all the other. Podcasts that we have available on MPN. There’s a ton of awesome content on there. I highly recommend you checking it out and also check out past episodes of the Ferrari marketplace.

I kinda go all over the place. Yes, I talk about Ferrari in the market today and that kind of stuff, but I also just kind of get into everything related Ferrari. So for everything from Ferrari and Porsche, Lamborghini and Konig seg, visit exotic car marketplace.com. If you’re into anything with wheels and a motor, log onto the Motoring Podcast network.

And check out our family of podcasts@motoringpodcast.net. This is the place to find your favorite new show. Next up a shout out to David Beatie and his team at Slot Mods who custom build some of the coolest slot car tracks in the world@slotmods.com. Let your imagination run wild and finally, grand touring motorsports.

Covering all aspects of auto racing and motorsports history. [00:02:00] Check out their ine@gtmotorsports.org. All the links for our sponsors are in the description. Check out our sponsors that were mentioned here prior to this and uh, really appreciate the support guy. So onward and upward. Got my diet Mountain Dew.

We are good to go. Hopefully with my new mic I have here, I got a new shore mic and hopefully all the sounds better. You’ve probably heard that too. Open up my diet Mountain Dew. ’cause I am a fiend for it. So you gotta have kind of one vice, right? So it’s Diet Mountain Dew for me. So anyways, today’s episode.

I had a different idea in mind for what I was gonna record for this week’s episode I was gonna get into about warranties and stuff like that and what she looked doing, even though I don’t really get in too much of the newer stuff, but I was gonna kind of talk about that and also maintenance and stuff.

But there was a post that someone I know stating the fact is that they were going to be a judge this weekend at the Hillsborough Concord, which. Quin say, enough, I’m headed there today. So this post was put on there and he was talking about, I was being a judge of the Concord. He was judging the [00:03:00] Ferrari class.

There’s a nice amount of Ferraris in this class. ’cause I’m actually going there myself to be a docent. I don’t think I’m judging, I don’t like to be a judge. ’cause that’s a lot of responsibility put on your shoulders and we’ll get into that as to exactly why. So this verse made the post and it kind of like struck a nerve with me and now it against this person.

Just in how the judging works in general at these CONCOR events. Now, when you get into more prestigious ones, pebble Beach, Caino, stuff like that, you know, they get very particular credential wise and background wise, or who they’re gonna bring out as a judge. Now these guys do, they’re volunteers straight up.

They don’t get paid. They get in an event for free. That’s about it. Maybe some free food free beverages. That’s about it. So it’s not like the wheels are getting greased and saying, Hey, vote for these cars or whatnot. You know, that kind of gig. Not to say that some money hasn’t been tried to slip into a judge’s hand at an event, but, well, that’s a whole different argument, but it’s a volunteer position.

That’s basically what it [00:04:00] boils down to. You gotta pay your own way. So if either you’re driving hour, two hours, or you’re flying across country, it’s your dime. So it just depends on how you want, how you get there. But anyways, when you get some of these other events, I don’t wanna say you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That’s not right because all these people that are participating, you know, have knowledge and background, but to what extent is what I’m getting at, so. This individual, they’ve only been in this industry maybe four or five years, so their background knowledge, especially of Ferraris, is very limited, and the only reason is working for one of the big auction houses.

That’s how he jumped into this industry. He started working for the auction house, whatever, but he hadn’t been in the right place, right time, and be involved in the transaction of a very particular car. All of a sudden got him a load of notoriety. Good for him, Hey, got his bank account fluffed up, everything like that, which is fantastic.

Good for him. Hey, kudos. So again, this isn’t about him. This is not about his situ. Had nothing to do with him, kudos to him, everything like that. Hey, he’s taking the fast track and having a great time and you know, doing a lot of cool shit. It just has to do with when you have a [00:05:00] car at a Concord event, depending on the level of event.

You know, a lot of these owners take that trophy placing what have you, you know, and that’s value to that car because then when you go to sell that car, you can say, oh, my car wanted X, Y, Z or came first in class at X, Y, Z, or whatever. It adds a lot of value to that car. ’cause you have a lot of people that when they buy these cars, ’cause you know they wanna do stuff with it.

And there’s a very, very small amount of people that they take these, they daily dry ’em or dry ’em on a regular basis and. Drive ’em, like they should use ’em for basic stuff and everything like that, and have a lot of fun with them. You know, we got a lot of guys, hey, it’s a weekend car. They only take ’em to car shows.

They take ’em to events, you know, take ’em to concourse. Stuff like that. You know, they pride theirselves on having a car that’s award-winning or as with Catalina Platinum Award winning. ’cause that adds a sh ton, a ton of value to the car, especially for Cavallo and Ferrari. Porsche has the same thing in getting those type of awards and it boils down to.

Because a lot of these things, it has to come down to like a point, point and a half. Caino, was it 96 or higher? 95 and [00:06:00] higher. It’s a hundred point scale, you know, so you have a cheat sheet and so to speak in regards to what you’re looking for. There’s a lot of basic stuff, but there’s a lot of stuff on there If you really don’t know.

You could really ding a car, you know, looking at hex head bolts compared to regular, you know, whatcha youma call bolts Phillips and blah blah blah. That kind of stuff. Or the hose clamp is wrong or wrong. Oil filter, stuff like that. I mean, ’cause if you don’t know your stuff, you could take a point off, half a point off thinking, oh that’s wrong.

But it could be, right? I mean, that’s the thing. Do you know. Now when they’re judging at events, it’s not like there’s one person go around to one car. Usually you have a group. I mean, that’s how you should do it. Now, I’ve seen events and been events where you have, they had one judge going around or two judges.

That was it. That again, that has to do with getting volunteers and people be able to come, you know, it’s, uh, all about that. But normally you have four or five, six judges in a group. They go around collectively from car to car. They have a specific amount of cars. They’ll know ahead of time, these are the cars you’re judging.

So hopefully these people did their homework and brushed up on the cars they’re gonna be looking at, you know, and how in depth they get into [00:07:00] that, that’s up to them. Now, normally you also have one judge in that panel. That group, hey, they’re the expert, they’ll know their stuff. So you can lean on them in regards to questions and everything like that.

And I highly recommend if you have time and you’re interested in it, follow a group of judges around. At the next big event you’re at. You don’t have to follow ’em the whole time, dude. ’cause it takes a few hours for ’em to go around ’cause they do multiple cars. But watch ’em do a few cars and see if they do.

It’s pretty much the same in regards to every car. ’cause they have to check, Hey, check this, check the horn, check brake lights, blah, blah, blah, da da da. It’s interesting to see how they kind of tweak a little bit from car to car, you know? So it all kind of depends what they’re getting at. And especially if a judge goes, oh, I love this car.

This is one of my favorites. You know, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. So. I recommend it ’cause it’s cool to just kind of stand in the background, watch them work and see what they do. So now we have this group of judges. Now you normally you have, okay, the owner of the car or whoever the handler is, they’re talking, normally they’ll talk to one of the judges predominantly and kind of that’s the judge asking all question, well, the other judges either talking to other people or [00:08:00] they’re just kinda looking at stuff on the car or everything like that.

You know, they might have two judges where the guy’s talking to, but it’s pretty much one person. And I usually, that’s the, I wanna say the go-to person in that group. Or like I said, you know, you could have the owner and the, the Restore or whatever the store’s talking to the judges while the owner’s talking to the other judges just shooting the shit, you know, that kind of stuff.

So it all depends, but you have to turn in your score sheets and get rated on your car. So at the end, they’re tallying up the points, they’re tallying everything up and kind of showing you, okay, here’s where you’re at. You can go back after the fact and ask for verification. Say, Hey, you know, this doesn’t seem right.

No, this is right. But here’s the problem is it’s after the fact. So it’s not during the event itself where, okay, well they’re gonna all of a sudden reshuffle everything. They won’t, they’ll rescore your card. You might think, well, what’s the point? If there’s a big difference between being a platinum and not a platinum for like Ferrari and stuff like that.

I mean it’s huge. And like I said, when you’re talking to point half point, that goes a long way. ’cause when you check out listings [00:09:00] and stuff for nicer, higher end collector Ferraris, not your newer stuff, but you know the older stuff and look at it and you’ll guarantee, if you say, oh, platinum award-winning, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, that’s huge because it just shows that it was restored correctly. It’s almost as is is coming outta the factory. It’s using NOS parts, all that kinda stuff, you know? I mean, that’s cool. It just adds a ton of value to the car if you have that. That’s why you have a lot of these guys that have the money that they started sending over when Ferrari started doing their class East program, as they started sending them over to Italy, to Ferrari itself, to restore the cars because they wanna get the award, they wanna get the Platinum Award, they wanna win this event.

It’s a huge ego thing for a lot of these people. And on that note. Judges can have a tendency to get an ego on them because they feel that, hey, they’re holding all the power. You know, it’s kinda like when, um, go through T-S-A-T-S-A, rightfully so, I guess. I mean, they could make your fricking life and trip miserable if they really wanted to, if they’re just having a bad day.

I. You know, you’re at the store and you got some [00:10:00] schlep, you got some clerk that they feel like they got all the power in the world right now over you. ’cause you everything’s in their hands, you know? And it’s like you gotta kowtow to them, everything like that. So people have a tendency to get a bit of an ego on them.

But again, you know, not saying that they’d sabotage it, what have you, but what I’m saying is they’ll start nitpicking and start deducting. Points for stuff that they’re not completely certain about. Like I said, you know, I’m not saying this happens all the time. I’m not saying this is common. I’m just making a point of what potentially is there in regards to doing it.

Because you know, it’s not like they’re going back and scrutinizing all this stuff. Normally someone’s bringing their car and they have a relatively strong idea of where their car should score at. I feel it’s a huge disservice to the owners when you have judges coming in that really have no business being a judge.

Now, if they stand on facts, oh, it’s celebrity judges, this and that, oh, this is a, you know, they have some knowledge and again and again they should, they can study up beforehand and you go to like, you know, pebble Beach, they have a lot of like extra. You know, drivers and stuff like that. Very [00:11:00] well known people in the automotive world, being the group of judges that, ’cause I mean, if you think about like Pebble and stuff, they gotta have a hundred, 200 judges.

I’m not exactly sure. They have a lot. So, and again, you volunteer everything like that, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s very enjoyable to do. Again, it’s something I don’t choose to do. I’ve been asked. A lot. And I just kinda, eh, you know, I, I kinda look at what the event is. Well, what is my role within that group?

You know, what are you expecting from me? One, I don’t like to be the main person. I just don’t like to have that responsibility. ’cause again, you know, you got some owners that can get pretty prickly about what kind of score they receive and demanding why and everything like that. I mean, I’ve seen an instance here or there where, you know, the owners got extremely pissed off.

In regards to what their score was and why the hell is it this, that I just spent this much money getting this done, da da da. Then they go back onto the restore, what the hell’s going on? Like, no, that’s right. Like it can create a very, very sticky situation all around. But anyways, so kind of going back to what whole point of this was when you watch a judge agency, I [00:12:00] said this all just basically started with the fact is, you know, it just kind of is a little bit of a, I don’t wanna say sore point with me.

I don’t wanna say that. I wanna say it’s, you know, just something that kind of irks me a bit and I think it’s a disservice to a lot of the owners now. Like I, I don’t know how you can fix it. I mean, there’s really new, ’cause again, these guys volunteer, so it’s like the event itself is kind of hamstrung in regards to, well, we gotta get who we can get because, you know, we’re not paying these people.

Then you might say, well, why don’t they get judging just paying it? Well, the money’s not there for it. All these events, a majority of them are about raising money for certain nonprofits, charities, stuff like that. They run his nonprofits. So people aren’t really making money off these things. You know, bill Warner’s always made the comment, people ask him all the time, well, I’m thinking about starting this conroy and this and that, and he tells ’em, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t do it.

Don’t do it. Don’t, don’t get, don’t be getting in for make money on it. You’re not making money on it. It’s a lot of effort. It’s a lot of work and it costs a lot of money. Stuff starts adding up. So I mean, those ves run on volunteers. You really can’t go that route saying, well, you know, pay the judges then, you know, because it just wouldn’t happen because then all of a sudden you could get into, well, they’re [00:13:00] getting paid so all of a sudden they’re gonna have favoritism.

That kind of stuff. I don’t know, like, I don’t wanna say it’s a lose lose, but, and again, I gotta reiterate, I’m not saying this happens at every event and all, everybody just say, it just struck a nerve. When I saw that post, it made me just kinda like, ugh. It just brought something up to the surface that it, it bothers me for the owners of these cars.

It’s one thing when you have the guy that’s got hundreds of millions of dollars in his bank account. Spending three, four, $5 million on a car, even, you know, a million dollars on a car. Then spend another couple hundred thousand dollars, if not a million dollars on the restoration. All this kind of stuff.

And they get angry, but they’re like, oh, okay, well next year we gotta fix this stuff and that. Then we’ll get those last couple points, yada yada. It’s the gentleman that. He’s saved up. That’s his only car, you know, that’s his baby. He’s had it for 30 years or 20 years, whatever it is. Or he got it. He restored it himself and everything like that.

Super passionate. I love these people. I’m actually ado these people ’cause they’re true backbone of the collector industry. Not saying these huge collectors don’t care about their cars, but I’m saying the people that have one, maybe two cars, they’re the [00:14:00] passionate ones that, you know, I just wanna be sure they’re not getting a disservice done to them in regards to their car and at these events.

Again, it’s just something I wanted to get off my chest. I guess basically you could say that’s what this whole episode was. It’s just about me venting about the situations and like I said, I, there’s really no way to fix it. There’s no way to correct it. And again, it’s not like it’s, you know, all over the place.

It’s, it isn’t not saying any of this stuff. Could potentially happen. You know, just someone being rude and ego and I’m deducting points, I don’t like this asshole. You know, that kind of stuff. Well, and you’d hope it wouldn’t be, these people put a lot of time, effort, and money into these cars, you know, and they take pride in that when they go to these events or to getting judged and they bring it to these events ’cause they gotta pay to put their car in this event, depending on what event it is, you know.

Get pretty expensive to have your car in the show to get judged and something happens that goes wrong, then they get pissed off. They’ll never bring their car back to that show again or what have you. And as we know, I mean, we all love the weekends where there’s events all over the place, big, small, what have you, various types of cars, from exotics to [00:15:00] muscle cars, everything like that.

You know, these shows are fantastic. You don’t wanna see people get a bad taste in their mouth ’cause you wanna see these cars out in the public, out in the wild, especially getting driven and you know, everything like that. So, which is always great. What’s cool is that get these more prestigious ones you like Pebbles, you know, they have that drive they do where you get extra points if you participate in that drive day before, two days before the Concor stuff.

Like that’s cool to see when you see these cars actually in motion getting driven, everything like that. That’s what I love about the Sione Museum in Philadelphia. If you have never been there, I highly recommend you visit the Sione Museum. ’cause they do events, I dunno often. I don’t know if it’s every weekend or what have you, but they take their cars out into their parking lot.

They drive ’em around. I mean, it’s not a very big parking lot, but you hear ’em driving, you hear ’em running, you know, they treat ’em as a cars as they should be. So, which is awesome. And kind of as a back note. They just had a fantastic event there for a viewing party for the Lamont 24 hours. It just happened last weekend.

Helped put on by the A CO America. I highly recommend next year you’re going check out the A CO America website, join up, sign up. You get a lot of [00:16:00] perks and benefits, especially if you go over to lamont itself or the Lamont Classic, but they do a lot of cool stuff over the United States as well. So check it out.

Definitely recommend going there next year. I will be there myself, so please come there. So anyways, I’m gonna wrap this up because. I had to start packing for my trip to San Francisco. My flight’s not till five 40 in the afternoon, so I have all day like, God, it’s a direct flight. I gotta get that situated, get that all taken care of.

But again, appreciate you guys listening. Tell me what you think. If you appreciate, hey, doing the vlog as well. We’ve discussed that, hey, it’s all depends on the listener. Some people just like audio, some people like video and some boats, what have you. So. It all depends and I don’t know if you’re like looking at my ugly mug, but anyways.

And what do you think of the Ferrari TFM uh, swag. We got some cool swag going on, especially for MPN. We got some cool swag for Ferri Marketplace Garage 65. We got a lot of cool swag going on. You gotta check this stuff out. We’re thinking about bringing some of that stuff to market, see if there’s some interest there, but you know, help support the cause.

Again, I appreciate you guys listening. Remember, uh, on the, for the vlog, on the YouTube, you hit that like, and subscribe. Spread the word. Let’s get this thing out there. We can blow it up. We can do a lot more cool things with this. Get some [00:17:00] people and interview ’em, stuff like that, and do what we can. So maybe do some onsite stuff, who knows where it can go.

Our appreciate guys listening. Hit that like and subscribe button and until next time, peace.

This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motor Sports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.

Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the [00:18:00] episode.

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.