I felt that this page would be a nice way to showcase various members, their cars, and or accomplishments. It will be changed as time, and submissions allow.
Bob Herzog just sent me this write up of his Barrett Jackson experience, thanks Bob!
Barrett
Jackson Auction 2007 – by Bob Herzog
(No
Lotus Content but still a lot of fun!)
We have an intranet instant message system at work, similar to the one used by millions on the internet. About a week before this year’s Barrett-Jackson Auction I changed the on line “Status” of my IM to show “Going to Barrett Jackson”. I got two kinds of messages from fellow employees over the next week. Category 1 being “Are you really!!! That’s terrific! What are you going to buy? Category 2 being simply: What’s a Barrett Jackson?
For those of you still in the Stone Age without the Speed Channel on TV, let me briefly explain. Barrett-Jackson hosts the most audacious car auctions in the world. The one held in January in Scottsdale Arizona is considered by many to be the biggest and best in the world. 1600 cars auctioned off with no reserve over 6 days. Speed channel covers 40 hours of the auction and it certainly adds to the excitement that climaxes sometime on Saturday evening when the best of the best cars cross the block. Things then quiet down a bit and the auction finishes up on Sunday. Last year the BJ auction sold over $100 million worth of neat cars!
I bought tickets for Sue and I as a Christmas gift to ourselves and we flew down to Arizona on a cool, rainy Friday morning 1/19/07 to enjoy the weekend part of the festivities. After going through the airport stuff, the rental car stuff and the shuttle bus stuff from the muddy red clay parking lot, we finally arrived at Westworld to see the giant 350,000 square foot enclosed tent! Largest in the world they say. Wow is what I say. The half dozen other support tents were pretty wow too. Or maybe wow six.
Upon entering the main tent which is enclosed and heated, your senses are bombarded with visual and auditory displays of automotive related “Stuff”. The first city block of the big top is filled with a car show. Ford’s best race car and performance car stuff on display. Tons of vendors selling everything from replica vintage gas pumps to car lifts to automotive art to Hagerty classic car insurance. Also to be found is multiple vendors of food. My favorite was the Pink Taco where their motto was “Where eating out is always fun”. There was a never ending line at Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for a $5 cup of delight. And of course there was ample cold beer sold by cute young Bud girls!
The second square block houses the auction itself which goes non stop from 10am to at least 10pm, longer if needed to sell all the cars earmarked to sell that day. We found a seat in the temporary arena where I would estimate 20,000 others where seated and cheering on the auction. Now when you want to watch a Champ car race at Elkhart Lake, the best place to do that is in front of your big screen TV. When you want to experience everything involved with a Champ car race weekend, you have to go to Elkhart Lake and experience it. The same applies to the Barrett Jackson auction. You can’t see the cars being sold very well from the stands way in the back or sitting on one of the hard metal seats on the main floor. But the experience is very special. And if you want to see the cars themselves, they are all there under the tents for you to view at any time you want during the auction.
Our routine worked out to be: watch the auction for an hour (while sipping some suds), then go tour the grounds for an hour or so, then repeat and repeat and repeat. The Phoenix area had not seen rain in three months. We brought it with us from Chicago. It rained and rained and rained all day Friday and it was pretty chilly for Arizona. About 50 F during the day and down in the 40’s as the evening rolled around. So our Friday touring of the outside was limited to short trips under the umbrella. It was getting to be 10:00 pm Chicago time and we had viewed the specialty cars and motorcycles inside the 3rd city block’s worth of enclosed heated tent. But we had not even seen ANY of the 5 big tents outside yet. We were beat so we headed for the shuttle bus to the sloppy red clay/mud parking lot and checked into our hotel.
We knew Saturday would be a walking marathon so we took it a bit easy in the morning, heading over to one of the local mountains just for some viewing. The trail map said the trail was ONLY 1.2 miles long but they rated it as 4 hiking boots out of 4. When you looked way up to the top you could JUST barely make out a couple little moving specks which were ambitious hikers at the top. We still had lots of hiking to do at the auction so we toured around the mountain a bit in our rental Mustang and headed back over to the auction.
We hit a couple of the regular sized, unheated and open on the side type tents. There we found the bulk of the cars being auctioned off. Some were pretty spectacular, some were just so-so. I think everyone thinks they can just spritz a quick coat of re-sale red on any old car and go get a million bucks for it at this auction. Not so. Buyers are finicky. And this is a no-reserve auction. We saw some so-so cars just getting so-so money and the sellers were a bit upset. We also saw some spectacular cars just getting so-so money and the sellers were also a bit upset. Imagine putting $100,000 to $150,000 into an absolute perfect 100 point restoration and only getting $60,000 for your efforts. Yow! On the other hand, certain cars brought top dollar. Many cars that we just walked on by without a second look fetched $100,000, $200,000 to a mil.
The best way to view the cars was in the staging lanes just outside the big tent. The cars were driven from their spots all over the campus and parked in 3 lines of three. The worker bees furiously wiped and wiped and wiped down the cars, especially on the cars that just came in from the rain. The crowd was quite crowdy but not rowdy and as the hours of Saturday rolled on, the cars kept getting better and better and the $old prices kept getting bigger and bigger. We got to see some celebrities there. Tony Stewart, Ari Lyendyck, Paul Sr. & Paul Jr. Tuettle of Orange County Choppers fame, Chip Foose. Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins from drag racing fame was there with Linda Vaughn on his arm. Bill is quite short. Linda’s still got what made her famous. It’s just a lot lower now.
We were sitting at the bar (imagine that) when the CNN truck went up on the blocks. This was a Hummer that the CNN news team had driven in Iraq. Chip Foose got it and rebuilt it for one of those rebuild shows on TV. It actually looked quite nice and it was a tribute to the troops as the money was going to help the families who lost a family member in Bush’s war. The crowd went wild as the bidding jumped quickly. There were no seats left on the main floor but Sue ran over to try and get a glimpse of the sale. I kept the bar seats for us and watched the bidding on the TV. You didn’t need the sound on as we were only about 200 feet from the stage and the sound system was booming everywhere. The gavel fell at an even $million and Keith Jackson, the owner of the show kicked in an extra $250,000 for the charity. Whew, that was intense.
We toured the rest of the tents where we found many different types of cars but mostly muscle cars. There were a couple Alfas, a few neat old VW bugs, some nice Mercedes gull wings, a couple Amphicars, a Messerschmidt and a few Minis. No Lotus Cars. Not even an Esprit. The Austin Healey market has gone crazy and so there were several AH-3000 that were perfectly restored and got anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000. Again, mostly muscle cars. Some very, very nice. Some were 50 footers.
Ford had a parking lot set up and showed some neat “Drifting” cars. The specialty drives would smoke the tires and drift around the lot coming within inches of the concrete barriers. Fabulous car control and the Rausch powered cars sounded great. It was an overload of sounds as I found myself walking away shaking from it all. Must be time for another beer….
Later on the Saturday afternoon crowd thinned out and we got some good seats in the grand stands so we were able to watch as Carol Shelby’s own Shelby Cobra went up on the block. There had already been maybe 6 real cobras and a dozen replica’s auction off during the week, but this one was special. Carol took the stage and described how he had this one up to 190 MPH in Nevada once. We had also smashed into a buzzard with it. Absolutely restored now. 800 hp, dual superchargers and an automatic transmission! Beautiful blue. The bidding began and quickly jumped up to $500,000 where it stalled for a while. Some more jibber jabber from Carol and Keith and the bidding resumed. Jumping by $100,000 at a crack, the crowd went crazy as it reached the 1 mil mark. Then it kept on jumping past 2 mil, then three, then 4! Last year’s high bid was $.3 million for a 60’s GM “Future liner” bus. The bidding for the Shelby finally stopped at an even $5 million. That doesn’t include the 10% buyer’s premium to BJ or the 8% seller’s premium. Lots of money out there. Whew! Wow!
Sunday was a relaxing visit with Sue’s Aunt in Sun City. Got to listen to the beginning of the Bear’s win of the NFC championship on the car ride back to the airport. The captain on the plane kept us informed of the score and the plane let out a unanimous cheer when they won while we were somewhere over Colorado I think. It almost woke up “Jabba the Hut” who was sleeping next to me on the plane. Not Sue. She was on the other side. Sue is still quite svelte thank you. The fat on this lady to my right kept on oozing over onto my side of the line between the seats. When she snored, she sounded like she had a whole chicken stuck inside her throat. Her own noise would actually wake her up and she would gather up some of her fat and pull it back over onto her side. As she slipped back into a snoring slumber, her fat would again begin oozing on over. It was actually quite humorous but a bit uncomfortable.
So this auction was one of those automotive things that every automotive guy should try and do at least once in their life. I am glad to have an automotive type gal who actually enjoyed most if not all of the trip.
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E-mail, or 'snail-mail' your pictures to Lotus Corps web site guy using the e-mail contact information found on the 'Home page'. I will change these pictures as time, and submissions allow.