Cable TV drives classic car frenzy

Cathy Luebke/Phoenix Business Journal

Left to right: Don Williams, Donald Osborne and McKeel Hagerty

RM Auctions photo by Steve Petrovich

This Aston Martin DB4 sold for more than $1 million at RM Auctions' The British are Coming night.

Pebble Beach and Monterey, Calif., may rule when it comes to concours car classics and vintage racing, but the Phoenix area is king of the auto auctions.

The region owes much of that status to Barrett-Jackson Auction Co., which just wrapped up its 39th annual classic car auction in Scottsdale despite heavy rain and wind that disrupted Russo and Steele’s Thursday and Friday sales.

But this one-time hobby has boomed into big-time business with a little help from six other January auctions and a surge of cable TV coverage.

It’s not just Speed Channel with its live and often-replayed coverage of Barrett-Jackson, but Discovery, History channels and others, says McKeel Haggerty of Haggerty Insurance, which gets much of its revenue from insuring classic cars.

Still, he said, “it’s a hobby at its core.”

“Television has been one of the greatest promotions tools to get people to collect cars,” agrees Don Williams, owner of the Blackhawk Collection dealership and museum in California. But, he adds, “You have to have it in your blood.”

Michael Leone is one example. Struck with Mustang fever years ago washing a green 1969 GT Fastback when he worked at a used car lot, he designed the Iacocca Silver 45th Anniversary Mustang with the Lee Iacocca, credited as father of the famed pony car. “It’s raining like cats and dogs out here,” he said excitedly heading off to Barrett-Jackson to talk up the limited edition car.

That passion for Mustangs also shows how the market has changed from pre-war cars to muscle machines and rustomods.

Most collectors fall into the 40 to 60-year-old class, says Williams. “But a 50-year-old today doesn’t want to collect the same cars as a 50-year-old in 1968.”

That generational drift also was evident walking into the elite RM Auctions The British are Coming night at the Arizona Biltmore. Think British Invasion chartbusters by the likes of Yardbirds and Freddy and the Dreamers preceding Thursday night’s action. Click here for a story and slide show on the RM event.

Haggerty says there also is a trend among buyers for small collections, rather that the expansive collections of the past.

Regardless of age people are always interested in prices, and Donald Osborne of Sports Car Market and Automotive Valuation Services says they want to see records. Barrett-Jackson prices can be somewhat of an anomaly, he says.

Auctions account only for about 10 to 15 percent of the market.

Just because one of the world’s best cars can go for $28 million, doesn’t mean you can’t buy an affordable Mustang convertible, Williams says.

The recession primarily impacted low and mid-market cars, according to the experts. Haggerty says his company’s revenue from insuring classic car buyers fell from $1 billion in 2008 to $500,000 last year.

But regardless of buying cycles, rain and recession, Arizona is in the spotlight with January’s auction frenzy, according to the experts who spoke at a meeting of the Phoenix Automotive Press Association last week. No need for fancy coucours shows or vintage racing.

“Arizona has so much already,” Williams says. And it’s seen by “everybody all over the world in many different languages.”

The area has much to offer outside the auctions, from winter golf to wide-open spaces, Haggerty says. Many people have come for the auctions and now have homes here, he says.

Check out my car review this week: BMW diesel goes the distance