Go behind the scenes with car auction’s Craig Jackson
Craig Jackson shoots from zero to 60 mph in about four seconds on the road outside WestWorld of Scottsdale.
He’s behind the wheel of one of the fastest sports cars ever made by Ford, a sleek black and red 2017 Ford GT.
“It’s not about how fast you’re going,” Jackson says. “It’s about how fast you get there.”
He moves fast.
Not just in sports cars, but in managing the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction in Scottsdale. Jackson’s schedule is timed to the minute.
But the seven days of bidding that attracts more than 300,000 people to Scottsdale — and has spurred numerous other collector car auctions in the same week — has been nearly 50 years in the making.
Jackson was just a kid when his dad, Russ, and Thomas Barrett, a fellow classic car collector, launched the auction in a dirt lot next to the Safari Resort in Scottsdale in 1971.
Jackson and his older brother, Brian, eventually ran the auction, with Jackson becoming chief executive when his brother died in 1995.
“He was 14 years older than me, so I never thought I’d have the reins. I thought I’d always be No. 2,” Jackson said.
But in the past 25 years, Jackson has pushed for improvements to WestWorld of Scottsdale, the city-owned events venue where the auction happens, and in turn expanded the auction.
The auction ran four days in 1995 and attracted about 60,000 people. Today’s auction, spread over nine days with seven days of bidding, attracts some 325,000 people.
Barrett-Jackson employs 90 people year-round, but during the auction week, approximately 2,500 people, including vendors, drivers and auctioneers, work at WestWorld.
As Jackson makes his way through WestWorld in the GT, people pull out their phones to take pictures and even salute him.
Jackson’s celebrity has grown with the auction, and he flexes his muscle car for the crowd.
The man at the center of it all goes non-stop from morning to night during the auction. The Arizona Republic tried to keep up with him on Thursday.
8 a.m. Getting ready for the day
Jackson was at the auction until 11 p.m. the night before, but he’s up at 5 a.m. each morning and says he gets through the day, typically with the help of five or six cups of coffee.
Jackson’s day starts at 8 a.m. on Thursday, when he begins pre-filming footage for two documentary series centered around the restoration of two cars.
The cars are Shelby Mustang experimental prototypes, and their restoration has been a passion project for Jackson the past two years.
Jackson isn’t just a company executive. He’s a car guy. The Coronado High School graduate got an associate’s degree in automotive technology, but dropped out of Arizona State University when he realized he could make more money restoring cars at his dad’s shop.
The latest restorations that have attracted the film crew for a documentary involve a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 EXP prototype known as “Little Red” and a 1968 Shelby GT500 prototype known as the “Green Hornet.” Today will be the first time both Mustangs have been seen together.
But for now, Jackson is holed up in his bus, which has its own espresso machine, preparing for the reveal.
His wife, Carolyn, arrives in a black Escalade. She’s frequently at Jackson’s side at events and in the front row as he bids. Jackson surprised her last year when he bid $1.1 million on a 2020 Mustang Shelby GT500.
Jackson has a personal collection of some 70 cars. Dozens are kept in a garage at his Paradise Valley home. The private garage has a rotunda that is made to look like a 1967 Shelby wheel, according to Jackson in a video tour with Business Insider.
9 a.m. Unveiling ‘Little Red’
Jackson comes out of his bus and walks a short distance to the tent for the reveal. He mingles and shakes hands with people like Aaron Shelby, the grandson of Texas racing legend Carroll Shelby.
After the reveal of “Little Red” and previewing trailers for the documentaries, Jackson answers questions and poses for photos with the cars.
Jackson’s marketing team has a “minute by minute” that gets sent out to the entire team each night, breaking down the important events in Jackson’s schedule the next day.
Jackson credits the minute by minute system, and his employees, for keeping him accountable.
They “harass the hell out of me until I get everywhere,” Jackson says. “That’s the system.”
Jackson is scheduled to go onto the auction block soon, according to the minute by minute. He typically is there for the National Anthem at 10 a.m.
In light of today’s unveiling, Jackson seems content to chat with industry insiders and take photos with car enthusiasts and media alike well past 10:30 a.m.
Noon. Finishing the documentary
Jackson is sitting inside his green room, a man cave of sorts, in the middle of WestWorld. It’s outfitted with leather couches, a conference table, a mini-fridge and giant canvas photos of the luxury vehicles up for auction this year.
His team rents furniture each January to cozy up the green room. Jackson’s own leather couches are brought in.
He’s hunched over the table with his documentary film crew, discussing how to film the footage of how they tracked down “Little Red.”
Jackson’s assistant comes in telling him there’s a man outside asking for a picture and an autograph. He steps out to oblige.
Soon, Jackson needs to film the kickoff for the auction’s livestream, which will air online, and on TV.
But first, he needs to change his jacket.
1 p.m. Filming never stops
“If I’m shooting for Shelby, I’ll wear Shelby,” he says. “If I’m shooting for a sponsor, I wear something different.”
He walks at a fast clip to the salon, an indoor staging area for some of the most prestigious cars to cross the auction block. At least three people stop to greet him.
Jackson runs onto a platform with Steve Davis, president of Barrett-Jackson, as well as Adam Ferrara and April Rose, the hosts for Barrett-Jackson’s live stream. The auction has been underway for three hours, but 1 p.m. is typically when traffic for the livestream picks up, a marketing specialist for BarrettJackson said.
Beyond those who attend the auction, countless more watch the auction online or on networks like MotorTrend, Discovery and Velocity Canada.
A crowd stands by and watches. It’s hard to tell if they’re looking at Jackson, or the cars surrounding him.
When he’s done filming for the livestream, he runs off to finish filming the documentary.
3 p.m. The heart of the auction
Jackson is now on the Barrett-Jackson auction block with Davis and the auctioneers, watching as a Chevy Corvette, a Diamond T custom pickup and a Ford Bronco roll through and sell.
The cars are selling at a brisk pace, typically no longer than 2 minutes on the block, but some go faster.
Jackson says the auction block is the “heart of the auction,” and where he tries to spend most of his time.
Jackson serves as a manager on the auction block, monitoring the pace of the auction and, like a baseball manager relieving a pitcher, changing out auctioneers if he senses they are running out of steam. “If they’re not throwing fastballs, I’ve got to change them out,” he said.
As the auction gets further along, Jackson says he spends more time on the block, particularly as the cars become more valuable and high-profile.
“It’s my best customers, and I owe it to them,” he says.
Jackson prides himself on listening to his customers. When he took over the company, he surveyed customers to gauge their experiences at the auction. He says he read every single response.
Some were scathing, about him in particular, in part because Jackson brought in new rules.
Jackson says he didn’t want dealers to bring in their entire inventory and make deals on the side when their cars didn’t sell at the reserve price set. He went straight to the consumer and started pushing the auction toward no reserve, meaning there is no minimum price and most cars are sold to the highest bidder.
The first year after Jackson took over, the auction had a 50% sales ratio. The following year, after the “no reserve” rule-change, they had fewer cars, but sold more, he said.
Last year, 99% of 1,817 cars that crossed the BarrettJackson auction block sold.
4 p.m. Charity cars cross the block
Along with the rare and collector cars at auction, a slew of celebrity vehicles and charity cars have come to symbolize Barrett-Jackson.
The auction will see nine cars this year auctioned entirely for charitable causes.
The first charity car to be auctioned off comes from Chris Jacobs, host of the TV series “Overhaulin” with Chip Foose. Jacobs is auctioning a 1968 Plymouth GTX custom coupe, benefiting the C4 Foundation, which provides support and services to Navy Seals and their families.
Jackson invites Jacobs up to the auction block to talk about the car, and the car sells for $300,000 to a bidder on the phone.
“Whoever’s on the other end of that phone, hopefully you let us know,” Jackson says amid the bidding frenzy.
On Saturday, a Superformance MKII replica of a 1965 Shelby Cobra will cross the auction block for charity, with the proceeds benefiting TGen’s colon cancer research.
It’s personal for Jackson, whose father and brother both died from colon cancer.
6 p.m. Hard to top
The second charity car of the night is a 1981 Jeep CJ7 Custom SUV, which was sold last year by actor Gary Sinise to benefit wounded veterans.
Before the car is auctioned, Jackson makes time to meet with Will Wade, a 13-year-old from Iowa whose wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation was to come to Barrett-Jackson.
Afterwards, Wade rides in the Jeep to join Jackson on the auction block. Jackson gives him the gavel to slam down once the sale is complete.
The car sells not once, not twice, but three times, raising a total of $425,000 for Make-A-Wish Arizona.
“You can’t script that. It wasn’t in our timeline,” Jackson says. “(Wade) had quite a day today. This one will be hard to top.”
7 p.m. A big kid
After taking photos with the Make-A-Wish team, Jackson prepares to head back into the auction block for the night.
He’s looking forward to being on the stage, where the noise creates a buzz and intensity that drives the event forward. “With an event this size, nobody sells this many cars, with no reserve, or raises this much money for charity, all simultaneously,” he says.
Just then, a man standing nearby introduces himself and shakes Jackson’s hand. The man is David Zun, a self-professed car guy, who traveled from Chicago for the auction.
“I’ve never seen an event like this,” Zun tells Jackson.” The charity work you do is the best I’ve seen for this type of business.”
Jackson spends five minutes talking to Zun, the same as when he talked with Aaron Shelby that morning.
Despite ending each night with the last car on the block, there’s one aspect that Jackson says he’s doesn’t look forward to: the lights.
“We made it a lot brighter when we went to HD,” he says. “It’s brutal on your eyes up there. It is bright.”
The light makes him inclined to wear his glasses, which he says makes him feel old. “I really don’t feel my age,” he says. “I’m an 18-year-old inside of this body.”
More than one of his employees has called the 60year-old Jackson a big kid when it comes to cars.
His enthusiasm for the business and the auction in the city where he was raised is clear.
Despite the auction’s expansion to three other states, Scottsdale is the company’s biggest auction.
The auction pumps more than $167 million into the local economy, including more than $10 million in tax revenue, according to a company-commissioned study in 2016.
And the city is set to invest millions into WestWorld.
Barrett-Jackson will begin consigning cars the day after this year’s auction ends.
Jackson predicts next year, the 50th anniversary of the auction, will see more than 2,000 cars.