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Ex-Top Gear host Chris Harris and Ed Lovett hit NZ to launch online auction site Collecting Cars
Yes, that was Top Gear host Chris Harris (there should probably be a “former” in there somewhere) you saw sitting in the Auckland Viaduct having breakfast. With him, not as recognisable to Kiwis but arguably more important in this context, Edward Lovett, founder and chief executive of the online “iconic, collectible and sporting cars” auction site Collecting Cars.
Lovett and Harris brought Collecting Cars to New Zealand this year. Physically, with one of its rapidly-becoming-legendary Coffee Run events at Auckland Showgrounds, where 900-plus cars and enthusiasts gathered. Not a bad showing from Kiwiland when CC’s biggest-ever Run, a UK event in September last year, attracted 3000.
But Collecting Cars has also arrived in a business sense, with the launch of a local online auction portal.
Lovett, a well-known prestige car dealer in the UK, founded Collecting Cars in 2019 after seeing the success of the US classic-car auction site Bring A Trailer.
“It was clear there was a market to be served in the UK. I’ve known Chris for 25 years and I told him I was doing this, I don’t think we can grow it organically and we need to make it grow fast.”
Thinking about really-quitefamous journalist and TV presenter Harris, promoting an auction site might not have seemed like a logical move at the time. Or was it?
“Because of what I do for a living, I’m not that interested in car media. I’m not interested in reading other people’s opinions about cars; I have my own. But I love classifieds. Car classifieds had become my car editorial without even knowing it.
“So I had to go to the BBC and say I want to do this, and they said
. . . no. So I said maybe I’d rather do this than the BBC stuff. And they said, well okay. But you just can’t do certain things or review cars in a certain way.
“But you know what? For a big corporation they were quite accommodating.”
London-based Collecting Cars now has offices in Australia, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and a strategic partnership in the UAE.
It has turned over US$1 billion in sales from 14,000 lots since 2019.
More than 90 per cent of sales since launch have been completed without a physical viewing, which was part of the USP for the business in the first place. So an international footprint makes sense.
It’s all a big deal and NZ is such a small country. Why here . . . now?
“We’ve looked at the opportunity, the size,” says Lovett. “Obviously you don’t have big car taxes in NZ like they do in Australia. A taxes-paid car there is only going to sell domestically; same with Malaysia or Singapore.
“We believe the market in NZ could be a lot more fluid. I went on to TradeMe and found that if
I wanted to make an inquiry on a car for sale, I need to be local. But it’s a big world out there . . . we feel there’s an opportunity.
The Collecting Cars Coffee Runs are simply “about community building . . . without forcing people to buy or sell on our platform,” says Lovett. “We called our podcast Collecting Addicts. You can be an addict without buying or selling anything.”
He and Harris agree the Auckland Coffee Run was the best they’ve held. That sounds like something you tell the locals before you jet off to the next location, but it seems like an honestly held opinion in this case.
“It was the best event we’ve had in terms of quality of people,” says
Harris. “People with car stories, who’ve bought them for the right reasons. The variety of metal and carbon fibre: from an 812 Competizione to an Avenger estate with a Lexus V8 in it.”
The Collecting Cars auction focus is on high-end machinery. But when it comes to Coffee Runs, any car is welcome.
“It’s not the car, it’s the human being,” says Harris. “There’s absolutely no vehicle that wouldn’t be welcome, because they all come with a story.”
Can we get through a Harris interview without mentioning Top Gear (he probably wishes we would)? No. So, can he sum up his time with the show so far in one word?
“Bumpy.”
This was the first visit to NZ for both; Auckland was their base, before flying to Sydney for another
Coffee Run. Time for a quick visit to Queenstown, though.
“We were spoilt by going to Queenstown first, so we’ve now adjusted our retirement plans,” says Harris. “Just stunning . . . but Auckland has been very kind to us as well.
“It’s strange that the farthest point on the planet for us as British citizens feels so ‘unforeign’.”
Harris and Lovett took a cab from central Auckland to the Auckland Coffee Run, and following our interview they took the ferry across the harbour to Devonport and walked up Mount Victoria for what’s arguably the best view of the city. Or at least one with more fresh air than the Sky Tower. So Chris Harris and Edward Lovett of Collecting Cars came to NZ and didn’t drive anything, anywhere, and loved it. You read it here first.