NEW TESLAS DELAYED
Traditional auctioneers are facing a threat from booming online car auctions
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed the company will launch no new vehicles this year, instead ramping up production of its current cars. As it stands, there are four delayed Teslas waiting in the wings. Here’s what we know about them.
CYBERTRUCK
Noting that this radically styled pick-up truck will “hopefully” arrive in 2023, rather than this year as planned, Musk said he’s worried about how to make it “affordable despite having awesome technology”. Ultimately, Tesla wants to sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year.
MODEL 2
In 2020, Musk promised a “compelling $25,000 (£17,000) car”, which was expected to take the Model 2 name into production and rival the Volkswagen ID 3 hatchback, but he has now downplayed the likelihood of it arriving soon. “We have enough on our plate – too much, really,” he admitted.
ROADSTER
Tesla had already pushed the new Roadster supercar’s launch back to 2023 – six years after its unveiling – in light of the chip crisis. It’s possible that development of volume-selling models could ultimately nudge it off the product plan.
SEMI
Three years since Tesla was due to launch the 600-mile Semi, only a small working fleet has been produced for testing purposes. While there was no mention of the HGV in the recent earnings call, Tesla has just installed four Semispecific 1500kw Megachargers at its factory in Nevada.
Faced with extended lockdowns, reduced travel, a squeeze on new car sales and not much else to spend money on, the wealthier among us have been going online to buy classic and enthusiast cars. In fact, the pandemic has substantially boosted the income of online auction companies and changed the business model of the traditional auction house.
Last year, for example, Collecting Cars, a Londonbased online classic car auction, claimed it had sold cars totalling £135 million, a record for the company, which started in 2018. In the US, meanwhile, Bring a Trailer operates a similar business model and handled the sale of cars totalling $828 million (£612m), more than double its 2020 figure.
The cars sold are several notches above those found on ebay Motors. Collecting Cars, for example, last year achieved a sale price of £800,000 for a 1991 Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer, as well as £146,000 for a 2014 Land Rover 90 Works V8 70th Edition.
In February last year, Bring a Trailer hit a new high when a 1961 Mercedes SL sold for $1.4m (£1.0m). This is marching into the territory of what Americans call ‘tent and pole’ auctions – blue-chip marquee sales hosted by the likes of RM Sotheby’s at upmarket events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed or Pebble Beach.
“Covid has been kind to us,” said Edward Lovett, founder of Collecting Cars. Sales took off in 2020 during the first lockdown. “Everyone was forced to go home, car dealers closed for six to eight weeks and that gave us an opportunity because we had active sellers and active buyers,” said Lovett.
Lovett reckons he has traditional auction houses on the run. “We’re taking a lot of their business and that percentage is growing daily,” he told Autocar.
He makes the comparison with Purple Bricks, the flatfee online house seller that undercuts traditional estate agents. Collecting Cars charges the buyer, instead of the seller, at the rate of 5%, limited to £5000 per car. “If you go to the traditional competition, the fee might be £20,000 or more,” he said.
Word of mouth, particularly among the Porsche and Land Rover Defender communities, has helped his business enormously. “When we sell a Porsche GT3, for example, news about what that car sold for seems to get around very quickly,” he said. “It’s a reallife data point rather than an asking price in the classifieds.”
Of the 4748 cars sold on the site in 2021, Porsche was the most represented brand with 856, followed by Ferrari (404).
Sites such as Collecting Cars, Bring a Trailer and others try to install an auction-house level of dignity to the process. Sellers are encouraged to be detailed with the description and upload multitudes of photos. A photography service is offered. Shady practices employed on some sites, such as shill bidding (bidding up your own item) or ‘sniping’ (using software to automatically
❝ In February last year, Bring a Trailer hit a new high when a 1961 Mercedes SL sold for £1m online ❞
insert a final bid in the dying seconds), are banned, the latter by extending the auction’s end by two minutes if a last-minute bid is put forward.
Bring a Trailer injected an element of social media into the process, allowing people to comment on bids and see messages from the seller. Collecting Cars has adopted the same theme, although you need to be a registered bidder to chat.
Auction companies are realising that their business model is under threat from this much improved online buying process. Last year, Bonhams bought online car auction site The Market, which operates in much the same way except that the seller pays, not the buyer.
Meanwhile, Canadianbased auction company RM Sotheby’s, in response to the pandemic, rolled out its Open Road series of online auctions, which oversaw sales totalling $33.28m (£24.8m) in 2021, according to the company.
The auction houses say their ‘tent and pole’ business is going nowhere yet. Their contacts, the buzz of the live auction, the ability to touch and sit in the cars beforehand – all of this is worth the extra they charge, they say.
And no matter how you spin it, the most eye-popping prices are still being generated at these events. Take the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato that sold for $9.52m (£7.1m) at RM Sotheby’s auction at Monterey, California, in August last year, or the 1962 Ferrari 268 SP at the same event, which sold for $7,705,000 (£5.75m).
Collecting Cars claimed for a short time the record for an online sale at $1.6m (£1.16m) for a Mclaren P1 in 2021, but for the really big numbers, you need to step away from your computer.
NICK GIBBS