Cars & Bids Just Opened the Classic Floodgates

PLUS: Weekend stunner - This Rome Red Singer Targa is gunning for the record books

The Daily Vroom

MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc… All online auction sites are analyzed to put this leaderboard together.

I only include websites that have sold 5+ vehicles in the chart below.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 5 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

2024 Porsche 911 (992) GT3 RS Weissach Pack $454,000

342-Mile Shelby Cobra CSX1000 $240,000

2023 Lamborghini Urus S $238,000

1996 Porsche 911 (993) Turbo $218,200

2022 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Coupe 7-Speed $147,000

Cars & Bids Opens The Classic Floodgates

After years of holding the line, Cars & Bids has finally crossed 1981.

That’s right — the platform once built around Doug DeMuro’s “modern enthusiast” rulebook just listed its first pre-1981 car: a restomod 1963 Corvette Convertible. And according to new CEO Dan Harman, it’s only the beginning.

“Being a modern enthusiast doesn’t mean only liking modern cars,” Harman said.
“We’re now accepting and auctioning great cars from before 1981.”

Longtime Vroomers won’t be shocked. We’ve been predicting this shift for a while now. You can read our exclusive interview with Dan on some of the changes coming here.

When Doug launched Cars & Bids in 2020, the premise was dead simple: only cars from the ’80s and newer. It was a counterpunch to Bring a Trailer — a fresh, digital-first playground for Radwood rides, tuner legends, and offbeat oddballs. It worked. The site locked in a loyal following and a solid 75%+ sell-through rate.

But let’s be honest — loyalty doesn’t always scale. And when private equity enters the chat, "focus" quickly turns into “how fast can you grow?”

They tried everything. Incentives. Design refreshes. Marketing spend. But the ceiling stayed low. And Doug? He held the line. Publicly, he stood firm on the 1980 cutoff — even said older cars were too hard to vet, too risky for buyers, too different from the audience he’d built.

Behind the scenes, that’s where the pressure built.

Now Doug’s no longer at the helm (still involved), Dan Harman is steering the ship. And the tone has shifted.

This isn’t a tweak — it’s a rewrite. Harman’s redefining what a “modern enthusiast” even is. Not by era — by attitude. A smart pivot. It sidesteps the need to admit the original guardrails were too narrow, while opening the door to a much bigger sandbox.

“They won’t take over the site,” he adds, “but we think they’ll add some welcome flavor to the mix.”

Translation: The floodgates are open. And the Private Equity backers, they got what they wanted.

This isn’t a knock on Doug. He built something great. But C&B is playing a bigger game now. And that means moving past the original constraints — however well-intentioned they were.

Let’s not forget: Bring a Trailer’s pre-1981 listings make up roughly 30% of their business. That’s a massive slice of the pie C&B has been leaving untouched.

Not anymore.

Some purists will whine. “This isn’t what the site was about!”
But guess what? The site was also never supposed to plateau.

Growth doesn’t come from standing still. And in this space, you either scale — or you watch someone else do it.

So here it is. The evolution we’ve been talking about in The Daily Vroom for months.

Now we wait and watch to see how bidders react.

Welcome to the new era.

What Do You Think of Cars & Bids Adding Pre-1981 Classics?

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Auctions To Keep An Eye On

There’s no better place to start than with the first real classic ever listed on Cars & Bids.

A 1963 Corvette Convertible. Restomod. LS3 V8. 5-speed manual. And finished in Rapid Blue like it just rolled out of Bowling Green yesterday.

This isn’t a trailer queen. It’s a driver. Modern suspension, Wilwood brakes, digital cluster, Bluetooth — all the right stuff, wrapped in one of the most iconic shapes American cars ever gave us.

And it’s a sharp way for C&B to kick off its new classics era. Not some dusty concours car. Not an auction just for the olds. But a usable, turnkey icon built for the modern enthusiast — exactly the kind of car this next phase should be about.

We’ll be watching this one all week. You should too.

One to keep a very close eye on this weekend: a Singer Targa.

Yes, you read that right.

This Rome Red beauty — dubbed the Maple Commission — might be the first-ever Singer Targa to sell on BaT. And it’s a showstopper. Cream white interior, Ed Pink 4.0L flat-six, six-speed manual, and just 1k km since completion.

It checks every Singer box, but with an open top and Canadian flair.

Now, it’s not without story — this one had a front-left impact back in 2015 before the Singer build — and that’ll be something to watch as it closes. But if it sells, it’ll set a precedent for where rare-spec Singers land in today’s market.

If you’re a Porsche diehard, this is the auction to watch. Because let’s be honest — how many Singer Targas are ever going to surface?

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