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.

Nearly Sale of the Day

There’s been a lot of chatter lately around Carrera GT values, and you keep hearing the same thing over and over. Prices are moving, market’s shifting, buyers are getting more selective. But that conversation has almost nothing to do with a car like this, even if the name “Carrera” gets thrown around in the same breath.

This is a completely different world. This 1974 911 Carrera 2.7 MFI had everything going for it on paper. Proper European-market car, mechanical fuel injection, great color, real rally history, and a restoration that looked the part. This isn’t some average mid-year 911. It’s one of the closest things you get to RS feel without paying RS money.

So naturally, heading into the close, everyone had the number in their head. Somewhere in that $240k to $250k range. That was the talk. That’s where it “should” land. That’s what made sense.

And then it didn’t. It got to $203k and just… stopped. Reserve not met.

And this is the part I always find interesting. As soon as it ends, everyone agrees it was cheap. Too cheap. Should’ve gone higher. Great buy for whoever gets it next.

But no one in the room raised their hand to take it there. That’s the gap. People love assigning value when there’s no consequence. It’s easy to say “this is a $250k car” when you’re not the one wiring the extra $47k to prove it.

Because when you actually break it down, there are just enough things here to make buyers hesitate. It’s a replacement engine, even if it’s correct. It’s got a proper competition past, which some people love and others quietly discount. It’s been restored, not preserved. None of those are deal breakers, but at this level they matter.

And then you layer in the current market with the stock market, with Bitcoin etc.. Some buyers aren’t chasing in the same way. They’re thinking a bit more before stretching.

So you end up with this weird outcome where everyone agrees it’s cheap, but the market still says no.

That doesn’t mean the car isn’t worth more. It just means, on that day, at that moment, with those bidders, $203k was as far as anyone was willing to go.

And that’s the only number that actually matters.

Auctions To Keep An Eye On

This is one of those cars where if you get it, you’re already interested, and if you don’t, nothing I say is going to convince you.

It’s a GT-B E-Tune, manual, twin-turbo, AWD, and that alone tells you everything. Subaru at its best, when they were building properly weird, properly usable performance cars that could do everything without trying to be flashy about it.

What makes this one interesting is where it sits right now at the time of writing, $5k, no reserve, a few days left, and the hard part is already done. It’s imported, titled, and has had the major service sorted, which is usually where these either scare people off or get expensive fast.

It’s not perfect and that actually helps. You’re not buying something to park, you’re buying something you can use, and these cars are built for that. They’ll do a lot more miles, they’re tougher than people think, and parts aren’t some nightmare if something comes up.

The other angle here is the auction dynamic. Another similar Legacy running at the same time splits attention, and on a car like this you don’t have a huge buyer pool to begin with. That creates hesitation, and hesitation is where the opportunity is.

If the right two or three bidders show up late, this moves quickly. If they don’t, it stays way lower than it probably should. That’s the bet.

I always find these the hardest cars to read in today’s market, not because of the car itself but because of the buyer.

Back in the day, you could pretty easily picture exactly who was buying a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Older, established, very traditional, someone who wanted presence and didn’t care about anything remotely sporty. It was a very defined customer.

Now I’m not so sure. Because this 2016 Phantom Series II is still exactly what it’s always been, a massive, unapologetic statement of comfort, presence, and old-school luxury, powered by that big naturally aspirated V12 that just does everything effortlessly. Nothing about it is subtle, nothing about it is trying to be modern in the way newer luxury cars are, and that’s kind of the whole point.

But the question is who’s actually stepping up to buy it today. At around £50k bidding so far, you’re looking at a car that originally sat at the absolute top of the market now trading in a range where a lot of very different types of buyers start to get involved, and that’s where it gets interesting. Because this isn’t just a cheaper Phantom, it’s still a Phantom, and the ownership experience doesn’t suddenly become cheap just because the entry price drops.

Running costs, maintenance, the general reality of owning something like this, all of that stays very real, which immediately filters out a huge chunk of people who might be tempted by the headline price alone.

So you’re left with this slightly unclear buyer pool, and that’s exactly why these can behave unpredictably at auction.

Some people look at it and see insane value for what it is, a flagship Rolls-Royce with proper presence, full spec, known history, and the kind of cabin that still feels special in a way most modern cars don’t. Others look at the same car and just see a big liability, something that depreciated heavily for a reason.

This is one of those listings that kind of flies under the radar if you’re not paying attention, and that’s exactly what makes it interesting.

Because this isn’t sitting on BaT or Cars & Bids with thousands of eyes, comment sections driving momentum, and the usual last two minutes turning into chaos, it’s on a smaller platform that most people simply aren’t refreshing every day, which immediately creates a different type of opportunity for anyone actually watching closely.

And the car itself is not the kind of build you usually see slipping through quietly.

It’s a 1961 Corvette restomod, but more importantly it’s a full frame-off build with a 550 horsepower small block, Tremec 5-speed, modern suspension, four-link rear, Wilwood brakes, and all the right supporting pieces that tell you this wasn’t thrown together to look good in photos, it was built to actually work as a complete package. The difference is subtle until you’ve seen enough of these, but most restomods are either all show or all headline numbers, and this one reads like someone actually understood how to tie everything together so the car drives the way it should.

That’s where the real appeal is, because original C1s are great to look at but not something most people genuinely want to drive hard, and this completely flips that equation without losing the shape that makes the car special in the first place.

The other thing that stands out is how clean the story is, same owner since 1970, properly documented build, no vague gaps or questionable decisions, just a very straightforward “this is what was done and here’s how it was done,” which matters a lot more on a modified car than people like to admit.

But zoom out and the bigger point here is the platform. When something like this lands on a major site, it gets discovered instantly, the right buyers find it, and the price usually reflects that exposure, but when it sits somewhere quieter like this, you’re relying on fewer people to notice it, which is exactly why there’s real potential for it to trade differently than it probably would with a bigger audience.

That doesn’t automatically mean it goes cheap, but it does mean the dynamic changes, and for bidders who are actually paying attention, that’s where the edge is.

Because the car is strong enough on its own that it doesn’t need hype to justify itself, but the lack of hype can absolutely affect how it performs in real time, and that’s the gap you’re trying to take advantage of.

If this exact car showed up on one of the big platforms with the same presentation, it would almost certainly have a much louder auction and a much clearer price discovery process, but here it’s quieter, a bit more uncertain, and that uncertainty is where the opportunity sits for anyone willing to step in while everyone else is looking somewhere else.

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