The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

Yesterday kicked off the week with over $7M in vehicle sales.
All eyes have been on Cars & Bids lately, but BaT quietly outpaced them by nearly 100 cars—clocking another triple-digit day. That’s the gap.

One stat to watch: 23.3% of all auction sales were pre-1981.
With C&B leaning into classics, that number could climb.

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.

Sale of the Day

This Hugger Orange '69 Z/28 just sold for $180,000. The same car brought $260,000 in November. On paper, that’s an $80K haircut in six months. Brutal.

But here’s what most people miss: this wasn’t about market correction. It was about real life.

The current owner—an 82-year-old retired doctor—bought the car to fulfill a dream. Then came a health diagnosis. And just like that, priorities shifted. In his words: “Some things are more important than the money in our bank accounts.” He let it go, reserve off, and it sold for what the market was willing to pay that day.

And that’s the key. This is today's market price. Could another one sell higher tomorrow? Absolutely. Could it go lower? Maybe. But this is what someone paid for a Jerry MacNeish-certified Z/28, in a top-tier color combo, with all the right docs and hardware.

Still, it’s worth asking—why did it hit $260K last time? Was it a perfect storm of two determined bidders? A buyer who had to have that car? Was it just momentum? Every sale is a cocktail of emotion, timing, confidence, and sometimes just luck.

One price doesn’t define a trend. We’ll need to see more top-tier Z/28s cross the block before drawing hard lines. But this result is a reminder: every car, every auction, every seller comes with a story. The numbers don’t always tell the full one.

Hemmings Motor Club: Smart Ecosystem or Another Distraction?

It’s been a while since we talked Hemmings. Today there’s no talk on the UX/UI, been done a thousand times here.

Hemmings recently launched a new membership product, Hemmings Motor Club. Early access to listings. Exclusive content. Perks and discounts. All wrapped in Motor Club branding.

But if you’ve been watching the market closely, you know auctions still aren’t where they need to be.

Listings fluctuate daily. Sales are inconsistent. And Hemmings rarely shows up on our leaderboard—not because the cars aren’t decent, but because they don’t close.

And maybe that’s the real issue.

From the outside, it’s hard to tell if Hemmings even wants to be a serious player in auctions. Classifieds still dominate the site. They feed the magazine. They’re familiar. But they don’t create urgency—and they don’t win online.

Meanwhile, auctions feel like an afterthought. Less volume. Less support. Less buyer energy. One day there are two cars, the next six. Momentum never sticks.

So is the Motor Club an attempt to build a tighter ecosystem? Or is it just another shiny thing pulling focus away from the one thing that actually could move the needle—more cars, better auctions, more consistent results.

Hemmings has the brand. They have the traffic. But that doesn’t matter if they’ve already got one foot out of the auction game.