The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

We all know the landscape by now. Every platform except BaT is essentially competing in its own private league, looking sideways at one another when the real focus should be on getting their own house in order. The opportunity is not in out-BaT-ing BaT. It is in tightening their product, owning their niche, and executing better than they did yesterday.

You can see it in the moves being made. Hagerty is doubling down on collections, with the David Glen Porsche collection now underway, and to their credit, they are leaning into what they know works. But then you look at the leaderboard and realize the top five sales of yesterday are all BaT. That tells you exactly where the market still funnels its confidence, at least for a day!

Let’s see what today holds…

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

A proper result today on Cars and Bids. This 2021 Nissan GT R T Spec in Midnight Purple with Mori Green interior hammered for $163k and that is a strong number when you look at how similar T Specs have traded recently.

What made this one work?
It’s simple. The car has the ingredients people chase. Midnight Purple is the poster color. T Spec means carbon ceramics, gold Rays wheels, wide fenders, upgraded interior, and all the visual drama that makes these late R35s feel special. Even with the miles in the mid range for a three year old GT R, bidders clearly valued the rarity of the spec more than anything else.

There were two potential friction points:
• An ECUTek tune and midpipe
• A minor sideswipe on Carfax that required repainting one quarter

Those usually slow things down, but the seller did what most sellers don’t. They documented everything. Original damage photos. Close up lighting to show the color match. Comments open, responsive, no games. When bidders feel like they’re not being asked to “just trust the process,” the number usually follows.

The conversation in the comments also showed how seriously people take these cars now. Buyers were comparing production numbers, talking about previous sales, asking the right questions about emissions readiness and repaint quality. This wasn’t a casual impulse buy crowd. It was a group that understood they had to compete for a real car.

What’s most interesting is that this didn’t feel like an overheated moment. It felt like the market simply rewarding a desirable spec presented cleanly. Nothing more complicated than that.

Cars and Bids did well for the seller here, and the seller met the market halfway. When those two things line up, you get results like this.

No Reserve Auctions To Keep An Eye On

Every generation has a moment when the market quietly decides a car’s place, and this Rainforest Green 2000 Porsche 911 Carrera on Cars & Bids feels like one of those reads for the 996. Not because there is anything exotic hiding under the surface, but because it captures the exact mix of spec, maintenance, and ownership history that defines where values have settled.

Start with the spec. Rainforest Green over Savannah Beige changes the entire conversation. Porsche offered some incredible colors on the 996, but most cars left the factory in neutrals. When you see a proper color car today, it elevates the listing instantly. It feels special. It feels intentional. And it stands out in a way that reminds you how much character this generation actually had.

Mileage and maintenance sit in the ideal range. Mid sixties on the odometer keeps the car usable without pushing it into the fatigue zone. The LN IMS update is the major box checked. Recent fluids, tires, and routine service add confidence. The typical early water cooled quirks are here, including the aging vent foam, but nothing that changes the story. This reads like an honest, well kept 911 that has been driven the right way.

The interesting detail is that the car last sold in 2022 for $38k with roughly six thousand fewer miles. Three years later, with additional use, it is still hunting in the same range. That alone tells you how the 996 has matured. The generation has moved past the old value narrative. This is no longer the bargain 911. It is simply a proper analog era Porsche with real demand.

A decade ago, clean manual coupes still traded in the low twenties. That window is closed. Today, well presented cars with color, clarity, and the right updates sit comfortably in the mid thirties to low forties. The number makes sense relative to the experience. There is no hesitation in the market anymore.

And this fits into a wider trend. While the broader enthusiast market has cooled for many makes and models, the Porsche market is operating in its own weather system. Demand remains deep, pricing remains confident, and there is no sign of any meaningful reset. Buyers know what they want and they pay for it. The 996 is now fully part of that story.

The takeaway is simple. The 996 has arrived at its place in the Porsche hierarchy. It no longer needs to defend itself. The buyers already decided. When the right spec shows up with the right care behind it, the numbers reflect exactly what this generation has become: a legitimate modern classic, priced accordingly.

Every now and then, a car shows up that reminds you why Mercedes overbuilt everything in the nineties. This 1995 E320 Cabriolet is one of those reminders. Final year. Low miles. A long list of expensive, boring-but-necessary jobs already handled. And offered at no reserve, which tells you the seller trusts the market more than he trusts winter storage.

The A124 is a different animal from a standard W124. Mercedes didn’t just cut the roof off a sedan and hope for the best. These cars were reengineered from the ground up. Shorter wheelbase, reinforced structure, bespoke doors, custom quarter panels, and a power top system that would never be greenlit today. They were hand-finished and priced like it.

That’s why these have quietly become one of the smartest ways into classic Mercedes ownership. They deliver the old-school feel that modern convertibles lost. Tank-solid structure, an inline-six that just wants clean oil and warm starts, and a cabin full of honest materials. There’s nothing fragile or fussy about the experience.

This particular example sits right in the sweet spot. Seventy five thousand miles means it has been used but not abused. And the recent service list reads like someone trying to make the car perfect for themselves, not for resale: valve cover gasket, coolant temp sensor, blower motor, antenna, brake rotors and pads, sun visors that cost almost a thousand dollars because “it bothered me,” in the seller’s own words. That kind of thing tells you exactly who owned it.

This one has all the right fundamentals. The right year. The right mileage. The right mechanical diligence. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s selling from a guy who shops like he’s being timed and maintains his cars like he’s being graded.

Someone is about to get a genuinely important piece of Mercedes history for a number that will look very cheap in hindsight.

When a car appears that tells you more about the platform than the listing itself, I take a closer look. This E46 M3 Touring conversion is already a headline car on its own, a fully metal widebody build, a supercharged forged-internal S54, a six-speed manual, and the simple fact that BMW never made one. It checks every box in the modern enthusiast playbook: rarity, theatre, craftsmanship, and outright usability.

But what makes this auction genuinely interesting is who is selling it, and how.

The car belongs to Chad, the guy running duPont Registry Live, someone a lot of people in the industry already know from his years calling lanes at Manheim and dealing with dealers long before “digital auctions” became a business model. And instead of hiding behind policies or boilerplate, he’s taking a completely different approach:
a personal, verbal guarantee on the car.

Not vague reassurance. Not marketing spin. A literal, on-page commitment:

It’s the opposite of what buyers are used to. BaT, C&B, and the rest all operate with rigid, lawyer-built terms. You’re buying a car, not a safety net. Here, the platform is essentially saying: trust the house.

To be fair, the comments suggest people do. Chad’s reputation in the wholesale world has always been that he stands behind what he sells. And transparency does feel higher when the person listing the car is also the person whose name is on the masthead.

But it also raises a whole host of questions the market hasn’t figured out how to process yet.

We’ll come back to this in a deeper piece, because the idea of a personality-driven guarantee is brand new in the auction world and absolutely worth tracking as this platform matures. We’ve never really had a “trust me, I’ve got you” model in this space, and it could either be a brilliant customer-confidence play or a growing pain waiting to happen.

But for now, back to the car itself.

This is one of the more serious M3 Touring conversions we’ve seen in a while. The builder stepped into the comments to confirm forged internals, a rebuilt diff, proper metalwork, a slick-top chassis, and a carefully executed drivetrain swap originally intended for a different high-performance build. In other words: the engineering is not the mystery here.

Where this one ends is anyone’s guess. Properly built M3 Tourings do not come up often, and when they do, the market usually corrects the moment someone inspects the car in person. But with a new platform, a new audience, and a new trust model layered on top of it all, the closing number becomes part of a much bigger story.

It’s a fantastic car. It’s a fascinating auction. And it’s a preview of a very different kind of platform dynamic we’ll be exploring in much more detail soon.

In the meantime, someone is about to buy an M3 BMW never made, guaranteed.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.