The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

Yesterday we were banging the drum about BaT sweeping the top five sales. A day later the leaderboard flipped, with the top results coming from a mix of platforms. It is a good reminder that the high end does not belong to any one site.

Plenty of platforms can move serious metal when the right cars show up. And for all the noise around the big numbers, the real story is still the average. Across the entire online auction landscape, the typical sale price sits right around $43k. And there are plenty of cars that sit below that range that are great, great value. Some of those we highlight here…

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.

Another Shake Up in the UK Auction Market

It has been a busy stretch for auction news and today brings another move from the UK. Bonhams Cars Online is gone. The original management team has bought the business back and restored the name The Market.

The timing is not random. In October, Epiris, the private equity owner of Bonhams since 2018, sold the auction house to Pemberton Asset Management. Any time a business changes hands at that level, non core digital units get reviewed. An online enthusiast platform acquired during the 2020 digital push suddenly sat inside a very different organisation. The team running it clearly saw an opportunity to take it back on their own terms.

If you watch the UK scene, you know how competitive it is. Collecting Cars, Car and Classic, The Market and PistonHeads are the major players all fighting for the same audience. It is far tighter than anything we see in the US. Fee structures are not uniform either. Some platforms lean buyer side, some lean seller side and some do both. So any shift in pricing is a signal.

Here is what changed. The team that had been running Bonhams Cars Online agreed a management buy out. Same staff. Same Oxfordshire HQ. New long term lease. Full control of brand and direction. The Market is back as an independent operator.

The fee structure has been reset in a way that tells you exactly who they are targeting.
No buyers fee at all. Seller fee at 7% plus VAT with a cap at £7k.

Removing the buyers fee is the headline. It is a clear play to attract more bidders. More bidders usually means stronger hammer prices and The Market is betting that message will resonate with sellers. The pitch is simple. If buyers know they do not have to factor in a premium on top, they may bid more freely. The hope is that the increased competition offsets the seller fee and keeps listings flowing.

This is not a return to some traditional UK model. Most major platforms in the UK still charge buyer premiums. Collecting Cars does. Car and Classic does. PistonHeads does. The Market is the one breaking from the pack and trying to win demand side first while reassuring existing sellers that their audience is loyal enough to keep consignments coming.

This move feels less like a cosmetic rebrand and more like a strategic reset. The Market was around before Collecting Cars arrived and reshaped expectations. The Bonhams chapter brought scale but also placed the platform inside a larger organisation with different priorities. Once ownership changed again, it made sense for the online team to take the keys and drive the business the way they want to.

Removing buyers fees will get attention. The real test is whether sellers believe it will translate into stronger results.

Auctions Ending Today To Keep An Eye On

Every so often a car appears that reminds you why originality still matters. This 1958 Corvette on SBX is one of those cars. Tuxedo Black with silver coves over red. One of 199 built in this configuration. Forty four thousand documented miles. Numbers matching 283 with dual Carter four barrels. And the detail that makes collectors lean in. It still wears its original paint.

Not a respray trying to look honest. The real finish with the right patina. The full story intact. Delivered new in Toronto, kept on display by the original selling dealer for more than a decade, later moved to Finland, and now back in the US with its Finnish plates still attached. The documentation fills a binder and reads like a travel log from another era.

Restored C1s are everywhere. Fresh paint is everywhere. True unrestored survivors in a top tier color combination are not. This car has presence. It has history. It has a narrative that carries weight well beyond cosmetics.

The real question now is whether SBX has the audience to carry a car like this across the line. A listing this special would pull massive attention on the larger platforms. Here, there may be fewer eyes. That could mean an opportunity for a bidder who knows exactly what they are looking at.

Either way, this is the kind of Corvette that stays in your head. Only original once. And very hard to find twice.

This 1996 Bronco Eddie Bauer on Cars and Bids is one of those trucks that stops you mid scroll. Pacific Green over Light Saddle, two owners from new, Tennessee its entire life, and still wearing the kind of condition you almost never see on these. For a thirty year old Bronco, this thing presents shockingly well.

The color combo is peak nineties Ford. The Eddie Bauer trim gives it that upscale outdoors look, and the 5.8 liter V8 with four wheel drive delivers all the charm people want from the last generation Broncos. Most of these have lived hard lives. Lift kits, rust, deer hits, questionable mods, you name it. This one feels like it dodged all the usual traps. The frame looks clean, the interior is still soft, and the overall presentation is far better than what usually hits the market.

It is mostly unmodified with just an exhaust and a modern head unit, which on a truck like this is a blessing. Buyers of these want honesty and usability, not a science project. The accident history is there, but the seller addresses the repairs openly and the photos back up the condition today.

Interest is strong with almost 1000 watchers and a lively comment section. That is exactly what you want to see on a later Bronco in this spec. It tells you the market knows this truck stands above the usual examples that cycle through. The Pacific Green trucks have always had a following and this one checks the right boxes for someone who wants a clean, usable OBS Bronco without diving into full restoration territory.

If you are hunting for a nineties SUV that still looks the part, this is one to watch. Trucks this clean do not surface often, and when they do, they move quickly.

It is game day for PCarMarket. The Relaunch Collection is closing out with a full grid of serious cars, and this RoW 1991 Porsche 964 Turbo in Rubystone Red might be the one that tells us whether the whole experiment lands. Factory press car. Early production. German market. Restored and refinished in its original color with the right stance and presence. It is exactly the kind of headline lot they built this collection around.

On paper it is a killer spec. Rubystone over Classic Grey. Five speed. factory turbo body with the Tea Tray. KW coilovers. Speedline style wheels. PCCM head unit. Sport seats. And that backstory. First registered to Porsche, used as a factory press car, featured on period television in the early nineties, then restored in Germany before coming to the United States. It reads like a greatest hits sheet for a modern air cooled buyer who wants something with real history, not just options.

The flip side is where it gets interesting. The odometer was reset after restoration so the car is effectively TMU. The true life mileage is closer to one hundred fifteen thousand miles. The paint is a full respray with readings to match. Most of the documentation is in German. None of that kills the car, but it does narrow the buyer pool to people who are comfortable with story cars and provenance, not just numbers on the cluster.

The PCarMarket crowd is already doing the forensic work. They are asking about paint readings, underside photos, leaks, title status and the real miles. Exactly what they should be doing on a car like this.

The question is whether the platform has the depth of bidders to convert all that interest into a result that matches how special this car is. Or whether someone who knows what this is quietly steals a former factory press Turbo in one of the most talked about colors Porsche ever sprayed.

Either way, this is the car to watch in the Relaunch Collection. If PCarMarket wants to prove it can handle top tier, story driven Porsche inventory, this is a very public test.

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.