The Daily Vroom

No Reserve Auctions To Keep An Eye On

How many three-wheel cars do you actually know?

Not meme cars. Not YouTube punchlines. Real, honest-to-goodness three-wheelers that put four seats into the hands of people who technically did not even need a full car licence in the UK.

This 1971 Reliant Regal 21E 700 is one of them, and whether you admit it or not, this is exactly the kind of thing that steals the show at Cars and Coffee.

You can park a row of predictable 911s, M cars, and AMG badges next to each other and most people will walk right past. Park a red three-wheeled Regal with its angular body and that unmistakable “breeze away” rear window and suddenly everyone is smiling, pointing, asking questions. Kids love it. Older guys tell stories. Someone inevitably asks if it tips over. I personally love these type of quirkier cars.

This one is the posh 21E version, or at least badged as such, which in period meant you got the luxury treatment with 21 extra features. By 1971 it also had the later 701cc four-cylinder aluminium engine making a mighty 29.5 horsepower, paired to a four-speed manual. No one is drag racing this thing. That is not the point. The point is charm.

The story makes it even better. First registered in August 1971. Two former registered keepers. We are told just one driver from new. Stored for around 30 years. Odometer showing 31,654 miles. It has essentially been asleep longer than most of its potential buyers have been driving.

It is not turnkey. It is not polished. It is a restoration project finished in what is likely non-standard red, with paint, interior, and mechanicals all needing attention. It has not been driven in many years, will require recommissioning, and even needs a new key and a V5 application. This is proper “sold as seen” territory.

And yet that is what makes it interesting. This is not about horsepower or concours points. This is about rescuing something odd, something honest, something that represents a completely different era of motoring where ingenuity trumped image and affordability was the innovation.

If you want a guaranteed conversation starter, this is it. If you want something that makes people laugh in the best possible way and then lean in closer out of genuine curiosity, this is it. If you want to pull into a show and know that, for once, your car is the one nobody else brought, this is absolutely it.

Not every standout needs 500 horsepower. Sometimes it just needs three wheels and a bit of nerve.

This one made me laugh in the best way.

A 1999 Mercedes-Benz ML320 Skyview from Mercedes-Benz with 53k miles, two owners, Southern its whole life, original window sticker, 28 service records, fresh fluids, new front calipers, Bilsteins, and that ridiculous lamella Skyview roof that almost always showed up on ML430s, not ML320s.

Let’s be honest. Most first-gen W163s you see are absolutely cooked. Sunburnt paint. Sagging interiors. Questionable maintenance. They were used exactly how they were meant to be used and then forgotten. That is why this one feels different.

Black over Sand leather is peak 1999. Burl walnut everywhere. Heated perforated seats. Bose with the trunk-mounted CD changer. The little lockbox under the passenger seat. Dual-range 4MATIC. A naturally aspirated M112 V6 that just runs forever if you maintain it. This is late-’90s Mercedes before the accountants really took over.

And the Skyview roof is the wildcard. Open it and the whole truck feels like some futuristic Y2K design experiment that somehow survived intact.

No reserve matters here. This is not a hype listing. It is quietly asking what a clean, rare-option, low-mile W163 is actually worth right now and we’re about to find out.

The 24k-mile 2007 Audi Q7 4.2 ran to $11,550 on BaT two weeks back and didn’t meet reserve. This was all due to the 2017 moderate-damage Carfax entry. The market saw the accident. It saw the repaint disclosures. It saw the underbody photos, and the result was

Now it’s on Cars & Bids no reserve and is at $4k with not too long left. (obviously last hours bidding will bring further bids, but generally speaking not much action happening here).

The damage isn’t new information. The Carfax wasn’t hidden before. So the real question isn’t “will buyers accept the accident history.” The market already answered that to a certain extent in the previous auction. The question is what happens when you remove the safety net and force the car to find its true clearing price.

Right cars sell with “bad” Carfaxes all the time. Enthusiasts forgive stories when the spec is right and the miles are right. This one has 24k miles, the 4.2-liter V8, a great color combo, strong options, and the kind of preservation you simply do not see on early Q7s anymore. Most of these are deep into six-figure mileage and feel every bit of it. At $11,550, it was arguably already a buy. Anything under that would be a gift!

The appetite test now is simple. How much does the market really discount a documented, repaired front-end accident on a 19-year-old SUV when the mileage is this low and the configuration this good. Is the psychological penalty $3k? is it $5k? Or does no reserve turn this into one of those auctions where everyone waits, assumes someone else will step in, and suddenly a 350-horsepower V8 Quattro sells for next to nothing.

This isn’t about whether the Carfax is “bad.” It’s about how cheap fear can make something when the hammer has no floor. And that’s where bargains are born.

Preservation or Paranoia?

The 50k-mile 1992 Porsche 911 America Roadster back on Bring a Trailer is less about spec, which is excellent, and more about the math, which is borderline ridiculous. It sold there in 2018 for $95,000 showing 49k miles, and today it shows just over 50,000 miles, meaning roughly 1,000 to 2,000 miles were added in eight years, which for a widebody 964 cabriolet feels more like storage than ownership and to me is crazy!

And this is not just any 964. The America Roadster is the only factory widebody, rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated 964 sold in the U.S., with just 250 built over two years as a tribute to the original 356 America Roadster. You get Turbo hips without Turbo complexity, a 3.6-liter flat-six rated at 247 horsepower, a G50 five-speed, and a limited-slip differential, which is exactly the combination purists claim they want. Which begs the question why has it not been driven in 8 years??

This one wears Grand Prix White over paint-to-sample Can Can Red leather, and it does not apologize for it. The interior was refreshed in the mid-2010s, the original CD-1 stereo has been rebuilt, and recent service includes fluids, an oxygen sensor, compression test, and transaxle service. It is not flawless, as the A/C does not blow cold, the hood and one door have seen paint, and the top shows a tear, but it reads like an honest 50k-mile car rather than a polished trailer queen.

If it was a $95,000 car in 2018 at 49k miles, what is it today at 50k? Bidding sits at $67,670 with days to go, which may mean nothing yet, but it does frame the question clearly.

The America Roadster checks the rarity box, the spec box, and the color box, and factory widebody rear-drive 964s do not exactly flood the market. Now we get to see whether minimal mileage preservation translates back into a $90k-plus result, or whether the market quietly resets expectations on one of the more interesting 964 variants out there.

Just above this we looked at a 964 America Roadster that added barely 1,000 miles in eight years and I thought that was excessive restraint. Now we have a 1991 Porsche 911 Targa Reimagined by Singer, completed in 2023 after roughly 4,500 hours of painstaking work, showing 88 miles, and I cannot pretend that makes any sense to me as an enthusiast.

I understand the economics perfectly. A Singer sits in seven-figure territory, allocations are scarce, demand is global, and a freshly delivered build offered at The Amelia Auction with a $1.1M to $1.25M estimate can function like a liquid asset. Delivery mileage protects value. The market rewards “as new.” Some buyers commission the car knowing full well they may flip it. I get all of that.

What I do not get is pouring that level of emotional energy into a machine and then refusing to experience it.

This is not a stock certificate. This is a seam-welded Targa finished in bespoke Blue Blood, trimmed in Orange and Dark Navy leather chosen stitch by stitch, powered by a 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six with RS+ cams and titanium exhaust that was engineered specifically to be felt, heard, and wrung out. Someone waited three years for this exact spec, watched 4,500 hours of craftsmanship transform a 964 into their personal vision, took delivery, and then effectively parked it.

88 miles is not ownership. It is proof of life.

At some point we have to admit that something has shifted in this corner of the market. When a car of this caliber becomes so precious that using it is viewed as financially irresponsible, then we are no longer talking about passion first and profit second. We are talking about controlled scarcity, optics, and portfolio management dressed up as enthusiasm.

If you commission a Singer and never drive it, that is your right. But from where I sit, building a 4.0-liter air-cooled masterpiece and treating it like a sealed collectible borders on absurd. These cars were not reimagined to sit under soft lighting and accumulate dust-free miles. They were reimagined because driving them is supposed to be transcendent.

I understand the strategy. I just think it completely misses the point.

What do you think?