The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers,

Yesterday was a big one. duPont Registry Live pushed through just over $4M in sales, although most of that came from a single Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport at $3.6M, notably the same car that traded for $4.1M on BaT back in 2024.

At the same time, the SBX story struck a nerve. The response has been strong, and there’s a lot to unpack, more on that below.

And on our side, the Import Calculator continues to get real use. You’re running scenarios, stress-testing it, and sending in thoughtful feedback, which is exactly how this gets better. Keep it coming.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 3 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

Your SBX Cars Feedback

Yesterday’s SBX piece clearly struck a nerve.

The responses (see below for a selection of them) that came in weren’t just opinions, they were a proper cross-section of how people inside this space actually think. Different angles, different experiences, but what stood out is how quickly it all starts to line up when you zoom out.

Because this wasn’t one thing.

It was a stack. You had the audience problem. Not just size, but type. A huge following built on content, not transactions. People watching cars is not the same as people wiring six figures for them, and that gap showed up fast.

Then you had inventory. Incredible cars, no question, but so specific and so expensive that you’re instantly shrinking your buyer pool. Add in the fact that many were overseas, and you’ve made an already narrow market even narrower.

You had ambition too early. Trying to be global from day one, trying to be everything to everyone, trying to build a top-end marketplace without first building the base. That’s not a small miss, that’s a structural one.

And then you get into the harder stuff. Execution, management, expectations. Multiple people pointed to the same themes ,not enough industry depth in key areas, sellers not being guided properly, and the reality that running an auction platform is a lot more than content and listings. It’s the unglamorous work that makes or breaks you.

There’s also a bigger truth sitting underneath all of this.

In this market, a smaller, credible, buyer-focused audience will outperform a massive, untargeted one every single time. That’s not theory anymore, we’ve seen it play out again.

If you strip everything back, SBX is a really clean case study.

Not because it failed, but because it shows how easy it is to misunderstand this business from the outside.

From the outside, it looks simple. You have cars, you have eyeballs, you connect the two.

In reality, this is one of the hardest marketplaces to get right. You’re dealing with high-value assets, emotional buyers, skeptical sellers, and zero room for error. Trust isn’t a feature, it’s the whole product.

And you don’t get that overnight. The big learning here isn’t “don’t try.” They did a lot right, especially toward the end, and brought in good people who were clearly trying to turn it around.

But there’s a difference between building attention and building a marketplace that converts. That gap is where most people underestimate the work.

And as always, it’s the people in the middle that feel it most, and the one’s I feel bad for. The ones actually doing the work day to day. That’s the part of these stories that never gets talked about enough.

Interestingly, there are still cars sitting on the platform that need to sell.

One of them is a Lionel Messi–owned Porsche, currently in Germany.

Which brings it full circle. Because for any US buyer looking at something like that, the question isn’t just “do I want the car?”, it’s “what does this actually cost me to land?”

That’s exactly why we built the TDV Import Calculator. You can run the numbers properly and see where you really stand.

And judging by the response over the last few days, a lot of you are already doing exactly that.

No Reserve Auctions To Keep An Eye On

There are certain cars you don’t really question whether they’re special.

The Vanquish is one of them. Early 2000s Aston, V12, Ian Callum design, the car that carried the brand into a new era. For a long time this sat right at the top of the food chain, the kind of thing you saw and just assumed was completely out of reach.

And yet here we are. Low mileage, clean example, and bidding is still sitting under $50K with real momentum building into the close which is today.

That’s always been the fascinating part with these.

Because on paper, this is exactly what people say they want in a modern classic. It looks right, sounds right, and has all the ingredients. But in reality, these sit in an awkward middle ground. Too expensive to run for someone stretching into the car, and not quite settled enough as a collectible for buyers to step in with conviction.

And then there’s the gearbox, everyone has an opinion on it, and most haven’t driven one. It scares people off before they’ve even given the car a chance. The owners who actually live with them tend to say the same thing, learn it properly, and it becomes part of the experience.

What’s interesting is not that this is cheap. It’s that everyone looking at it knows exactly what it is and still hesitates.

That’s the Vanquish problem. Not awareness, not design, not even performance. It’s the ownership question sitting in the back of every buyer’s mind. Running costs, gearbox reputation, the unknowns that come with a car like this.

There’s a version of this car everyone says they want. Low miles, completely stock, perfect, tucked away somewhere and barely used.

This isn’t that car. C5 Z06, one of the great driver’s cars of its era. LS6, manual, lightweight, properly quick even today. These built their reputation by being driven, tracked, and used as intended.

This one has clearly lived that life. It’s not perfect, it’s been modified, and the seller hasn’t tried to hide any of it. If anything, they’ve leaned into it, laid everything out, shown the flaws, and let people make up their own minds.

And importantly, they’ve listed it no reserve. We’ve talked about this before, what happens when a car doesn’t sell. Expectations get set too high, the market doesn’t meet them, and the car just sits in limbo.

This feels like the opposite approach. Instead of forcing a number, the seller’s reset the conversation. Put it in a no reserve environment, surround it with other cars, price the risk in, and let the market decide where it actually belongs.

It’s already been around a few times, which tells you expectations and reality haven’t quite lined up. And that’s really the story here.

Because once a car moves out of the “collector-grade” lane, everything changes. You’re not selling perfection anymore, you’re selling honesty. A car someone can drive, use, and not worry about keeping pristine.

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