Classic Auto Mall - #209 - Stewart Howden with Guests Dave Kinney + Keith Martin

This is the Classic Automall Show.

Broadcast from the studios inside the Classic Automall in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, just one

hour west of Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 298, featuring nearly 1,000 classic

vintage and barred-fine vehicles for sale under one climate-controlled roof.

Now, here's your host, Classic Automall president and the man with all the toys,

Stuart Howden, Episode 209, that can't be possible.

Wow.

I don't have all the toys yet, but if I won the 1.3 billion, is that tonight?

It's tonight.

It is tonight.

I'm buying it in Morgantown.

I have the ticket, and I gave it to my barber as a tip.

It was in with the money, the money, tip money, and he came out and he gave it

to me.

I was an honest guy, and I said, you know, if this hits, you've got a free

house.

Oh, my goodness gracious.

It's a dumb story.

Welcome to the show, and before we get started with our guests joining us via Zoom, let's

guess how many cars are in inventory.

JR, you go first.

My very first radio station, 940.

Well, that's what I guess last week, and let's not forget that I hit it now on the

head.

Okay.

Let's go.

I wasn't even with the camera, so.

I'm going to say a little bit lower.

935.

I didn't say there was a Porsche reference.

941.

We're up one car in a week, so it's like we haven't done anything in a whole

week.

I thought we lost a few.

Sold a few, let's hope.

And that's why.

So anyway, joining us via Zoom, Mr. Dave Kinney, for his third time on the show, which has

to be some kind of record, and it's actually, what is today, October, November, September.

And season five begins.

And season five begins of our show.

Yeah.

And the first four didn't count.

The first two didn't count.

This one's for real now.

Yeah, this one's for real.

We're really trying.

Good morning.

Welcome, sir.

Good morning to you, Stuart.

It's great to see you.

Great to see you as well.

We saw you in the metropolis on the left coast in Monterey, and oh my goodness.

You guys told me that, you know, I'd been missing it for all these years of not going

to Monterey.

But my God, I had no idea how crazy and madness it was.

It was great.

You know, anybody who says that, well, number one, you know, we always hear the

kids these days are interested in cars, well, I can tell you that they're so

interested they're getting arrested out there.

Now, that's interest.

That's dedication.

The street shows were amazing.

You know, the events are unbelievable.

You know, somebody who's asked me just the other day that I mentioned another

event and they said, well, what is there other than Pebble Beach in the

auctions? I said, probably about a hundred and fifty sanctioned events.

You can't do it all.

There's no way in the world if you had a sonic powered helicopter, right?

You still couldn't drop into all of them because there's five of them

going on at a time. Absolutely.

There's Porsche events.

There's old car events.

There's, you know, the Concord of Lemons.

There's crazy stuff.

And, you know, the car culture in California has always been huge.

But, you know, anybody who even thinks that car culture is dying,

you just you just have to take them out there with a video

camera for about an hour and a half and they'll figure it out that nothing's dying.

I mean, yeah, I love the people sitting on the side streets

and in folding chairs.

And unless a road that maybe one car every ten minutes came down,

yet every other car that came down was something cool.

Yeah. No, it's it's amazing.

And, you know, we were just talking earlier about the Street Park cars.

I took a I'm walking now for my health.

So I get out in the morning early and I do I do a I was doing

Carmel mostly was where I was walking.

So one day I did a Street Park in Carmel and there were like 11

Ferraris, a Koenigsegg, you know, I mean, just incredible stuff.

There was a McLaren's like you can count.

Yeah, more than you know, McLaren's are like old sedans were in the in the 80s,

you know, when you're in in in Central Pennsylvania, you know, just we replace

all those, of course, everything said cutlass on it was of course mobile

back then replace all those cutlasses with McLaren's.

And I don't know I'm exaggerating, but it's unreal.

I saw I can't count.

I know I probably counted over 25 singer porches that I saw of there.

I didn't even know they'd made 25 and they were everywhere.

And as we'd said earlier, there was a goal wing parked overnight on the street.

And, you know, I get that it's car culture and car time and all that.

But my goodness.

And then, of course, in Carmel, the first day we got there Tuesday,

I guess it was or Wednesday, maybe I can't remember.

It was just all running to get a Monday or Tuesday.

I think it was you were there Tuesday because you came to my event.

Yeah, exactly.

So but Tuesday morning, we were just wandering around after breakfast.

And there was a car show that wasn't even supposed to be

that was in downtown Carmel that apparently they had redone it or something.

And last minute and here they had 300 cars, probably at this.

Yeah, it was a charity, charity car show.

I remember seeing it and it got it was really funny.

I'm used to you're used to, you know, car shows started, you know,

when the sun goes up is when the first person gets there.

I'm out walking at about 730.

There's like 13 cars there or something like that, maybe 14.

And then I'm walking around that same area.

And then there's about 60.

And I'm thinking, man, this this show is not going to do well.

Right. And I guess I left it, I don't know, 845, something like that.

And I saw it, saw pictures of it.

You're right, there are hundreds of cars there.

So I guess, you know, when you talk about casual car shows,

they were casual about running it, you know, more power to them.

It was for charity, you know, great event.

Yeah, and it's it's great to see those type of events that are for charity.

And it's great that they do the cars and coffees

because as we've discussed many times on this show,

our generation or the generation coming up

does not want to sit on a folding chair for eight or nine hours

behind their car all day long.

They want to go out for a couple of hours at most

and then go do something else.

Sure. And I mean, that's a big change.

And you know, and and that's the way it's supposed to happen.

And I keep saying that to everybody.

You know what, a lot of the kids don't like the cars we like.

Guess what?

We didn't like the cars that our dad liked or our granddad like.

So I mean, we can appreciate them. Sure.

And it's, you know, when you get into collecting,

then you realize even though, you know, a gallwing was from the 50s,

it's a really important car.

So maybe when you're, you know, 40 years old and you've gone through all your

Subaru's and you've gone to, you know, you've gotten a McLaren,

you've gotten a Ferrari or something like that.

Then you're going to take a look back and say,

you know what, I'd love to have one of those from my collection.

And, you know, I mean, joke is true.

I mean, you know, the the cars of the 50s and 60s,

we can now rent automobiles that have more horsepower than the cars that we thought

were like, you know, the most outstanding horsepower we could find.

So exactly. Yeah, change.

My Trans-Am at 180 horsepower.

Find me any car that has that low of horsepower today.

I don't care if it's a whatever, a Yaris.

I don't even know what that is.

That even a thing?

I told you about the Yaris.

It is. Yeah, you don't want one.

You don't want one.

But it's got more horsepower than my Trans-Am or the Corvette of the era had.

You know, I was on the first of the cannonball.

I'm sorry, not the cannonball.

The. Oh, geez.

Now I've lost it.

A Texark cannon to Atlanta.

Oh, oh, yeah.

The Bandit run.

Bandit runs, thank you.

I was on the first of the Bandit runs.

I bought a I bought in Branson, as a matter of fact,

that brought a really a Trans-Am for it.

And I got to tell you that was a real eye opener to me because I'm an East Coast

guy, you know, I get out there and go to different places.

And I'm not going to say that I don't appreciate other things.

But boy, when I was out doing that run, it was so much fun.

And here I am in my five thousand dollar at the time, fifty five hundred

dollar Trans-Am, I think, something like that, you know,

that a mouse family had lived in for a while, so we kept the windows down.

But anyhow, you know, people lining the streets, the cops waving us,

you know, the cops all had a great sense to humor about it.

They all had their radar guns, you know, post it on us, you know, whatever.

It was so much fun.

And I came back and I told my wife, I said, you know,

I'm used to going to these places with the CEOs of the auto parts company.

And I got to talk with the people who work there.

And my God, what a what a wide open event that was to me

because those guys are the hobby, not the CEO.

So they got their millions of dollars or whatever.

But the guys who work hard and really appreciate those cars.

And it was just a I mean, you know, I went to a car wash, you know,

quarter car wash. We used to call them that back when it cost a quarter.

Now it's 18 dollars worth of orders to walk around with a bag of nickels.

Exactly. But anyhow, I went to a quarter car wash

and I saw a guy driving around and he got out of his car.

I was, you know, it was like 11 30 where I just wanted to get the thing

prepped for the next day and he came out and he just got out of the car

and his son was with him and they said, hey, can we help you clean your car?

And it was like, well, why would you want to do this?

I mean, you know, it's just because we know that, you know,

the run's coming through town and whatever. And it was just the.

I mean, it literally brought tears to my eyes. Sure.

That's that's the car hobby. Absolutely.

And we forget about those guys.

And, you know, we have a tendency to, you know, the lower end stuff.

You kind of, oh, God, you know, here comes a XYZ car.

And those are nobody cares about those anymore.

But yes, they do.

And then it's important that that part of the hobby

maintained because guess what those guys become?

It's no different than Chevrolet.

They sell you a Sprint or whatever the heck those are

and and hopes one day to sell you a suburban, you know, same with the hobby.

They get in and maybe they'll get an 85 BMW 5 series

and it's got 200,000 miles on it.

But their next car might be a little bit nicer and it might be this

and a Camaro and and before you know it, they've built their way up

and in a humble way, you know, that they appreciate it and enjoy it

and don't roll their eyes at it.

And there's nothing wrong with staying with the five series

as that's what's blind your watch, you know, and that's, you know,

that's what I love about the first couple of cars and coffees I went to.

True story Lamborghini, Countache Park there, cool car.

Everybody thinks it's cool.

This dude drives in in his Volkswagen and Jetta Harlequin edition.

Now, for those of you who don't know, they actually made Harlequin

the Harlequin is an Italian clown, right?

OK, so all the fenders and the doors and the hood were all painted

different color from the factory.

Yeah, I'm not making this up.

Scouts on or, you know, all that sort of stuff.

And this guy was sitting there and nobody's looking at his car

and everybody's looking at the Lamborghini.

I walked over and I said, dude, that is the coolest car here.

And he says, well, you're the only one who thinks so.

I said, hell with everybody else.

You know what? I see Countache's not all the time,

but I see a bunch of anybody who bought this car knew I want to shake their hand

because instead of 50 percent depreciation, it was 80 percent.

The minute it drove off the line, not the hour.

Exactly. Well, you know, it's it's funny how things

that attract attention at car shows anymore.

And like you to your point, we were at.

Oh, we were walking through the pits at Laguna Seca

and the car that caught my eye and the whole pits was a seventy one

Oldsmobile Cutlass Vista Cruiser wagon.

And we had Mike Joy on the show last week and he said he knew the car exactly

and he had seen the car there.

And he said that was the most photographed car of all weekend.

There's Formula One cars.

There's IMSA cars, NASCAR, all these wonderful cars.

And the Olds Vista Cruiser is getting the nod.

I, you know, and and I don't doubt that a bit because, you know,

people can relate to that. Absolutely.

How many people have owned a Formula One car?

I mean, there's not many.

How many people remember driving across the country from my age,

driving across the country, looking at the back window,

because remember that backseat and some of those things was paced backwards.

Looking at the back window, I have a buddy of mine who said, I saw America backwards.

Well, you know, it's funny that that those type of cars

resonate so well with people, because like you said, I mean,

you can see all these wonderful cars and you kind of get a little bit

jaded over the years.

And so you need to see something different every once

in a while to kind of keep you grounded and go, that's why I love this hobby.

You know, they they don't have they don't have to have

multimillion dollar price tags to be cool or enjoyable.

We see that on bring a trailer all the time, too.

Yeah, a lot of the times the, you know, the the cool cars

are the relatable cars or the cars that you had no idea existed.

I mean, they came back to that VW car.

I was just thinking, you know, they made like three different series of them, too.

You know, they didn't stop with one.

So you can you can imagine the dealer,

the VW dealer, he's like, no, we need we need 15 golf.

So the only way you're going to get 15 is if you take that hard.

No, please no.

But you know, there's a lot of cars that we didn't all particularly know about

if we, especially if we didn't grow up in a metropolitan area.

I mean, an Opel, an Opel GT was such an oddball that if you saw one,

you'd think, what the heck is that?

There was lots of cars that, you know, a Ford Capri.

And the Ford had the denim series where they had denim seats and a denim

roof and denim, all kinds of stuff.

I remember the Levi's edition, the ANC Grim, that I had a college professor.

He wasn't a nerd, was he?

Hey, buddy Owens, if you're if you're listening, say howdy, drop us a line.

So back to Monterey, we were, you know, everybody was worried

that the sky is falling this year and that things are not going to be great.

And this is going to be an indicator.

And, you know, the whole thing is going down the tubes.

I believe we saw something a little different than that.

Yeah, we did.

We, a group of us just won't get into the details here,

but you were involved in this group.

We have a little twenty dollar bet that we put out.

I'm not eligible because I run the thing.

So the winner was one of the two outliers.

We all were, we were all punching around three hundred and seventy five

million for the auction sales for the weekend, maybe three sixty five,

three eighty four twenty was the winner.

And I believe it's now at like four twenty seven.

Something like that.

Yeah, a little bit more.

Yeah, and it's like our second best year ever, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, that's that's not nothing.

I mean, there's some significance to that.

And great cars are bringing great money.

And and of course, the person that won it is a guy who's so

knowledgeable in the hobby.

And so, you know, it was deserving, even though you say dog on it.

I wish it was me, you know, but but it was interesting

because he was very, you know, he was very resolute about it.

It was it was the number and he felt you felt like you believed him.

He thought I should have guessed that same thing or let him go first, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

So but yeah, so I mean, you know, once again,

proving me wrong, too, because my my number would have been around that

three seventy five, three eighty five mark, something like that.

But the the hobby strong we did have now.

I mean, one thing, you know, there's always an asterisk, you know,

it's just like in in baseball, you know, whatever.

Right. But the little asterisk on this one is that Bonham's got a

collection of cars that were government seized, apparently.

And they were sold with no reserve.

So we had a whole bunch of multi-million dollar cars there

that were sold in no reserve.

So we knew they were going to sell.

They sold very well, by the way.

I don't know if you looked at the numbers.

I didn't know.

Not your business, not my business all the time, but but it's

fun to see the numbers.

And you would think that maybe some of these extreme

exotics, these, you know, hypercars, I guess they call them,

would have suffered if a lot of them came on the market at once.

And not true at all, not true at all.

They all did very, very well with zero exceptions, actually.

Sure. Sure. And there was a lot of, you know, world record prices out there.

I mean, I know R.M.

sold the twenty six million dollar charity Ferrari, which was crazy.

Gooding had a seven or ten.

I can't remember. It was just it's all just kind of runs together.

You really almost didn't film every minute of your experience out there

so you can have a reference to go back and check it.

Yeah. And Bronner did well as well.

I mean, they did. Meekum. Meekum did well.

Yeah. Gooding did. Gooding did great.

I guess it was their first outing with Christie's at Monterey.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

And so it was funny because those of us who've been to Gooding

since the since day one, everything was blue.

That was their color was kind of a, you know, mid a mid tier blue color.

And now it's red because that's the Christie's color.

So it was funny seeing all that.

But everybody was, you know, I have to say this also,

everybody's in a really good mood.

Did you notice? Yeah, it was it was fun to see people.

Nobody seems stressed.

And the traffic, even though the crowds look bigger than I've ever seen,

the traffic wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

We got caught a couple of times.

Pretty bad.

We got caught a couple of times, but we we were always going the other way.

Well, I have a big tip for you.

OK. Don't order Chinese food on Saturday night.

Because you're not getting there.

Well, I went out with a buddy of mine and thank gosh, he's young

and he is agile.

And I gave him my credit card when we parked eight blocks away.

And he ran, you know, literally to pick up the food.

And it took an hour and a half to get about four miles.

Oh, my God. Maybe four and a half.

And it's not to those of you who live in New York City.

You go, you should have just walked it.

You can't walk this far. Oh, not in Carmel.

Oh, my God. It's not it's not going to happen.

And then, you know, there's no sidewalks in this place.

You know, you would be walking on people's front lawns.

Not a big deal. Not a good deal.

No. And so everything else.

So I mean, even though it was like no time at all.

And of course, we get back to the house

and everybody was like, what the hell happened?

Like, you know, OK, next time you order Chinese food.

And you go get it.

Yeah, we we somehow lucked out

and we ended up at a couple of cool places.

We ended up at the Monterey Fish House, which when we pulled up,

we thought, oh, we this may not be a good idea.

It was a cinderblock building and ramshackle

and maybe not the best.

Well, it was near Doty's.

So the used car lot

where everybody gets all their lemons cars.

Food was fantastic.

It was one of those great,

you know, cool places that you just stumble on.

And it was really wonderful.

So it was nice to do that.

And that day we were going that way

and everybody else was going the other way.

But going to motorlux,

the traffic going into the airport was, oh, man,

I don't know how they controlled all that.

There was thousands of people there.

It was well, you know, they take over golf courses,

not just for Concord, but also for parking.

Sure. Different times.

And a lot of the times that's that's where the out is,

is on a golf course.

Think about it.

I mean, Meekum's entire event is held on a golf course.

And a lot of the, you know, a lot of the overflow parking,

you know, of course, obviously, Pebble Beach Concourse.

Right. A golf course as well.

But it's, you know, it is an amazing celebration.

The automobile, did it get a little out of hand at times?

Yeah, it did. Sure.

Is it is it one of those things that you want to go back to every year?

Yeah, for me, I do.

But I could see I could see putting it on the five year plan as well

because it's expensive and it takes a lot of time.

We rented a house with another couple out there.

You have to rent the house for the month.

Right. There's no weekly rentals there.

So for the first time, you know, I'm learning here.

So I'm getting better at it.

Do we spend my wife and I spent three weeks out there

because, you know, that amortizes the cost down to about,

I don't know, 800 a night or something like that.

Exactly.

And I don't even want to do the math.

But actually, so substantially less than that.

But but it was fun, you know, it's a fun time.

It's fun while it lasts and everything else.

But the important part to get across to people is that,

yeah, there's changes in the collector car market,

but the collector car market itself

still had a very, very strong week.

Sure.

You know, very strong.

And you're right about the going back.

Kathy and I have decided we are going back next year.

But after next year, who knows, you know, we may decide that,

you know, two years in a row is enough for a couple of years.

And to kind of feel it out.

I mean, it's not like they'll miss us.

You know, it's like they won't say, oh darn,

there were two people like this year.

And he doesn't seem to be.

But it seemed like at Pebble on Sunday that there was.

I'd seen all the pictures before and video seem like there's

way more people there than I have seen before.

Do you think that's accurate?

Or I maybe I think there was.

I think there was probably about a five or six percent increase.

Now, it's really, really hard for people to get this because

they've they've expanded the field.

So what you saw was an expanded field.

So they've taken over another couple of holes, basically,

from the golf course.

And so there's more cars there.

So that was to get rid of some of the overcrowding.

Right.

But, you know, the Pebble event is always very, very well

run, always fun, always great cars.

This year, for the first time ever,

I picked the winner of the of the grand prize that,

you know, the the best in show car.

But I'm just going to say this.

Everybody else did, too.

There was there's a Spanish weasel with a tulip wood body

boat tail and I saw it and I said, yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

And as as a person who works for me,

reminded me afterwards, you didn't have to be

Nostradamus to have that one.

You know, it's your best in show.

Exactly. Although I tell you, I mean, that was an

amazing car and people were calling me on Wednesday,

telling me that that was going to win and I hadn't even seen

it until Thursday morning when they did the tour,

which they did with that car, which was great.

Right. Of course, me and my infinite wisdom was

like, yeah, it's made out of tulip wood.

No, it's mahogany.

It's just called.

Yeah. It's not tulip wood.

Well, it's you know, we could do an entire show

about about things that cars are named

that have nothing to do with what they actually are.

Exactly.

I tell you the car, I liked a whole lot.

And if it wasn't the tulip wood hispana,

then the mybok was unbelievable.

That Art Deco 30s mybok was just wow,

that car was as elegant as they come.

That was.

No, there's some there's some, you know,

we're talking rolling on a mode of art.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I love the fact that they make them tour

or they don't make them tour.

But if you tour, it's a benefit to you

if there's a tie in the scoring or something along those lines.

And it makes it easy because, you know,

not everybody can afford a ticket to and not everybody

is going to get a ticket to the Concorde.

So you couldn't pick a corner of the street there

and take all the pictures you want to, you know,

see the cars in motion, which is even better than seeing them,

you know, static a lot of the time.

So I mean, a lot of these things are, you know,

they're evolving and the shows are figuring these things out.

And it's a great thing because they get these cars out

of the street, they show that they're able to be driven,

they show that they're able to be used.

So that's great.

Yeah.

And I think that the tour was probably one

of our favorite things to do, although we had a great time

at the track at Laguna Seca.

That was a lot of fun and a lot of cool stuff we saw

and the cars were absolutely amazing.

And the people that you see there, I mean,

it's just everybody, you know, just wandering next to you.

I'm like, oh, look over there.

Is that Jeff Gordon standing right there?

Yeah.

It was just, it was just so matter of fact out there

that people that you or Rob Walton or any of those guys.

Yeah, well, I understand that some people saw Stuart

Howden out there.

Well, apparently he was there with some beautiful eyes,

way out of his league woman.

So, honey, I love you.

I use this as not only my public forum,

but my private forum as well.

There you go.

Well, thanks.

That's enough.

We don't need it anymore.

But thank you.

No more information.

So, yeah, it was that was a lot of fun.

And, you know, of course, when we got up at 6.30

in the morning to or left the condo at 6.30

in the morning, he's like, where are we going?

What are we doing?

This is it's going to be, you know, she was prepared

to be bored and had her Kindle prepared

and all charged up.

She loved it.

She had a great time at most of the track

and and, you know, at the tour, watching as you said,

all those cars leaving was, oh, man,

it gives me chills just to think about it.

Yeah.

No, it's great.

Back to the auction.

Yes.

Let's let's talk some values.

Yeah. OK.

I think that what we're seeing, I mean, you know,

just for for getting down to the brass

tax is more of the same.

And that is that if you have a great car

and, you know, you and I have talked about this

ad infinitum, if you have a great pinto,

a great chivette, it's going to sell

because people want great cars.

And the lesser that the car is ready for sale,

the less it's going to bring in.

That's never going to change back

because cars are expensive to restore.

They're getting more complicated to restore.

The people who can restore them other than the people

who do them themselves are getting fewer and far between.

So this is where our values.

That's where we see our values going in these old cars.

They're ready to go cars.

Doesn't matter what it is.

They'll bring big money and they'll sell fast

with very few exceptions.

But when you get the lesser cars

and you have problems with them,

it makes them very, very difficult.

And that's the difficult task that we have

in the consignment business

because not everybody has the funds to do it.

They may be in a state.

There's money is not, you know, allocated for this

and there's no way for them to do it

or the car just has problems

and the guys, you know, struggling a little bit

and just needs the car to go away.

And like you used to your point

when people say, OK, the baseline is this,

now it needs this, now it needs this, now it needs this.

And before you know it,

they're going to get to a number

and it's usually not going to make the seller very happy

because used to be nobody cared if the blinkers worked

or the headlights worked or the horn worked.

Now, absolutely that better work

because if it doesn't, it can be an expensive fixed,

even a fix and a blinker,

all of a sudden can be a wiring nightmare or whatever.

Yeah, no, there's no doubt about it.

And you know, the other thing I like to tell everybody,

I'm 70 years old.

When I got in the hobby, I was 16 years old.

There wasn't a hundred years of history of the automobile

when I was 16 years old.

I was born in 1954.

So when you think about it,

you know, the first let's just call it real cars

happened around the turn of the century.

OK, you can argue 1886 or 1904 or whatever you want to argue.

But, you know, when I was born in 1954,

there was basically 50 years of automobiles.

We'll look at it now.

I mean, add another 70 years to that.

And so it gets more complicated.

But the fun part is that, you know,

there's still as we love to say in the car,

there's an ass for every seat.

Sure.

You know, and that's a that's a triple entendre

when it gets down to it, because, you know,

sometimes I enjoy being that ass who grabs that seat

because it's what I want, you know, whatever.

It's what makes me happy.

And sometimes, you know, whatever,

it's all depends on the price.

And that's where I'm having some some real issues,

you know, putting together the price guide.

Sure. Keep moving the lesser conditioned cars down

because there's less people who want them.

That's exactly right.

And especially if it's not a hugely desirable car

to begin with, a 77 Corvette comes to mind.

Beautiful cars.

If you look at them just aesthetically, which we don't

because we're so jaded on when it comes to those.

And then you find one that needs everything.

And where's the value?

Is it $3,000?

Is it $4,000?

It probably not much more than that.

Yeah. And especially if it's in white or tan.

I did. I said that with a little tone.

I didn't mean that white or tan.

Well, you know, we're back there.

And this is here's a sidebar for you.

I went to help my sister buy a new F-150 pickup truck.

And we went to the dealer.

All they had was you don't even have to guess,

but I'll tell you, white, silver and black.

That's all they had. White, silver and black.

And, you know, you look at some of the colors

and they're not even extra cost colors. Right.

Guys, how about throwing in the tan every once in a while?

How about throwing in that light green every once in a while?

Just for, you know, you know, what's in giggles?

You know, well, they say like I bought a brown Mercedes

one time and the dealer, I went in to have a service

and he goes, oh, a brown Mercedes.

I go, what do you mean?

He goes, well, we don't like to have those on the line.

I go, why not? Because because people get they can't make up their mind.

You got to have white, black or silver or people will go, I don't know.

Well, I kind of like that.

It's like they don't want people having to vacillate between different colors.

You know, and here's here's a little thing, you know,

for everybody to plant the seed into their mind.

Which one of those porches brings the most?

Is it the white one? No. Is it the silver one? No.

Is it the black one? No.

It's that weird blue one that brings the most on the used car market.

And on the collector car, no, not on the used car market.

I'm sorry, on the used car market, you might take a hit, yeah.

But on the electric car market, oh, my gosh, when the people see that,

you know, verflaken purple car, whatever the name, I hit the microphone.

Sorry about that, I guess.

The verflaken green car, like verflaken.

I didn't know that was a color.

I hope it's the worst in German.

We'll find out.

We'll find out, I'll get a letter from somebody in Germany.

Right, yeah.

No, we don't. We never get letters.

What are you talking about, my mother-in-law like that?

This is verflaken, was a lovely lady.

He just says, hey, for the record, absolutely, everybody loved it.

But you know what's interesting?

Green cars seem to be kind of trendy right now.

That seems to be an interesting color that we see a lot more of

in these specialty type cars.

Green is very popular and very elegant on these cars, too.

It can be something, a color that really stands out.

You know, the most recent example I can think of is the Heritage Edition

on the Ford GT 2005-2006.

You could not give a Heritage Edition away to a new car buyer.

Nobody wanted it.

The Heritage Edition is the golf colors.

It's the light blue.

It's the white, black stripes with the orange.

Nobody wanted it.

And as soon as those cars stepped into the electric car market,

guess what happened and guess what is still true?

The Heritage Edition sells for more.

They're breaking a million bucks now.

And when the when the rest of them are doing four or five hundred,

maybe, you know, well, I mean, you know, depending on the miles,

which is the indicator, which is another thing we can talk about

because miles mean nothing.

Yeah. How do you in a in a well,

the problem is, is people buy low mileage cars for their own reason.

If the guy tells me I'm going to buy a grand national

because it's only got 5,000 miles and what are you going to do with it?

I'm going to drive it.

Well, if you're going to drive it, then buy this one over here

with 50,000 miles on it. Right.

But how do you factor in those or do you those Uber low mileage,

93 Ford Mustang with 22 miles on it?

Yeah, it's they become outliers because, you know, you know,

if if let's just say generically, they're all worth as much as

I'm making a number up or whatever.

They're all worth as much as thirty five thousand dollars.

And that one sells for fifty seven.

It's an outlier.

Right. Simple as that.

Just like the one that sells for fifty seven hundred,

you know, because of a title issue because of this because of that.

So I mean, a lot of times what we have to do is look at it,

take a look and find the explanation and then just throw it out.

But, you know, we've become this this cult that worships at low miles.

Right. We worship it and matching numbers.

Why? I don't understand that.

OK, if you're going to show your car and you're buying it purely for investment,

absolutely, absolutely.

You know, I had a friend of mine came to me and said,

I want to buy a matching number of sixty five Corvette.

You know, you're I was born, all that sort of stuff.

I said, great. I said, why do you need matching numbers?

You said, well, that's what everybody tells me.

I mean, what do you do with it?

I'm going to give it to my son and I said, OK, I got a great idea.

How about if we save one third of the price going in,

knowing that you're going to get one third less going out of it?

Exactly. You know, whatever.

And and I mean, you know, but but people are people.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny how that is.

And we see that often and we try to steer people in the right direction.

But some people are stubborn about that kind of thing and say, no, no, no.

And I say, you know, you're going to kill the value of a low.

If you're buying a car with 300 miles on it, if you're not parking it,

that that's the only option for you is parking it and just putting it

in the corner of your garage and or museum or whatever it is,

because any miles you put on it is going to diminish the overpriced you paid for.

Well, here's the funny thing, though.

You know, and I drive an F-150, so I always use that as an example.

When I bought my F-150 for an embarrassing amount of money,

let's say it started with an eight.

OK, I'll never get used to it.

I'm not talking about eight thousand.

But it started with the I knew full well that when I drove it off the lot,

it was going to start with the six and right now it probably starts with four.

And by the time I'm done with it, it'll probably start with it, too.

And I'm fine with that, sure.

But with collector cars, we think differently because they're collector cars.

So even if your guy buys that low miles one and drives it,

he's going to he's going to find the same thing out just like buying a new car.

You know, a lot of times the value just keeps going down

and he's driving the driving the value out of it by not having

that 300 miles on it. Sure.

And if that's cool with him or her and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with it.

There's there's odd badges of honor in the car world that we see

that is just strange how what people, you know, a look at that or look at this

or celebrity doesn't have anything.

But you know who was riding in this seat right here?

That was a Nick Cage had this car.

You know, you hear that all the time from people who say,

oh, celebrity doesn't mean anything.

But yet they're the first to tell you who, you know, who drove this car,

who rode in and who didn't, whatever.

No, I know, I know.

There was an article, I think maybe it was in Jalopnik yesterday about a guy

who has three 200,000 mile kind of late modelish ferraris.

This guy's my new hero.

I love that guy. So he buys a new ferrari and he drives it like a car.

Well, I'm that, you know, my brain explodes when I hear that.

Imagine somebody buys a Ferrari and drives it like a car

like it was supposed to be driven. Exactly.

So when you put values, how do these, I mean, these, these one off,

you know, the Tulip would Hispanic race cars, 935 Moby Dick twin turbo, blah, blah,

blah. But you get into that area.

You see the auction house put these estimates.

Where are they coming up with these numbers?

I mean, they're not in the price

guides because there's not enough to even make a column for it. Right?

Yeah. Well, as an appraiser, I'll put my appraiser hat on yours.

What you have to do is find other comparable.

Right. So you have to find, I mean, it's not going to be

maybe another Tulip would car.

Maybe it is another Tulip car, but from a different manufacturer.

Right. Right.

So you have to use the value attributes.

So it has this, it has that, it has this, it doesn't have this.

And so in a way, it's kind of like an AB comparison. Right.

You know, going back to the days when you bought stereos at a, you know,

a store brick and mortar and you walked in and they'd have those

six set of speakers and six amplifiers and six record, remember record

for, well, now everybody knows what vinyl is now because now it's not called records.

It's called vinyl vinyl. Yeah.

And you don't say vinyl records, by the way.

No, no, that's redundant vinyl.

Just, yeah, just learning you here.

But anyhow, they would have a button and they could play this record player

with this amp and with these speakers.

So you'd have ABC comparisons, just like a, you know,

menu at a Chinese restaurant, take one from column A, you know, whatever.

And that's that's basically the job that appraisers have to do.

Or one of the jobs that appraisers have to do is they have to get those value

attributes and add, add, add, deduct, deduct, deduct, and then come out with

with an estimate of value and keep in mind, that's what appraisers do.

We estimate value and keep in mind, that's what price guides do.

Sure. It's just an estimate. It's not, you know, it's not,

there's no money comes out of it when you shake it or anything like that.

Exactly. Like, like I like to say,

somebody will come up to me and say, you know, I just sold me

so Grifo for a hundred thousand dollars more than it's in your book.

And my answer is like we all say down at the Presbyterian Church,

Mazel tov, right? I mean, I'm happy for you, right? Absolutely.

Why shouldn't I be? And, you know, it's great because it's another data point for me.

And I love having that.

But, you know, there's always going to be cars that sell for too much

and inside the cars itself for too little.

And at the end of the day, we're not splitting atoms here.

We're just talking about having fun with our car.

As our mutual friend, Donnie Gould, and I used to say, after every auction,

I would say, well, did you see this?

Would you see that?

And we'd always end the conversation with it's an auction.

Yeah, it's an auction.

Of course, you're going to see it.

And I remember those stereo stores back in the day.

It was always that cool guy in the neighborhood who worked at the stereo store.

He had the 9-11 or the 240Z and he was the cool guy.

I worked down at the stereo shop, you know,

sunglass sunglasses 24 hours a day, right? Exactly.

The cool guy.

You and I can't do this anymore.

But here's how you flip his hair back like that.

Using his thumb.

Yeah, just a little, you know, get a little of that going.

So, well, we could do this all day and I know you have better things to do.

I'm certain. But I always love having you on, Dave.

We'll make it four here before too long, because I'm sure we'll have plenty

to talk about again.

Well, that sounds like a plan.

Thank you very much, George. Good luck to you and all your

all the people at the Auto Mall there.

I love that place.

I'm going to get up there again soon.

I do have a car in restoration nearby, so I'll darken your door step again.

Look forward to it, everybody.

Dave, Kenny, we'll see you next time.

Talk to you later.

We'll be back in just a couple of minutes on the Classic Auto Mall show.

You are invited to a safari at Classic Auto Mall on a search for animals.

Look closely and you might see a tiger, Jaguar and a cheetah or cougar

as they try to catch a herd of impalas and don't forget the wired

mustangs and Broncos plus Gazelle rabbits and rams.

Instead of the zoo, you'll want to do your animal watching at Classic Auto Mall.

It smells better, too.

Now, more of the Classic Auto Mall show with your host, Stuart Howden,

from our showcase studio just inside the Classic Auto Mall,

Morgantown, Pennsylvania, just off Turnpike Exit 298.

And we're back with the Classic Auto Mall show, Classic Auto Mall studios

in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.

I like saying that weirdly.

I don't know why I do that every time.

I don't even know why I do that.

Pennsylvania is what.

Dave Kenny's great.

He just is such a wealth of knowledge and all the stuff.

And, you know, between him and Keith Martin, just two of the two guys

that just have so much knowledge in this hobby and have been around.

Gosh, as long as I remember these guys, they were veterans

when I just was starting out in the hobby in the good old days.

What's Dave Kenny's title exactly?

Well, he's a publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide.

And then he's also a senior accredited appraiser.

He has an appraisal company, and that's how he got in the business.

But he used to write for Sports Car Market back in the day, too.

And he would do the analysis.

He'd go to all the auctions and then he'd analyze, you know,

25, 30, 40 cars that were in the sale.

They'd publish those in the magazine.

And it was, you know, when it started, it was unheard of.

And everybody loved it.

It was great because you just got all this inside information

from these guys and why something should have brought more.

You thought should have brought more, brought less and so on and so forth.

So where did we sell cars this past week, did you ask?

Where? Just a week. Just a week.

It's a little light, too.

La Moine, Pennsylvania.

Yes. Charleston, West Virginia.

Salinas, California.

It's Salina, Salinas. Salinas.

Salinas. Yeah, Salinas, California.

I knew that. Gladwin, Michigan, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania.

Swedesboro, New Jersey, Percasy, Pennsylvania,

Green Castle, Pennsylvania, Roseville, California

andville, Pennsylvania, North Wales, Pennsylvania, Houston,

Texas and Kaiser, West Virginia.

Nice. West Virginia.

So do we have an auction coming up?

I think we do have an auction.

It'll be less than two weeks from today when this first airs,

which would be Saturday, September the 6th, 2025.

So don't get confused on the year.

Yeah. Great sale coming up.

We'll have about 85 cars, all absolute.

We've actually gotten some.

Most of it is barn find and parts cars and that kind of thing.

But we've gotten here in the past week or so,

we've gotten some really nice cars.

We've got a 56 Lincoln Continental, no reserve,

a 57 Ford Fairlane, no reserve, hard top.

We've got a pretty good little BMW.

That's it. Yeah, there's nothing else.

But some really good. There's no Jaguar.

Yeah, there's no Jaguar, I promise, in some kind of green.

We're getting some interesting cars in because a couple of these guys are like,

you know what? It's an opportunity for me.

You're going to have lots of eyes on it.

If it'll bring what the market will bear.

I mean, that's what we tell people all the time.

Look, we don't set the prices.

The market sits the price and the market is the price that somebody's

willing to pay for your car on any given day.

And it could be different today as it is tomorrow.

And the next day could be different from that.

And so we don't know.

But I mean, you talk about with the advent of the Internet,

I mean, we'll probably have, I don't know, six or 700 bidders online

Wow.

Bidding on these things.

Now, that doesn't mean anything.

That means that you've got 700 guys who registered to bid.

They could all sit on their hands and not buy anything.

So we don't, we can't guarantee anything by that.

But it's a damn good number to have.

It beats 20.

Yeah, what sparks you to raise your hand or click, you know.

Yeah, that we don't know.

But to have that kind of ratio, you know, 10 times the amount of vehicles

just in the online.

And then that doesn't count in person bidding.

You know, we'll probably have another 300 or 400 in person.

Maybe more than that.

I mean, we could have 1,000, 1,200 people for 83 cars or vehicles.

I should say they're not all.

That's right.

I make that mistake.

But as we've said in the past, without these, with most of these cars,

about 80% do not have a title.

80, 83% as a matter of fact, as of right now.

As of right now.

So somebody online said 99% don't have titles.

And I said, no, let me correct you.

83%.

Yeah, I'll get my percentages right.

That's right.

Well, and it's an estate sale, and that's why they sell them.

And if that's not for you, then I recommend that you go buy a car somewhere else.

I mean, that's, it may not be for you.

Or we have 941 that do have titles.

Pick from inside.

Yeah, that do have titles.

And some of these newer ones that we've gotten in, the more driver quality

or better than driver quality do have titles.

But again, if you've got a problem with that, I think go elsewhere.

And I'm not trying to discourage business, but it's, it is what it is.

The estate's not going to go get titles.

And if you can figure out a way to get a title, then good for you.

And if you buy it for a parts car, then you don't need a title.

And if you're buying it for some other reason and have a way to get it,

then power to you.

But I, you know, usually if you have to ask about getting a title,

that probably is a good indicator that you shouldn't be.

It's not a car for you.

Yeah.

So, and again, not trying to be negative, just trying to be real with people,

just like we do with our descriptions.

Look, you know, we don't want you buying something you don't know,

know what you're getting.

And we don't want you to come up to us after the fact and say,

well, I didn't know it didn't have a title.

Well, yeah, we mentioned like farm vehicles, you know,

you pick up truck that runs, you use it on the farm and never goes out on the street.

Yeah.

So you don't have to worry about that so much.

But there are ways to get titles, apparently, but that's on you.

Not on us.

So, and we got some interesting, interesting army trucks.

It's really going to be the interesting thing that it's such a wild card.

It's hard to put an idea of what value is,

as we were talking with Dave Kinney earlier,

about the value of these things.

Because, you know, there's not not a lot of them trade hands

where you get these troop haulers and these right tow trucks,

army tow trucks, and you don't see them at all.

So be fun to watch.

So now you can bid now, right?

You can bid now on proxy bid and on guyer auctions.

Randy will put that up on the screen.

I'm certain the guyer auction house where you can go to there.

And they're a local auctioneer.

But, you know, that's if you're a local person and you've done business

with them in the past, and it's probably easy for you to register with them.

They probably have all your information.

If you're out of state or, you know, out of the area,

then proxy bid is probably the better way to go for you.

Or you can telephone bid if you want to.

We'll call you a few minutes before the car or the vehicle runs across

or is shown and being offered.

And we'll bid on your behalf until you tell us to stop.

Now, you don't have to say which,

but didn't you say one or two have a bit of a dollar?

Yeah.

It's a start.

One dollar, you know, let's imagine it doesn't get another bid.

But then we made eight cents.

Yep.

Because our commission is eight percent.

Yeah, it all adds up.

Eight percent of a dollar is.

It all adds up, that's right.

It's all, you know, hey, listen.

Not nothing.

It's not nothing.

As my old friend Grant Miller used to say,

you know, you never go broke making a profit.

And he's, you know.

Smart.

So right.

I mean, you turned out, I have turned down in the past

and not now and not recently.

But in the past in business, I've been,

you know, probably ridiculously stupidly firm on a price

on something that I should have said, you know what,

that's a fair price.

I'm still making a couple of thousand dollars here.

I wanted to make 10,000, but what's wrong with making 2000

versus maybe you hold it for another year and you lose 2000

or something goes wrong.

Right, right.

Something.

So I mean, we've all probably made that mistake and,

you know, shame on us, but it is what it is.

Other or new arrivals that we have.

I think this one's already sold the 73 Plymouth Barracuda hard time.

Rally red over white and black.

Numbers matching 318 two barrel.

Great presentation, rebuilt front suspension.

So it drives nice.

Splendidly, it might say.

And it's got the broadcast sheet, which is so fascinating

to read these sheets that you find under the seat of these cars

to tell you how the car was born and what it came with.

And to Dave Kinney's point earlier in the first segment,

you know, numbers matching is really only important for

collectability.

And if you're looking to flip something to resell it,

if you're looking to buy something to drive, buy a 327 Corvette

with not the original motor, who cares?

It's still a cool looking car.

Sure.

Nobody's going to banish you from the Corvette world

because you got a 327 that was built in 66

and the car itself was built in 65.

It's not no harm, no foul.

That's right.

And it's a collectible thing and I get that.

So other new arrival, the 1996 AM General Hummer H1,

white over gray.

It's got graphics all over.

Oh, that one, yeah.

This thing is not for the meek.

If you're shy.

If you're shy, do not buy this car.

6.5 liter turbo diesel, four speed automatic,

go anywhere capable.

I think it would climb this building if it wanted to.

Easily.

And rugged and luxurious.

Yes, it is.

It's interesting how the seating is in those things.

Yeah, it's very way far apart.

Way far apart.

It's like coffee.

I remember there was an ad they used to run in the

old days, coffee calms you down and picks you up.

Which one is it?

Calm me down, pick me up.

I don't know.

I worked at a dealer one time and he had one and we went

and I was in the front seat with him and it's like

he had to use a stick, like a fishnet to pass the coffee.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, the next one we got in is very cool.

And it's one of yours in my favorites.

The 2012 Cadillac CTS-V station wagon.

It's still here.

No, I cannot believe that.

They're so shocked.

It's amazing, yeah.

I'm shockingly shocked.

50,000 actual miles.

Again, as we talked about in segment one, low miles,

oh my God, I got a CTS-V Cadillac and it's got 350 original

miles.

What are you going to do with it?

Are you going to drive it?

Are you going to go down the bank?

Fix the seals first.

Buy this one for 50 grand with 50,000 miles on it.

Lot less money.

Just as much fun.

Just as cool.

And clean.

And clean as it can be.

6.2 liter supercharged VA,

six-speed automatic, meticulously maintained.

And it's the rare long roof.

Now, that's not the rare long roof addition.

It's a rare station wagon.

That's what we mean to say by that.

I think we should slap some classic

automobile decals on it and just use it as the company car.

Well, we've got a production car.

That's down in that Radner Hunt that we bought,

66 Plymouth Fury.

That's true.

Sport suburban station wagon.

That thing is cool.

That's one.

Cool.

That's one.

That's the start.

Yeah, we've got more employees.

They just have one car to pass around.

Yeah, they made it there and back, right?

Exactly.

Well, they made it there.

It had made it back there.

Yeah.

Other new arrival, the 1970 Dodge Challenger Convertible,

bright blue metallic over blue,

beautifully restored, won a 2900 bill.

Numbers matching 318, numbers matching manual.

It's got an added shaker hood and the desirable pistol grip shift.

I love that pistol grip.

Oh, you grub that thing.

It is the most iconic shifter.

I feel like I'm in control.

Yeah.

Take aim, take aim.

We used to talk about, we should do that again.

We talked about hood scoops that we liked,

gifters that we liked, and spoilers that we liked,

and things like that.

That's a good segment.

It was a great segment.

It was a good old thing.

Bring it back, bring it back.

We used to do it with the quiz and everything.

We used to have prizes and yeah.

We had nothing else to do.

We talked about it.

We couldn't get any gas.

It was terrible.

Yeah, time to kill.

How about the 1970 Buick Skylark

custom convertible, fire red over white?

I really liked the body style of these 70 Buick Skylarks.

They are good looking cars.

Yeah.

Convertible, 47,000 actual miles and restored in 2013.

So 10, 12, 12 years ago.

Yes.

Turbo high-demand 350 with a 350 cubic inch,

two-barrel VA, great top-down cruiser.

I mean, this is a car that will get attention everywhere you go.

I don't care how expensive the other cars are around it.

That is true.

And last but not least, the 1931 Chevrolet

AE Independence five-window coupe.

Yes.

I love five-window coupes.

They're so cool.

Blackover Pewter.

It's got a 545 cubic inch LS7 V8.

It's Rodder's Digest featured.

This thing is a hot rod.

You would never expect somebody to pick a five-window coupe

to do this to.

Normally, they kept them restored and as built condition.

But the value of those has gone down so much.

And I think people are saying, well, might as well do this.

So, DFI fuel injection, air conditioning,

and the old will wood just breaks.

So when we return, we'll see you next week.

Oh, no.

One more segment.

I thought we were going to do this segment as the last segment.

Nope, because Keith is bad.

I know, but wasn't we going to slot him in between segment one and two?

We could do whatever you want.

Okay, we'll be back in a couple minutes with Keith Martin,

Sportscar Market Magazine.

We'll see you then.

Here's a special offer from Sportscar Market Magazine.

Get a six-month subscription for just $19.95 by going to sportscarmarket.com

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That's sportscarmarket.com slash test drive six.

If you're a buyer, a seller, or just general classic car enthusiast,

publisher Keith Martin says,

We've been around almost 40 years.

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And we're back with the Devo show.

How are we not men?

We are Devo.

That's what it sounded like.

Driving around the coast highway.

All right.

So we were driving around the coast highway a couple of weeks ago.

That would be great music for.

Yeah, it would.

Joining us via Zoom, Keith Martin.

Thank you for rejoining us.

You've been AOL for a couple of weeks,

but with good cause.

You did a nice little family road trip,

and I'm sure you enjoyed yourself

and got lots of driving time in.

It was a stewardess, you know,

time with your kids is hard to come by.

And the biggest thing about this little mini tour

I put together for my daughter,

her husband, and my son in two cars.

We had dinners together four nights in a row.

We had lunches every day.

We just, we could never make that happen in regular life.

Sure. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's so important to spend time with family

because, you know, time is precious and we all,

you know, people get too busy in their lives sometimes

and the important things get put on the back burner,

so to speak.

Well, we're always too busy.

Yeah, for everything.

That was me going to Monterey.

I am still going to Monterey.

So I want to know,

I heard that supercars are taking over the Monterey streets.

Did you notice that?

Oh my God.

I just said all I want is the spent fuel

that's burning up,

popping in those exhaust pipes

for every Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche,

BMW.

It's all night long and it was crazy.

But you know what was really interesting

about the whole thing

is that how people were respectful,

people were nice,

people were friendly.

Nobody was in a bad mood.

You waited a little bit at a restaurant

and you were prepared for it.

So, you know, it's all managing expectations

of things that you do.

And I think that people,

people have a tendency to not manage

their own expectations

or manage in business

their customer's expectations.

And so with that respect,

everybody seemed to be just pretty darn chill

for, you know,

being out there in the epicenter of the car world.

Did you go to Pebble?

I did go to Pebble.

We saw the tour on Thursday morning,

leave at seven.

Yeah.

Got awful in the morning.

And that was really amazing.

And then of course,

the Pebble the day was on Sunday

was just unbelievable.

It's such a beautiful place to begin with

and then add the beautiful cars,

the beautiful people.

The funniest takeaway for the whole week,

for the whole Sunday

was that the line for buying merchandise

was an hour long.

Wouldn't you like to have merchandise so popular?

And it was expensive

that people waited an hour to buy it.

It was just floored me.

And my guess is that stuff's all available

on our website as well.

Absolutely.

But there's something about that tangible

for our generation and even older,

I think,

is there's,

I can tell you how many times I go into buy something.

Well, we don't have your size,

but we can order for it.

Nah, pass.

Something about that tangible,

even though now you got to lug it around

and you got to get it home in the suitcase,

which is now overweight,

grossly.

I think our suitcase weighed 68 pounds.

So they have those nice thick programs.

That's part of the problem.

So you were doing your family vacay,

but you were keeping an eye on things

back at the Sports Car Market Central, right?

Yeah.

In my front room,

I've got a 62 inch TV.

And I thought that the live stream this year

was far better than it's ever been in the past.

I don't disagree.

I've watched a little bit of it.

I think that they are in the past,

I like the focus that they have now

in the way that they're doing it.

It wasn't,

it was a little bit looser before

and not looser in a good way,

I don't think.

I agree.

Yeah.

I thought the commentators did a good job.

I thought the interviews were short and to the point.

Right.

We got good views of the cars.

I mean, it really, it was almost like being there.

Right.

Exactly.

Well, it's like watching a football game

versus going to a football game live

when it's 14 below zero and you miss the play

and you don't have instant replay

and you got to go stand in line for a beer

and a hot dog or you can sit at home

in front of your 62 inch TV

and your surround sound and you're there.

The other thing is that all the auctions

were live streamed as well.

Right.

Exactly.

Which I love.

You know, it's always fun to watch those

if you can't be there in person

because you can switch around to, you know,

three different auctions.

You can't do that in Monterey.

You can't just say, hmm, I think I'm going to

pop on over to someone's, it doesn't work that way.

Right.

I want to be there Thursday

so I'm going to leave Tuesday.

It sounds like an excellent plan.

We really enjoyed it.

Highway 1 just, I've been in Pimple 30 times

and it's just, it's always the same.

It's crazy and nuts.

We drove to Big Sur for lunch on,

I think it was Thursday after the tour took off

and we timed it perfectly.

We didn't catch a whole lot of traffic.

There weren't many of the clubs.

The tour cars had already come and gone

and what a beautiful drive that is.

That's just pretty a part of the world

as you'll ever see.

I just was floored at the scene.

Every time you came around the corner,

oh, there's another beautiful view.

Yeah.

And a beautiful car.

Oh my God.

The cars were over the top.

It was, it was everything we imagined and more

and my wife who was going for me,

not reluctantly but just knew that this was my bucket list trip.

She had a great time.

She had a great time out at the track at Laguna Seca.

She had a great time watching the cars take off

at Pebble on Sunday, the restaurants, the people.

It was, it turned out it was,

it was more fun for her than she anticipated

and that was really good.

How did you set that up Stuart to,

to, to position her to have a good time

at this car guy love fest?

Well, I can tell you the one thing that I never do

that I did this time is that I made

an itinerary and a plan and we stuck to it.

So she knew every minute of every day what the plan was,

when she had time to work,

when she had time to call the grandkids,

when we were going to be at dinner,

when we were going to,

and it seemed to make her more at ease

having all that and me as well

because it was overwhelming.

I was like, oh crap, are we missing this

or are we missing that or, you know?

And, and I think by having that itinerary,

it, it forced us to, to do everything

in a logical way and we weren't ever rushed

or feeling like we were, you know, missing something.

So you don't have to tell me the truth here,

but did you end up using the SCM Insiders Guide to Monterey?

I absolutely did.

I promise you it was in,

I had a folder Carmel 2025

and it had my itinerary which was 19 pages

and it had the SCM guide in it

and it had some maps of the Pebble Beach

and it had some maps of Carmel

and it had a list of places we were going to go

and we used it frequently, especially for addresses

to plug into the GPS because we drove everywhere.

And so having those addresses right there

all in one place was really, really helpful.

Yeah, that's our 24th year I think of doing that guide.

It's wonderful.

And we just, we try to bring it all together and just,

we try to put it in one place

where it's everything about Monterey, your schedules.

And I, like I said to you,

I insist on physical addresses for the GPS.

Yeah.

It's just, it's just, it simplifies it.

And you can't, what did you not get to?

Did you get to Legends of the Audubon?

Yeah, the only thing we didn't get to was that we wanted to.

We didn't go to Legends of the Audubon

and we didn't go to Concord de Lemons

and we're going to do that next year

and we're already planning next year

because they said Concord de Lemons is just fun.

It's just way more fun than you expect.

And we did go by Doty's, the used car lot

that people buy a lot of those.

And there was some weird, crazy, hard to describe stuff

going on out in front of that building.

I'll just put it that way.

It was a strange day.

But we had a really good, good trip overall.

We were exhausted.

The problem that we have is being gone

for eight days from our business.

And you know this, even with computers,

even with everything, it's still,

it puts you behind the eight ball.

That's right.

And I, and you're trying to follow up

with the people you've just met.

Right.

And that's difficult.

Here we are two weeks out

and I still got a few people on my list to call

that we'd met out there.

And so it was, it's so much overload.

But when you get home, then you have to kind of organize,

okay, I got to make sure I told this guy

I would email him because he didn't have a card

or I didn't have a card with me or whatever.

I never didn't have a card.

But let's get that part straight.

I had cards, I had a card.

But it was, it's, you kind of got to have

a game plan for that as well too

because you don't want to tell somebody,

I'm going to call you when I get back

and then you never call them and, you know,

and then all of a sudden then you go,

oh crap, that was three months ago.

Now if I call them, I'm really going to look like a rub.

So you have to really manage your time

and, and, and your, your hours of what you do in a day.

And especially when you've been to an event like that,

or events.

Right.

So, right.

And so you're going to go back.

We're going back.

We've already got a room.

Well, we haven't, we're going to reserve it

this week for next year.

And we're already going back.

Of course, all the guys have wanted to try

to figure out how we can do the show from there.

So they can all come and go as well too.

Exactly.

As long as we have a million viewers by this time next year,

then I'll bring all of you.

So that's my word.

I'm sticking to it.

So we,

NetJets things are pretty cheap.

Yeah.

They're pretty reasonable, aren't they?

Especially if you pile as much in there as you can.

You know, it's like, all you can eat buffet.

You know, I got 30 guys for this plane.

Well, sir, it only holds 12.

Well, we're getting 30 on here.

Well, yeah.

And you get a discount if you bring your own box lunch.

Nice.

I like that.

I'll have to make,

let me have to make a note of that for next year.

I think you can get a Costco fuel card.

Yeah.

I was just getting that pesky jet to get into there,

into that Costco.

You need to fold back wings like the James Bond airplane have.

What was that, the BDE-5 or the BDE-5?

You don't know that you're a movie guy.

You should reference this.

So they had folding wings.

I want to touch on something today.

You mentioned I had a family vacation and just briefly,

we had a couple of cars.

Lotus at least is a modern car.

The Alpha Spiders, an old car.

Right.

But I found that going 65 or 70 miles an hour on twisty two lane

roads is as fast as you need to go.

Right.

And I watch these hypercars blow by.

They can go 200 miles an hour and they don't have a driver

that has any idea what's going on with those cars.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's scary to see them out of control a little bit.

You see videos all the time on Facebook of that.

No.

Well, you see the supercars blocked off 17 mile drive one night.

Yeah.

What's that about?

I don't know.

It's rebellious.

And I don't, I can't imagine being rebellious when you're young

and have a supercar.

And rich.

Yeah.

There's a little bit of money.

I think if you had a black American Express card,

you were, you know, upper middle class, maybe.

I understand.

Yeah.

Nothing was cheap out there.

But you know, again, if you go into it,

knowing what you know ahead of time and not just kind of

blindly wander into it, it makes it a little bit more palatable.

You know, you can, you can, you can stand it a little bit more

when you spend a little extra than you thought.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's the, it's the, it's what we call it,

the price you pay, pay to pay.

Yeah, exactly.

And if you're going to be in the classic car or special

interest car business, then if you're not there,

you're missing the same with Scottsdale in January.

You really should be there.

It's an important thing for our hobby.

And it's great people to meet.

And, and the more people you meet,

the more you get to meet.

And, and you know, to meet some of these people

that you've kind of idolized over the years

and to now get to know them and, and talk to them

and have them on the show.

You know, that's a dream come true stuff.

So you got to take advantage when you can

because you only do this once, right?

And there's only one, one trip around the earth

or whatever they call it.

No, that's, that's exactly right.

I, pebble looked beautiful this year.

It was really nice.

The weather was fantastic.

Yeah.

It was, it was, it was everything we expected

and then some.

And the cars look, the array looks staggering.

And everybody picked the best of show winner

and it was not hard to pick that Hispanic.

I mean, it was spectacular looking in person

and it was unique.

I think that set it apart.

Although, as I said to Dave Kinney earlier,

that my box, that 32 my box that was in the show

or was one of the finalists for Best in Show was stunning.

I mean, that was.

They think that was Dana Meekam's car.

It was.

And that car was spectacular.

It was, it really, I didn't notice it the first

trip through the field.

But when it pulled up there is like, oh my God,

that thing just really, it just shouts at you in a subtle way.

Yeah, Dana is interesting guy because he's got a hand in two pots.

He's got the every man auction and he's got his high end collection.

Yeah, exactly.

What's interesting to see, you know, most of the stuff that he sells

isn't in that realm.

Although they do get some cars like that out there in Monterey

and in Kissimmee as well too.

They've got that Ferrari 250 GTO coming up in Kissimmee.

So, but, but you're right.

I mean, the core business is no different than us.

It's the Mustangs and the Chevelles and the El Caminos and the Camaros, you know.

Right, that's right.

You know.

And then somehow he gets one to 2,000 cars at every auction.

Don't know how he does.

I don't know how they logistically do it, much less just do it.

It's, it's an amazing amount of car.

I mean, Kissimmee one year had over 4,400 cars.

I don't know how many, you got to have a thousand people

working for you to manage all that, you would think, right?

There's a lot of admiration in the industry for how hard Dana's family works.

They work hard.

And he does too.

And even when he was a little bit ill of health,

he was out there as much as he possibly could be.

And he looked like he was tired.

He could have just taken a nap and, you know, worked his butt off.

Because, you know, I'm sure he didn't come from a lot of money.

He didn't come from, you know, I remember when he was doing auctions

with two and 300 cars and struggling to get that many in a field in Illinois.

So, you know, hats off to hard work and persistence, right?

I agree 100%.

All right.

Well, we're glad to have you back

and hope they get your elevator all lined out.

When I pressed the button for it this morning on my condo,

and it said, emergency power only.

Does it make you feel good?

It's like buying a steak that they've marked down

because it's, you know, we're getting close to the end date on it.

It's like, I don't know if I want it.

It's also you don't, you have a choice then, right?

Do you stay on the ground floor and wait?

Or when the door opens,

do you hope that it'll get you all the way to your floor

and not stop two floors short?

I'm thinking I'm turning around going out,

getting in my car and finding something to do for a while.

And hopefully my brain will have forgotten

about the fact that the elevator didn't work

when I was there earlier.

And I'll just get in it and push the button

and go pray that it goes up.

And I'd say Stuart, live from the coffee shop.

Do you get cell phone service in the elevator?

So, I have to check that next time you're in the elevator.

See how your signal is.

So, because we can't miss you, Keith.

We've got to have you.

And if you're in the elevator,

then we'll still talk to you.

Well, I'll get a little remote cam for the,

I'll get an elevator cam.

Oh, that sounds great.

We can, we'll have to watch some of that.

That'll be fun.

Anyway, Keith Martin,

so wonderful to have you on the show again as usual.

And we'll catch you next week.

All right, thanks.

Great to see you, Stuart.

You too, Keith.

Bye-bye.

And we'll catch you next week

on The Classic Automall Show.

We'll see you then.

You've been listening to The Classic Automall Show

with their host, Stuart Howden,

executive producer, Steve Sethair,

produced and engineered by yours truly, JR Russ,

video editor, Randy Lambie.

Available on ClassicAutomall.com,

YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Questions, answers, or comments,

write us at ClassicAutomall.com.

And if you want to talk about buying a classic car

seen on our website,

you're looking for a particular vehicle

or want to consign your classic for sale,

write us at info at ClassicAutomall.com

or call and talk to a real live classic car specialist

at 888-227-0914.

That's 888-227-0914.

Music courtesy of the Pat Travers Band

for tour dates, contact, and stuff,

visit pattravers.com.

Produced by CarSmart's Media,

Classic Auto Mall - #209 - Stewart Howden with Guests Dave Kinney + Keith Martin

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