Classic Auto Mall - #233 - Stewart Howden with Guests Russell Hayes and Keith Martin
Classic Auto Mall SHOW
Classic Auto Mall - #233 - Stewart Howden with Guests Russell Hayes and Keith Martin
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Term
logo
A logo is a picture or symbol that shows what a company is. Aston Martin's logo is special because it was designed a long time ago and still looks cool today.
Car
Volkswagen Golf
The Volkswagen Golf is a small car that many people like because it is easy to drive and useful for everyday trips. It has been made in many versions since the 1970s.
Car
Aston Martin DB5
The Aston Martin DB5 is a fancy and stylish car from Britain that became famous because it was in James Bond movies. People love it because it looks great and is very special.
Car
Aston Martin DBR1
The Aston Martin DBR1 is a special race car from the 1950s that won a very famous race called Le Mans. Many people think it is one of the prettiest cars ever made.
Term
wind tunnel testing
Wind tunnel testing means putting a car in a special tunnel where air blows over it to see how well it moves through the air. This helps make the car faster and safer.
Concept
wind tunnels
Wind tunnels are big machines that blow air over cars to see how the air moves around them. This helps car makers design cars that drive better and use less fuel.
Concept
racing career
A racing career means someone drove cars in races as their job or hobby before doing other things. It helps them learn how to make and drive fast cars better.
Car
Shelby Cobra
The Shelby Cobra is a special fast car made by Carroll Shelby by putting a big engine into a small car body. It became very famous for being really quick and winning races.
Concept
Sebring
Sebring is a race track in Florida where cars race for many hours to see which is the fastest and most reliable.
Concept
James Bond franchise
James Bond is a famous movie series about a spy. The cars he drives, like Aston Martins, became very popular because of these movies.
Concept
Ford ownership of Aston Martin
Ford, a big car company, owned Aston Martin for some time and helped it make new cars and stay open.
Brand
Volvo
Volvo is a car company from Sweden famous for making safe and strong cars. Ford used to own it but sold it later.
Brand
Land Rover
Land Rover is a British company that makes fancy SUVs good for off-road driving. Ford owned it before selling it.
Brand
Jaguar
Jaguar is a British car company that makes luxury and sporty cars. Ford used to own it but sold it later.
Term
hand-built V8s
A V8 engine is a type of powerful engine with eight cylinders, and 'hand-built' means people carefully put it together by hand instead of machines.
Car
Aston Martin DB7
The Aston Martin DB7 is a fancy car made to be fast and comfortable, and it helped the company make more cars than before.
Part
V12 engine
A V12 engine is a type of car engine with 12 cylinders that work together to make the car powerful and smooth when it drives.
Concept
Formula One
Formula One is a type of very fast car racing where the best drivers and teams from around the world compete in special races with very advanced cars.
Brand
Ferrari
Ferrari is a famous car company from Italy that makes very fast and expensive sports cars and races in important car competitions.
Brand
Red Bull
Red Bull is a company that makes energy drinks and also has a team that races cars in big competitions to get attention for their brand.
Brand
Mercedes
Mercedes is a famous car company from Germany that makes fancy and fast cars, and they race in big car competitions.
Term
starting price
Starting price means how much a car costs at the lowest level before adding extras or taxes.
Term
medical car
A medical car is a special car at races that carries doctors and medical equipment to help drivers quickly if they get hurt.
Term
pace car
A pace car is a special car that drives in front of race cars to keep them safe and slow down the race when needed.
Car
Aston Martin Valhalla
The Aston Martin Valhalla is a very fast and modern car that uses both gas and electric power to go really quickly. It's one of the newest and most advanced cars from Aston Martin.
Brand
Honda
Honda is a company from Japan that makes cars and engines. Their engines are sometimes used in racing cars.
Concept
Aston Martin F1
Aston Martin F1 is the racing team that Aston Martin runs in the fastest and most famous car races in the world, called Formula 1.
Car
Aston Martin DBX
The Aston Martin DBX is a big, fancy car that looks like a mix between a sports car and a family car. It is made for people who want something fast but also useful for everyday driving.
Car
Aston Martin Lagonda
The Aston Martin Lagonda is a fancy and high-tech car that looks very modern and different. It was made to be very comfortable and use new technology.
Term
platform
A platform is like the car's foundation or frame that many cars can share. If a car has its own platform, it means it's built on a special base just for it.
Car
Mazda 3
The Mazda 3 is a small car that is easy to drive, looks nice, and doesn't use too much gas. Many people use it as their everyday car.
Company
BBS
BBS makes special car wheels that are very light and strong. Many race cars and cool cars use BBS wheels because they look good and help the car perform better.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a fast and sporty car made in America. People like it because it looks cool and can go really fast, often used in races or just for fun driving.
Part
four speed automatic transmission
This is a part of the car that changes gears by itself, helping the car go faster or slower without the driver needing to shift manually.
Car
BMW M3
The BMW M3 is a special kind of car that is both fast and fun to drive. People like it because it can be used every day but also feels like a race car.
Car
Cadillac El Dorado
The Cadillac Eldorado is a very fancy and comfortable car from America that many people liked in the 1970s and 1980s. It was known for looking good and being very smooth to drive.
Car
Oldsmobile Tornado
The Oldsmobile Toronado is a special car from America that was one of the first to have the front wheels powered, which was new at the time. It looked nice and was comfortable to drive.
Car
Cadillac El
The Cadillac ELR is a fancy car that can run on both electricity and gas to save fuel. It was made to be good for the environment while still being stylish.
Car
Dodge Custom
The Dodge Custom 880 is an old, big car from the 1950s that many people liked because it was roomy and looked nice. The special convertible version is rare and special.
Car
Chevrolet 3100
The Chevrolet 3100 is an old truck from the 1950s that was used to carry things for work. People like it now because it looks cool and is part of history.
Car
Ford Model
The Ford Model T is one of the first cars ever made that many people could buy. It changed the way people traveled a long time ago and is very old and special now.
Car
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang is a famous car from America that lots of people love because it looks great and goes fast. Old Mustangs from the 1960s are very special and many people want to own them.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and sporty car from America that many people like because it looks cool and drives well. Even older models from the early 2000s still look new and exciting.
LIVE
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.
And here we are, show number 233.
Congratulations.
Hey.
Is there a milestone for 233?
No.
Is that like wood or silver, one of those anniversary gifts?
Sure, if you want.
If you wanted to.
How many cars in inventory?
Right now, JR.
901.
895.
Oh, 893.
Oh.
Boo.
Which we boo because we're down in the 800.
So I'm, you know, can't sleep at night.
You're hitting the cabinets and stuff like that.
I'm hitting cabinets in the middle of my sleep.
You know, is it neurotic where you've got almost 900 cars and you're like, we don't have enough?
We don't have enough.
We're panicked.
Neurotic might be one word you use for it.
Can't wait till the spring.
Can't wait till spring, yeah, because the weather has slowed us down on consignments,
but the sales have just kept on going and I can't tell the guys to slow down on the selling.
So we'll just keep it going as we can.
We need the money.
We need money.
So we've got to fund this, you know, monstrosity here.
So let's get to our guest who's joining us from across the pond, Russell Hayes, author,
freelance writer, backgrounds in magazines, television and books.
Good morning, afternoon.
Russell.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me on.
Oh, so glad to have you on.
Your latest book is amazing.
I got it, I don't know, four or five days ago and asked him Martin and I was going to ask
you, is it the entire story?
And then I saw that the title was the entire story.
So I thought, well, I don't have to ask that.
So that's the entire story.
Where's your cutoff?
Where's the last thing that you did?
It was a 2023 or?
No, it's actually 2025.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
We were tinkering with it right up until May last year.
And, you know, proof in a book that size is no easy task.
That's a lot of work.
No, you've got to have several pairs of eyes on it and I had a really good editor.
Sure.
So, well, you know, hats off to Steve.
Well, it's always, well, I have a Steve and I hats off to him.
So yeah, it's always good to have a Steve around, right?
So basically as to Martin started in 2000, I mean 2000, 1913, right?
That's it.
Yeah.
With the formation of a company called Banford and Martin, which was Lionel Martin and Robert
Banford, two engineers who met at a cycling club.
Their passion was cycling.
There was a real craze for fast pedal cycles at the end of the turn of the century.
So they were both mad cyclists and then that turned into cars.
And it's so much better that they named the company after Aston, which was the local hill
climb, I believe, that was in close to where they grew up or where they were from.
Yeah, sort of, not far to London, Buckinghamshire.
It's basically, there's a village called Aston Clinton and there's a hill called Aston Hill.
So it was where Lionel Martin had a bit of success with his singer going up the hill.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting how things get their names and how like you sometimes see Aston
Martin written with a hyphen in between it.
And I thought, I wonder where that came from.
And then I was looking through your book and I saw there was a couple of times where Aston
Martin were separated by the wing logo and it almost looked like a hyphen.
I can see where maybe people might mistake that as a hyphen between the two words.
Yeah, it was actually hyphenated in the very early years, but that had gone by about the
1920s.
What, where did the wings come from?
Where did that, was that inspired by anything other than just kind of flight and fast and
whatever?
Yeah, the wings came from a guy called Sammy Davis, who was the sports editor of Auto
Car at the time and a big, big Aston Martin supporter who was very, very friendly with
Lionel Martin.
And he actually drew them.
He was quite a talented artist and he drew them based on the design of the scarab beetle
and the kind of Egyptian fashion in the 1930s.
So that was very fashionable then.
So that's where it comes from.
Yeah, it's a great looking logo.
It really is.
It's so iconic and still holds up well today.
It's a little modified from the original, but fairly true to its roots.
You can trace it through.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, and you've also done other books on Alpine, Lotus, TVR, the Volkswagen Golf, which we're
all big fans of around here.
That must have been a fun book.
Yeah, I've done, I've done, the golf has followed me quite, quite a way through.
I first did my first golf book in 2014.
Right.
When, when I noticed that it was the, the 40th anniversary of the golf coming up and nobody
was producing a book on it.
So that came out and then that reprinted in 21.
And I've just had a book on the GTI come out.
Oh, wow.
Well, and, and books, you know, being an author these days, it's a little better than it was.
It seems to be that the internet has helped actually helped more than it hurt being an
author and book sales in motorsports type books and automotive books seem to be doing
much better than they were doing even 10 years ago.
It's a small market, but it hangs on in there.
And there's, you can't see much in book shops anymore.
Right.
And there were a couple of motoring book shops in England and I think that they might have
gone completely online now.
But you see them at car shows and yeah, the internet has helped.
It's, it's, it's, it's given a much wider market.
Sure, sure.
And with, with Aston Martin, I mean, when you write a book of this stature with Aston
Martin, do you, is it required to get some kind of permission from Aston Martin?
Do you have them bless it?
Is there, is it kind of free reign and open, whatever they call it?
Well, it's, this isn't endorsed by them, but they were, they were good supporters.
Oh, good.
They have a, they have a guy who's a, who's a permanent historian guy called Steve Waddingham
and he was a great ally.
Sure.
So I would, I would go and see him every now and again and chew things over and he even
got me in on a private tour of the factory, which was fantastic.
Wow.
How cool is that?
Yeah.
So, and this was a labor of love for you, this Aston Martin.
Well, it was actually my second Aston Martin book.
I did one in 2019 on just the V8s.
Right.
From 1969 to 2000.
And that was, that's not on Amazon.
That's quite an, you know, a limited edition book, which is only sold through the publishers.
Sure.
And that's gone on, but I had a, I had a really good grounding, I think, from that book, from
the research I did.
Then I was writing for an Aston Martin magazine called Vantage.
Right.
So, so when I approached Evro, they had a project and that had my name on it, I think.
Sure.
Well, and I mean, this is, this is not just some paperback book.
This is a very nicely done in a, in a highest standards and a cloth-bound slip case.
I mean, these, this book set is really a real work of art.
Yeah.
I think they've done a beautiful job on it.
And they'd been, they were really good to me because originally it had a kind of smaller
scope, but then I looked at it and I wrote down the whole history and we, the movie looked
into it.
I said, I've just got to do everything.
I've got to put all the motorsport in there as well.
Because people, what people have tended to do because the history is so long is pick
distinct parts of it.
They'll pick the DB5 or they'll pick the modern cars or they'll just do the motorsport.
And I noticed that there wasn't, there wasn't a book which covered the entire story, hadn't
been done for decades.
Sure.
So I thought it was about time and, and Evro were very kind.
They let me grow the book into two volumes.
I was going to say, was it, the original plan was just a single volume or was it always
kind of in your mind to be two volumes?
It was a, it was a single volume, but then the word, I just completely bust my word limit.
And they didn't mind.
They were so kind.
Well, the volume one is 1910s to the 1980s and then volume two 1980s to the 2020s.
Was there, was it harder?
Was it one harder than the other?
The, the sort of very early stuff is always, is a couple was a kind of new territory for
me.
Because, you know, we're a long way from cars in 1900s and 1920s.
They're out of, they're out of our memory.
And I, I took myself to an Aston pre-war Aston Martin specialist to spend a morning with
them to just talk me through what all this, these bits of technology were that I was talking
about, like friction shock absorbers.
So that was, that was really useful.
So yeah, that, that, and there's nobody around to interview.
We can't talk to anybody.
They're, they're all gone.
So you have to rely on archive interviews and dig around to see what, what you can find.
There are so many people that have passed on that we wished we had gotten more information
from that we weren't thinking about it like we are nowadays.
It seems to be we're doing a better job of it as a society to talk to people that have
significant contributions to the world.
And we get that information on tape or in books or whatever.
But man, there was a lot of them that we missed and, and missed a lot of information that
it's like my grandmother used to tell stories that I just wouldn't listen to.
And now I just killed to have those stories and to be able to hear them and to record
them and to preserve them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you've got to get people out there retiring.
That's, that's the point.
You know, they just retired and it's still fresh.
Right.
But then they can, they can let rip.
They can normally say what they want to say about how it really was.
Yeah.
I mean, the problem is some of these guys, they waited so long to get them that their memory
was slipping and, you know, they were getting up in age and, and, you know, recollections,
things change, you know, the way we remember things and something can trigger you to remember
something a little differently.
And it's, it's a shame.
But, you know, books like this, I think, you know, we love the internet, we love the
ability to do all we can do on the internet.
But to have books like this that will be preserved, I think is, is important to the history of
the world as anything is.
Yeah.
I think so.
And I'd like it to be, you know, referred to as a, as a kind of reference.
If people think it's, it's good enough to be a reference.
I'd be very happy with that.
Is it, is it, did you have stuff that you had to leave out?
I mean, there was there's stuff that you just, there was just too much more information
about, or did you cover just about everything that you wanted to cover?
I covered just about everything I wanted to cover.
And that's why it went to two volumes because I kept coming across stuff like old interviews
from, which people had done in the 1980s.
I can't, I can't not have this.
This is a great story.
I've got to put it in.
Right.
Because those kind of things break up the flow.
They, they, they give it a rhythm because you talk, you, you're bombarding people with
lots of facts.
Right.
And then suddenly to have somebody's voice in there is great, which says, oh, well, you
know, we did that.
It didn't work and the wheels fell off it and it was a really bad idea.
But then we did this and it was much better.
Well, I mean, I imagine the minute you hit print, literally, not literally, but figuratively
hit print that there'd be another story that some guy'll tell you, Hey, did you hear the
one about, you know, when so and so did this?
Oh, yeah.
When it's, and when it's active, it's somebody who was concerned.
Oh, yeah.
I told you about that.
That's okay.
Why didn't you call me?
Second edition.
Second edition.
That's all right.
Yeah.
And that's the great thing about publishing.
I know that a lot of these, especially automotive books are doing second and third editions because
of the fact that the history is continuing.
Like with Aston Martin, I mean, in 10 years from now, there'll be a whole nother.
We hope there'll be another 10 years worth of information, right?
We don't know that for certain, but we hope that there will be.
Yeah.
Maybe another chapter.
Yeah.
I think so.
So, I mean, this is gosh, 700 pages.
That's, that's a lot of information.
Did you, I mean, how do you keep track of where you are and what you're doing?
Do you have sticky notes like all over a whole wall or how do you keep juggle all that?
I love sticky notes.
My entire life has been on sticky notes.
I have guys that work for me.
They have sticky notes.
I have to write myself a little timetable of about the next four weeks and put on it every
day what I want to do and what I want to do by the end of that month.
Right.
Right.
So, Aston Martin, I mean, they've had some serious ups and downs over the years.
I mean, I think that I read that they'd been bankrupt at least seven times or not bankrupt,
but almost bankrupt at least seven or eight times.
And it's amazing that it was somehow survived because so many manufacturers did not survive.
Yeah.
They were perpetually bailed out by people who just love them and that's been the way
since the 1920s.
They always had their supporters and a lot of them, thankfully, had very deep pockets.
Sure.
So, you know, every now and again, they would just run out of money and somebody would say,
well, okay, I've got 10,000 pounds knocking around.
Can I be your director?
And they said, thank you very much.
Of course you can be a director.
Well, maybe make a little plaque with your name on it, right?
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, because in the 30s, Aston Martin's were pretty pricey and it was kind of a more
limited market for what they did and that probably didn't help them a whole lot.
I mean, it was great for their reputation, maybe not so good for the bottom line.
Yeah, they kept up their standards of having a quality car.
Right.
But essentially, you know, the people that ran it were enthusiasts and engineers first
and business people second.
Yeah.
I mean, don't we see that often though in people that are good at their trade, but their
business skills are not quite as good.
And so, to find somebody who has both is kind of a rare combination or that's why a lot
of times that even though everybody says, oh, never been partners with somebody, sometimes
a partnership between a guy who's good at marketing and a guy who's good at, you know,
the numbers is a win-win situation.
Yeah, yeah.
And every now and again, that happened.
And they had some, Aston Modin's had some fantastic combinations of owners and some
very charismatic bosses as well, which all makes the story great.
Sure.
And some great looking cars, especially the early 30s, especially those early Le Mans
cars from 1931, the two-seater Le Mans from 1931.
I mean, that is sexy before sexy was a thing with cars.
I know.
And the Ulster, that's the standard car of the 30s.
And then, of course, you know, the late 40s to the late 50s, I mean, the David Brown
cars were just unbelievable.
And of course, culminating in a victory at Le Mans in 1959.
I mean, that car, that may be the prettiest car in the world ever, I would argue.
That DBR-1, man, what a car.
Yeah, I mean, halfway through the 1950s, they kind of suddenly realized that you
cannot have a racing car and it can be good looking.
Yeah.
So they got Frank Feely to design the DB3S and that was a beautiful car.
And it continued through to the DBRs.
And the DBRs were also, you know, really informed by function as well.
They were properly wind tunnel tested and they went as good as they looked.
Right.
Which was rare.
I mean, most of them were so purpose built that they didn't, nobody thought
about the design nor cared about the design of the car.
Yeah.
Well, they cared about the mechanical bits, but the availability of wind tunnels
didn't really come in until the late 1950s.
Right.
So they were just guesswork as to, you know, why they stuck on the ground
or didn't stick on the ground.
Sure.
And think about it.
I mean, that must have been a difficult task to be an engineer back in the 30s and
40s trying to figure out aerodynamics without the tools that you have even back,
you know, 25, 30 years ago that you just didn't have the tools to be able to test it.
It's amazing that they figured it out.
I know that there were some guys, they would get a fan and some smoke and they
would try to do a kind of a crude version of a wind tunnel, you know, like a whole
bit.
And the other thing they did with the DBRs was they stuck little bits of wool all
over the car and ran it around a test track and looked at it for hours to see
which way the wool was blowing.
Wow.
That's, you know, it's crazy.
And of course, they had a pretty famous American guy in 1959 running at
Carol Shelby, who's well known to all of us over here, you know, driving for
Aston Martin.
A lot of people don't realize that he had a racing career before he was building
Cobras and all the other stuff that he built.
Oh, yeah.
He first raced for Aston Martin in 1954.
And that's because John White, the legendary team manager, had gone to the
organizers of Sebring and said, can you, we need to, you know, sell more cars in
the States.
Can you recommend a driver who's known to the American public?
And Shelby's name came up and he had quite a long association with Aston Martin
going through right till the early 1960s.
Right.
And an interesting thing was that he originally approached them first before
he went to AC to build his own car.
So the future Cobra might have been built by Aston Martin, but David Brown wasn't
keen because he wanted to come.
He thought an Aston Martin always have to have an Aston Martin engine.
So he turned him down.
Until you come to modern Formula One and then they put a Honda motor in it.
So I don't know.
Yeah, well, they've just gone from Mercedes to Honda.
Exactly.
We'll talk about that in a minute, but, you know, it's it's one of those things
that that Aston Martin is such a well-known brand that doesn't sell.
You know, it's like everybody's heard of Aston Martin, but they don't sell
cars like Ford does or General Motors or, you know, even Fiat or somebody else.
I mean, they don't they're so well known yet they're that doesn't equate to sales
necessarily. But I got to imagine that the the relationship with the James Bond
franchise had to do as much, if not more than anything ever was for Aston Martin.
Yeah, it's been it's kind of come and gone for them, you know, started
it started with Goldfinger and they were quite taken aback by the whole thing.
And they didn't quite know what to do with the sell success.
They were producing DB6s faster than they could sell them.
And then it went away right through the 1970s and the 1980s was
Roger Moore was driving anything but an Aston Martin, right.
And then BMW started waiting its money around and when Ford took over,
they said, right, we've had enough.
We want to seriously get in bed with the Bond people.
And from that point on, was they're actually building cars for the films.
Right. Yeah, that's interesting how that all worked out.
And of course, you know, Aston Martin, I mean, the Ford years were, I guess they were.
I mean, we probably wouldn't have Aston Martin if Ford wasn't involved
at that juncture, wouldn't you imagine?
No, he wouldn't. Absolutely. Absolutely not.
I mean, for 20 years, Ford just threw money at it.
Right.
And, you know, from then they got a whole range of new models, which lasted
them for, you know, 10, 15 years afterwards and a new factory and a whole
method of method of construction.
So the Ford years were a lifeline for Aston Martin.
And we owe it to Ford that we've still got it today, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when Ford sold it, were they just tired of it?
Or what do you think they got?
I mean, did they get what they were looking for out of it?
Or what do you think was the mindset there?
It was like, there's often things when the parent company catches a cold,
the child suffers.
They were their premier automotive group wasn't doing well.
And they were, you know, the profits had gone from the main Ford group.
So they were just selling off.
They sold a Volvo, then they sort of landrover, then eventually they sold off Jaguar.
So Aston Martin was always due for the chop in those circumstances.
Knew it was going to come.
Knew it was coming one of these days, just not exactly when it was going to happen.
So, and of course, you know, I mean, the things that Aston Martin was doing,
I mean, hand-built, hand-built V8s, which, you know, Aston Martin's calling card.
I don't imagine that set well with the Ford guys.
I think they, I think they were a bit bemused by what they'd bought, first of all.
In 1987, and they used to parachute in the retiring Ford executives to head the company.
I think as a kind of good work, as a goodbye handshake,
that was that was considered a nice thing to do.
But again, you know, they, they, they funded
the development of the DB7 straight away.
And that really, that really changed, changed production.
That was ramped up production in a scale that they'd never seen before.
And they got the right engine for that.
And then, of course, Ford invested in the V12.
Right.
And that V12 had such a long life, and it was such a good engine.
Sure. Well, I think that, you know, the V12 is just that.
Talk about a status symbol when it comes to engines.
When you say V12, it gets people's attention, because a lot of people
don't even realize that they're such a thing.
I mean, even this day and age, where, you know, all the information
you can find all over the world, you still say V12 and people look at you
sometimes funny and say, what, what would that be?
There can't be possible that there's that big of an engine.
No, when it's, it's still their calling card, it's still their
flagship car, you know, they've got their own V12 now, which is unrelated
to the Ford one, and they continue to, you know, which is made in England.
So that, that's a real signature for them.
Sure. And what are your thoughts on Formula One and Aston Martin's
participation in that?
Is that you think that's been, I mean, obviously it's good for the brand
because it's a lot of exposure, but that's a tough cookie to crack.
When you're, when you're racing against Mercedes and Ferrari and Red Bull.
It's, yeah, I mean, I think they, they, they, they know that they get millions
in millions with the free advertising out of the exposure.
But, you know, when you've got cars, which, which the average starting
price is about 200,000 pounds or about $300,000, right?
That market is not very big, but their, their exposure is, is fantastic
when you think about it because they, they managed to get the deal
to have the pace cars and the medical cars as Aston Martin.
So every time you see a medical car go out, it's a DBX.
Right, right.
And when you see the pace car go out, it's, it's nine times out of ten, it's a
advantage. So, yeah, their exposure is way higher than their volume of cars.
Right. Yeah. I mean, that kind of exposure you think would equate to
much more sales than, than they have.
I mean, do they limit their sales like Ferrari does or do they build as
many as they need?
Their targets for sales have gone up and down.
I mean, you know, about 10 years ago, they were talking about 10,000
cars a year, but now they've, they've got more realistic.
They, they've, and they've, they've realized that it's much better to make
fewer cars that make them much higher value.
Right.
I mean, in 2024, they made 6,000 cars and they haven't got the 25, 25
figures yet, but that's, it's probably going to be less because it's been a,
it's, that was a hard year.
And, and 6,000 cars doesn't seem like enough to, to keep the lights on.
I mean, that seems like a low amount that would be hard to, to cover your costs.
It depends what kind of cars they are, I guess.
I mean, the Valhalla, which they said they'd make, they get about 999 of them.
Those are 850,000 pounds each.
That ought to do something for the bottom line.
Yeah. So that's not, they just, they just need to ramp up production of the
more expensive cars and they've always had the specials baked into the product
plan. Right.
So they'll do, they'll do a run of 100 charge, you know, two million for each
of them and then they'll do another different type of car because what the
ultra-wealthy want is exclusivity.
And they want a car that nobody else has.
And those cars seem to, those special editions, whether it be at Ferrari or
Aston Martin or McLaren, those, you know, kind of one of 400, they can
charge basically whatever.
And I just think they go, what if we charge three million on this one?
And they go, yeah, that sounds good.
And what can we get, what can we get away with?
Yeah. I mean, yeah, when's going to, somebody's going to tell us to stop,
you know, we'll just keep making.
They ring around their favorite, we're very wealthy customers.
I said, oh, if we did one of these, would you be interested?
Yeah. Yeah.
And then they take the bait and most of them pre-sell out.
I mean, most of them are sold before they even start the manufacturing process.
I mean, they're not completely paid for.
I imagine it's just a deposit or something along those lines.
But, you know, it's like with Ferrari.
If you want certain Ferraris, you have to buy other Ferraris to be able to even
get into the, to the queue to buy the one Ferrari you really wanted.
So you buy five that you didn't care about to get the one you wanted.
Yeah. You have to be lucky enough to be invited.
Yeah. Exactly.
So with, with Aston Martin, we talked about this a little bit, you know,
using Honda engines, I mean, that seems odd.
I would think that a manufacturer would want to use their own power plants
in a Formula One car or any type of motorsports, because it, I don't know,
it just seems like it dilutes the brand a little bit when you're using a Honda
and an Aston Martin or a Mercedes or whatever.
Yeah. It's it's been a quite interesting way that the feeling has evolved
about how people care about what what brand of engine is in their car.
Because, you know, in the 1960s and 70s, the idea that an Aston
Martin could have anything but an Aston Martin engine would be just heresy.
I love that word.
But now, you know, when they went over to the Mercedes engines
in in 2014 for the Vantage, it worked fine because people and I spoke
to one of Aston Martin's oldest dealers for the book and he said, well,
people people recognize that that Mercedes AMG engine is a really good reliable engine.
Right. So they were fine with it.
And it has Aston Martin state of tune as certain changes to it.
But I think people are more open to different power plants to keep their car going.
Well, and listen, if it's if it's a choice between Aston Martin
participating in Formula One with a Honda engine or not participating at all,
I think we'd all choose the former that we would like to see them continue
to participate in F1 and, you know, hopefully be competitive
and to not just go away.
Yeah. I mean, it's when you think about it,
relatively, as you said, relatively the amount of cars they sell,
it's a miracle that they're at all.
Yeah. And it's, you know, thanks to Lawrence Troll, who pulled off a coup
when he made an agreement, I think for the next 40 years that the F1 team
has to pay Aston Martin X amount of dollars.
So even if he doesn't own the companies anymore, Aston Martin F1
will continue to get funded by Aston Martin proper for many, many moons
to come or something along those lines.
Yeah. Yeah. Separating the road car funding from the motorsport was a smart idea.
Absolutely. And, you know, Lawrence Troll is an interesting guy.
And on one hand, he seems kind of like an arrogant guy who doesn't listen to people
and doesn't, you know, doesn't care about doing things and just wants to own the team.
But on the other hand, I mean, he did a lot to improve the F1 team.
I mean, Bill, the state of the art factory, a world class wind tunnel,
you know, a simulator brought in Adrian Newey, which I don't know how that makes
sense at this point in time.
But, but, you know, hopefully it does.
Yeah. I mean, all the ingredients are there and the investment is massive.
Oh, yeah. I was reading the numbers.
It's crazy, the amount of revenue that they get.
And it's amazing, based on where you finished in the manufacturer standings,
how much money you get. I think the lowest team last year got 60 million
and Mercedes got 260 million. Wow.
That's a significant difference.
Yeah. Mad money.
Yeah.
So, and, you know, we were talking, I mean, we were talking about the pace car.
And I think Mercedes, so I read somewhere and I'm not sure if this is
one internet troll or what, that that Aston Martin might not be renewing
their safety car and on track car, a medical car agreement.
I guess they had an agreement and Mercedes had one, too.
And I'm not sure.
So I didn't know if you'd heard anything about that or not.
No, I hadn't, but it might be a case of the highest bit of wins.
Well, true, absolutely.
I mean, that DBX, that thing is, that's a sexy looking SUV.
I'm really impressed, especially in that green.
They pulled off a real coup there, I think.
And I interviewed the guy that was the head of engineering at the time.
And they were, they waited for the right moment for it.
Right.
They produced, they produced along a Lagonda concept in 2009, which looked really good.
But that was too soon.
That was before the Bentley Bay Tegra, before the Colorman,
Rolls-Royce.
So when the DBX, they came to develop the DBX, they thought, well,
should we do it off a platform?
Should we do it off a Mercedes platform?
And they decided to go ahead with their own platform just to get the credibility.
Right.
So they're not sharing parts with anybody else.
And that gave them a lot of freedom to build the
the proportions and dimensions they wanted to.
And it's quite a low-slang car for an SUV.
Right.
And it's so distinctive, you can't make, you can't mistake it for anything else.
It will make you turn your head.
I don't care how jaded of a car guy you are.
You see one of those, especially in the green.
And you see one of those and you just immediately go to it.
I mean, and that green, especially the DBR9 Racing Green, my wife has a V8
Vantage convertible 2008 that's in DBR9 Racing Green with a Sahara tan.
That is the best looking car you can park anywhere.
I don't care what you park next to.
People are gravitating to that car.
There's something about an Aston Martin in green that is perfect.
That sounds like the best combo.
Yeah, it is a great combo.
I actually made the mistake of telling my wife that I maybe was thinking
about selling it and she said, don't you even let anybody test drive that car?
It's only got 5,000 original miles on it.
And it's a, you know, it's a 2008.
So it's a limited use to say the least.
Well, hang on to that one.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the question begs, are you an Aston Martin driver?
What's your daily driver?
I'd love to be an Aston Martin driver, but I'm just a poor author.
Yeah, just scraping by him, right?
And so what is your daily driver?
Oh, well, I have to say, I'm afraid, well, we're not afraid.
I change it very carefully.
It's a Mazda, it's a Mazda 3.
Oh, yeah, I like those.
Those are fun to drive.
A friend of mine has one of those and it's a lot of fun to drive.
It's a cool looking car and it's very well made.
And it's got to live on the street in London.
Yeah, living on the street, living on the street in London is hard.
And it's been scraped by the passersby already.
Yeah. Oh, it just happens.
I think I think when you buy a car and have to park on the street,
you should just take a key and just go ahead and gouge the fender right away
before you even drive it and just say, OK, I got that out of the way.
Well, I could my own wheels straight away.
We won't even get into curbing wheels.
That's a whole nother, a whole nother subject.
Do you do you have a favorite as to Martin?
Is there one that you particularly are fond of?
I quite I've got quite a soft spot for the V8.
The you know, that long running V8.
Yeah. And I think the sort of very last of the sea,
the series where they had slightly flared arches and BBS
a lot of wheels as in the as in the living daylights.
That just looks so good. Yeah.
Isn't it funny? That's a good looking car.
BBS wheels in the day were the wheel.
I mean, there was nothing that came close to a BBS wheel.
The coolest looking wheel on the planet,
whether it was on a Porsche race car and Aston Martin or a Camaro,
it didn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.
So that was a very thorough design by then.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
So so to find your book, obviously, I guess, Amazon,
you can probably find it.
But can you I mean, the publisher of the US publisher,
Evro Publishing or North America's Quarto knows dot com, I guess, is the
yeah, Quarto distributes it.
But if you go to the Evro EVRO website,
there's a whole lot of information on it.
You can see extracts from the book as well, if you can order it direct from that.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Well, listen, we really appreciate your time and have enjoyed very much.
Talking about Aston Martin's and all things Aston Martin.
And we hope we can run into you sometime soon.
If you're over here in the States, come visit us here just west of Philly.
Oh, well, your mouth looks amazing.
It's it's it's crazy.
I don't know what I was thinking.
And I'd like to if you if you have a big check or know anybody does,
we'd sell it tomorrow.
OK, just kidding.
Anyway, thanks so much.
Russell Hayes, everybody from the book, Aston Martin.
And go out and get it if you can, because it's fantastic.
And we'll see you soon.
And I'm sure. Thank you very much.
By the way, those of you don't realize this is a car show,
but we've been talking music in the studio with us.
Obi O'Brien, who has done a lot of work with John Bon Jovi.
Obi is a car guy, too, and has been for a long time.
There's a picture of you and on Jovi on the cover of
we were together on Rod and Custom talking to our special guest of the day,
Scott Pruitt. Good morning.
How are you guys doing?
Mark Lieberman, Tucker Wiz Guru.
Is that fair? I'll go with Ash.
Corky Coker. How are you this morning, Corky?
I'm great. How are you, brother?
Brock Gates, Jr. How are you, sir?
From somewhere in North Carolina, Ray Evernham.
How are you, sir? I'm doing great.
John Clark with the Ford Motor Company.
This is a great honor.
Her name is Lynn St. James and you're all the way across the country, I guess.
Right? Yeah, I'm in Phoenix, Arizona right now.
Tony Angelo, YouTuber, influencer, drifter, one point TV host.
Talking race cars, classic cars, movies, music or just having fun.
It's the Classic Automall Show on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the Classic Automall Show.
If you have questions or comments, write podcast at classicautomall.com.
Hey, is that me?
The finger. He already did the finger.
I was ignoring his finger.
But here we go again.
Oh, that cracks me up.
J.R. has got too much free time.
He's got too much free time.
And, you know, you talk about, you know, now I've got my own theme song.
You love rockin', that guy rocks.
And my poor wife is, you know, I don't know how she puts up with anything that I do.
So, wow, what, you know, we're selling like crazy, but as we mentioned earlier,
the consignments have just, the weather has just been so nasty.
Well, and ugly.
And ugly.
That's what happened when you opened a consignment house in Pennsylvania.
Exactly.
It's always that risk.
It's not always sunny, you know, it's there's many, many days that are.
And the worst part is, is apparently they put salt down, even if it's, you know,
chance of snow or even just heavy rain.
We could put salt down and maybe it'll, you know, make it splatter different.
And you make a good point.
This is the, this is the time when it's rainy like this, that you get this salt
mist on your windshield.
That is the worst thing you can't see.
And then it gets underneath your car.
You have to spray the soapy stuff.
The soapy stuff.
The soapy stuff.
So it's not always sunny in Philadelphia.
No, it's not.
And when there are guys named soapy slips.
So soapy sails.
Exactly.
And soapy Williams, the former governor of Michigan.
That's exactly right.
So where do we sell cars this week?
Where?
Oh, how about Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?
Haverford, Haverford, Pennsylvania, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Spring City,
Pennsylvania, Shavertown, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Middletown,
Pennsylvania.
Why don't we just sell all the Pennsylvania?
All of Pennsylvania.
Perky Omenville, Pennsylvania.
Kidding.
Bay Harbor Islands, Florida.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Honeybrook, Pennsylvania.
Leesport, Pennsylvania.
Middletown, Pennsylvania.
Greeley, Colorado.
Plainfield, Pennsylvania.
McKinsey, Pennsylvania.
Waynesville, Georgia.
New Baltimore, New York.
Charlton, New York.
Huh.
So lots of PAs.
Maybe Laforza came out of Greeley, Colorado.
Greeley, Colorado.
That's a cool part of the world.
So some of the new arrival, our YouTube channel.
Thank you for all that subscribe and who watch and to comment and to tell your friends about
it and everything you do.
We're really getting some traction with it.
Have we hit a bazillion yet?
We're about a bazillion.
So we're at.
Half a bazillion.
213,000 subscribers, which is mind boggling.
When we got that plaque.
100,000.
It was 100,000.
When was that?
Two weeks ago.
All right.
Now let's don't completely.
But what's amazing to me is some of the shorts that we have are like in the million.
Yeah, millions of views.
And we've got 1778 videos online right now between our shorts and our full link stuff.
Thanks to Randy and the guys and total views, 12.8 million views.
Wow.
So don't say there's nothing to watch.
If everybody would just send us a dollar every time you've used them.
Is that how it works?
Maybe I'm doing it wrong here.
I didn't know that you had to ask for a dollar for everyone, right?
We can monetize.
We can monetize that bad boy.
How about the new arrivals?
How about this one's a little near and dear to my heart.
The first one, 1937 Ford 85 Deluxe Cabriolet, orange tricolor over 10 and brown.
This thing is spectacular build built by some friends of ours.
Got a 6.2 liter LS3, four speed automatic transmission, no expense spared.
I mean, this thing over 500,000 invested.
I mean, a lot of that is not recoupable.
We get it.
We know that, you know, just because you.
That's not the list price.
That's not the list.
No, it's not the list price.
And it was donated by our dear friends to the Christian Action Charity,
which is a charity founded in 1982 centered on disaster relief efforts.
And they go in and either gut your house if it needs to be and then rebuild from
the frame out and up, or they go in and tear it down and clean it out and make way
for, you know, if you've had a tornado or floods or some kind of damage.
And then they have, and it's all volunteer.
None of the guys get paid to do it.
They have the heavy equipment that can remove trees from properties that have demolished.
And last year they demolished and cleared the property for 300 homes.
So it's 300 families that probably wouldn't have been able to rebuild had they not had
the help from, from these guys.
And, you know, they don't receive any money.
Everything they do is free.
Nope.
They don't receive any public funds or even grants.
They're all just, and they operate debt free.
They, you know, they monetize it every year and they cover their costs.
And, and how is this car related?
They, it was donated by the sellers.
The husband passed away just after this build was completed.
And the wife, you know, it was hard for her to, it was their dream car, you know, and
they built this thing, you know, to the specs that they wanted.
And it was hard for her to, to, you know, it's like walking back in the house.
You know, it's just tough.
And, and so she decided that it should go to a good cause.
And we're just happy that we can help with that.
If you go to their website, Christinaction.com and you can, I guess, donate there and see
what's going on.
And also go to our website and you can, you know, get information on the car itself.
It's stock number 8153.
And we've, we've just recently lowered the price on it a little bit.
We'd like to get it sold for them.
I don't know if there's any tax advantages.
So I'm not going to claim that there is for purchasing the car.
You're not writing the check directly to the charity.
So I'd imagine not, but you're doing a good thing.
This is a good thing to help people in need in a crisis time.
You know, so I'll get off my soapbox now and thanks to the family that.
Oh, absolutely.
The car itself is like a foos level.
Yeah.
It's Boyd Coddington level.
It's perfect.
I mean, it's, it's a hard to find fault with it.
So if you get a chance, check that out.
Another new rival is 1940 Pontiac Deluxe 8 Silver Streak Superior Hearse.
Black over blue.
It's parked in my office for some reason.
I don't know why.
Black over blue lovingly preserved.
This thing is really well.
I mean, do you expect a Hearse not to be well made?
You probably don't want to see a Hearse that's got, you know, the sagging headliner.
There are.
Not this one.
Probably are.
All clean.
Yeah.
Rarely seen.
I mean, you just don't see these and especially from 1940.
It was the last time you saw a Hearse from the 40s or even 50s for that matter.
Never, never.
They just don't exist.
Rarely even in movies.
Yeah.
And they're just not seen.
So if you get a chance, check that one out.
Another new arrivals of 1977 Chevrolet Cheyenne 20 step side long bed pickup.
Green over saddle, 87,000 actual miles.
One family owned since new.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Garage kept.
I mean, who kept a step side long bed pickup in a garage?
Well, not many people.
He had a barn or something.
He did.
But yeah.
My point is, is that not many people had the space to do.
That's right.
Trucks are, you know, low on the totem pole.
They went outside.
Sure.
Mama's Cadillac went in the garage.
And, but this thing is really, really nice.
And it's long bed and it's funny how long bed pickups used to be almost unsalable.
People just did.
Like four doors.
Like four doors sedan.
They just didn't care about it.
They're back baby.
But boy, people love the long beds now.
I mean, I guess they're more practical if you're planning on hauling things.
Yeah.
This one's got 350 cubic inch four barrel and it's a long bed step side, which is rare.
You see the long bed slab side, but the step side in the long bed is not something you
normally see.
Very cool.
The step side is a great idea on a truck.
I don't know why they don't make them anymore.
My, my GMC has a back bumper step that you can step on.
Electric.
And, and no, this is just a hole that you stick your foot in.
But, but the running boards on my old GMC truck would actually come out.
Yes.
And, and then you could hit the button on the end of them and they'd slide back where
you could get up into the, into the box.
Wow.
My new ones are always out, which I didn't know and I'm kind of ticked off about.
I don't know why GMC didn't make them all fold up and come out.
But, you know, I'm sure it had something to do with money, but I would have paid the
extra had I paid enough attention to know that the damn thing didn't happen.
You knocked your chin on it.
No, I just didn't realize that there are certain things that I overlook in buying cars.
So if you need to sell a car and you want to get a good price for it and you want to
get somebody who's not really paying attention, I'm your guy.
We all have tunnel vision when we go to buy a car.
I just want that car.
Yeah, exactly.
I bought it.
I've told this.
I bought an M3 BMW one time from a dealer and I didn't even test drive it.
Kathy's like, what is wrong with you?
I just want it.
I don't want to ruin it by test driving.
Maybe if I test drive it, I'm going to go, well, you know, I really don't care about
this.
And I think that's what you meant.
She's so logical.
I love that logic.
So other new arrival is the 1982 Buick Riviera convertible.
These are iconic body styles.
Riviera, the Oldsmobile Tornado and the Cadillac El Dorado of the 1979 and through 85 era.
We're cool looking cars.
Yeah, a little luxury.
A little luxury.
This one's got 79,000 miles.
A little 307 cubic inch V8.
Red Fire Miss Metallic over Dark Red, which is a good color for those.
You know, nicely optioned car.
It's just, and it's a good kind of, it's not really a classic car in the true sense of
the word, but it's kind of cool.
You pull up to a car show and you're going to gather, people are going to look at it
and they're going to ask you questions about it because a lot of people haven't seen these.
You just don't see them on the road anymore.
You don't.
And that's the testament to their well-builtness.
Yep.
How about the 1956 Dodge Custom Royal D500 convertible?
I've been using this in a lot of our advertising.
Oh yeah.
This thing is bad.
Oh my God.
Black and white over black and white.
Frame offer store.
Rebuilt 315 cubic inch HEMI, which people don't even realize there was HEMIs back in the 50s.
There were.
Power flight automatic.
One of less than 1500 belt.
This is early Mopar muscle for lack of a better term.
It's just spectacular.
And it's in our main showroom.
So when you come to classic autumn.
Yeah.
Just turn right.
Turn right into the main well.
It's like at the grocery store.
Why is it that people turn right?
Why won't people turn left when they go to grocery stores?
There's some psychological thing about turning right when you go into a store and everything
that you, I don't know.
And then they put the milk at the back and the lime and the coconut.
The tail lights on this car are worth the price of admission.
Yeah.
I don't know what it would cost to restore the tail lights and re-chrome them.
Amazing.
And to do that, to redo those, even if you could find them.
Right.
But it would be crazy, crazy, crazy.
So next on the list is the 1955 Chevrolet 3100 series panel truck, commercial red over
gray.
Yeah.
Never heard of commercial red.
Is gray?
G-R-A-Y or G-R-E-Y?
That's a good question.
It could be either one.
Excellent question.
Sometimes it appears in both iterations in write ups.
I think I'll have to do so.
Kudos to the writer.
Yeah.
I want to hear more about that.
When you get to it.
This is nicely restored.
Three-speed manual, 235 cubic inch inline six.
It's a great, great engine.
Yeah.
Those are awesome.
Oh my God.
They are bulletproof as the day is on.
Love the red.
Love the red almost.
I do too.
It really looks nice.
And last but not least, the 1927 Ford Model T Roadster.
Midnight blue over Ivory.
Mm-hmm.
2345 actual miles.
Phew.
How's that possible?
It's a hot rod.
Yeah.
350 cubic inch.
ZZ1 Cracky 8 is how.
That's how.
Aluminum head.
So I imagine the car itself has more miles than that on it.
But since built and restored, it's got 2345 miles.
TCI turbo hydrometric 350 three-speed automatic four-wheel disc brakes and a Ford 9-inch 411
posi rear.
It's a real custom.
It's got parts from 27, 28 and 32 Ford.
Wow.
Really interesting.
Pretty crazy.
So when we return, we'll be joined by our friend on the west coast, Mr. Keith Martin,
publisher of Sports Carp Market Magazine.
We'll see you in a couple of minutes.
Here's a special offer from Sports Carp Market Magazine.
Get a six-month subscription for just $19.95 by going to sportscarmarket.com slash test
drive at the number six.
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.
It's the Wall Street Journal of the collector car world.
Activate your six-month trial of Sports Carp Market Magazine by going to sportscarmarket.com
slash test drive six.
That's sportscarmarket.com slash test drive at the number six.
Offers for a limited time.
Be in the know with Sports Carp Market.
And we're back with the Classic Auto Mall show from the Classic Auto Mall studio.
Morgantown PA, dreary, dreary, dreary day, March day.
Here we are.
But joining us to brighten our day, Mr. Keith Martin, publisher of Sports Carp Market Magazine.
Good morning, sir.
They call me Mr. Sunshine here in Portland.
Is the sun ever shining in Portland?
Or is that a myth?
One time.
About an hour.
Yeah.
Well, that's why you got to have-
Oh, she put sunscreen on it.
We're really scared.
Is that SPF three?
Exactly.
That's all you need, right?
You don't have to have that fancy 50.
Well, I hear you can get a suntan even with the cloudy day.
I don't know.
My wife's told me that.
And I don't know if I believe her, but, you know, who am I to argue?
You know, skin cancer is probably-
Well, you're here to argue, but you have to pick your battle.
Boy, don't you ever.
Yeah.
There are times that I say things and I think, what in the hell was I not thinking to say
that?
I just had a very-
I've got my jagus on Bring a Trailer right now.
Yeah.
It's going to end tomorrow, a couple of days.
So, I got a comment today saying, hey, this same car is advertised on Hemmings.
Who are you trying to fool?
It's all smoke and mirrors.
We're trying to put the, you know, hey, you see these little cups and where's the ball?
You know, I said, you know, a lot of websites now scrape other people's listings.
I personally won't, I won't deal with somebody who does that.
Right.
Because I want to be dealing with the real person.
Right, exactly.
And, you know, the worst part about it is, is that it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what the reserve is in an auction.
It doesn't matter if it's advertised 100 other places, pay whatever you want to pay.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, don't, you know, I don't know, people have this weird thing in their head.
They go, well, if I knew the reserve, then I probably wouldn't even bid on it.
Well, you don't know where they're going to lift the reserve.
That's right.
You know, so has the, has the Jag getting close?
It's at 37.5 right now in secretly, I would, I'd like to get closer to 60.
Yeah.
And then, you know, by the time you take away the selling fees and the prep and all that,
I mean, it's, it's, it's not, if you go to one of the, the bad partners, it's not cheap
to sell through them.
Right.
But they do a hell of a good job when they present your card.
Probably, well, not probably much better than you were.
You could do on your own, not you or I.
You and I have a little better understanding, but it's not, it's like washing your own windows.
You can do it, but you don't want to.
You could sell.
I sold my SL 55 Mercedes on a Mercedes specific site and they did an okay job, but they sent
a guy out with an iPhone and took pictures underneath and it didn't cost me almost nothing.
Right.
Right.
On the other hand, the, it's going to cost me, there's a 12% surcharge.
So, you know, it'll cost me six, $7,000 to sell this car.
But I'll probably get six or 7,000 more.
That was what I was getting ready to say that the value added to just like what we do here.
I mean, when we sell a car, if you were to take a picture, you know, a couple of grainy
pictures and throw it up on Marketplace, you might get 40,000 for a car.
We could probably get 50 for the same car and, and get you more money in your pocket
with no aggravation.
You don't have to deal with it.
You don't have anything to do other than just wait for the check or wait for the phone
call to tell you to send the title.
I think what, what Bat has done with their partner's thing, they've put a quality bar.
They spend an almost three grand reconditioning my car and I didn't think it needed anything.
Right.
Yeah.
I thought it was perfect.
Yeah.
What's the problem here?
The valve cover gasket, rear wheel, stuff because they want the car to come out from their
partners to be really good.
Yeah.
And they don't want to have, they don't want to start getting feedback saying, oh, you
didn't disclose this or this was a problem or, and that's the problem with consignment
vehicles, whether it's an online like Bat or cars and bids or whether it's us as a, as
a retail dealer or whether it's an auction house.
These are old cars and, and things are going to go wrong with them.
And the more you can mitigate that and, and fix the things that are maybe obvious or maybe
not quite as obvious, you know, you, you have a different way of looking at your own car
than, than a stranger does and, and I get that.
So we got a note from the mechanic yesterday.
He said, you know that thermostatic switch that turns on one of your fans that went out
five years ago?
Well, it's, it's gone to sleep again.
It's waiting until I've had the car five years, 10,000 miles, not a problem.
And it's waited until this exact moment when it's one day away from being sold to take
a nap.
Yeah.
It's, it's inevitable that that happens.
I mean, we have cars that we literally put on a truck and trailer and there's no problem
and they start and they run, they drive and they don't do anything wrong and they get
to the West coast and there's some little issue that's popped up and we don't know how
it happened and it just happens.
And it's, and it's timing and just, you know, all of that.
I mean, it's, it's inevitable.
It's Murphy's law, I guess.
Oh, I sold my 67 duetto, which I'd had 10 years and was a perfect, a perfect driver.
Guy gets the car and he says, how come there's no reverse in this car?
I'm sorry.
Good question.
Yeah.
I said, well, we never drove it backwards.
Yeah.
We weren't trying to, you know, if we'd have done that, we'd have been trying to get the
mileage off the odometer by driving backwards because that works, right?
Have you tried pushing the lever all the way to the right and then down?
Yeah.
I just got to give it a little extra tug.
Well, it's amazing in this day and age and this is, this is the boon in the bane of the
collector car hobby as we know it.
We get a lot of guys who've never bought classic cars, never owned a classic car before that
come in here to buy a classic car.
And we try to explain to them about how, why, what, when and where, and when what's going
to work and what might not work and what might fail on you and what, you know, what these
issues are.
And, you know, they, they're, it's in one ear and out the other.
They're so excited about owning a fill in the blank, 67 Mustang or a 71 Jaguar or whatever
the piece is that they don't, they're blinded.
They don't see what they need to see.
Well, they think they bought a brand new Lexus in an old body.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's the problem with cars built in the early 2000s, a 2002 Corvette looks like
a new car.
Guess what?
It's 24 years old.
Well, that Porsche I just bought, that C4S is a 2005, that's a 20 year old car.
Yeah.
It looks like a new car.
Yeah.
So, well, you know, so this, this Jaguar though, I mean, I know we'll, the show will air after
it has sold, we hope it sells, but it is really, it's a good car.
It's really well sorted, really nicely maintained, all of that good stuff.
Original paint, original interior.
Yeah.
They're only original ones.
They don't, you can't go back to original.
I've never owned a car that has been this original, but also has not been a barn pig.
Right.
I like it.
This car has been loved all its life.
The guy who bought it and his son who sold it to me, they're both NASA engineers.
So they did maintain it very well or replaced every little fuse, every little anything went
wrong.
They, I love guys like that.
They're meticulous to a fault.
Yeah.
No, it's been, I've put, I figured out that it's cost me 65 cents a mile to own this
car.
Not a bad return on the old investment of what you do.
And again, we tell people, don't buy these cars and investments and buy them because
you love them.
If you make a profit when you sell it, then hallelujah.
Good for you.
Try to buy a good one.
Yeah.
Just buy a good one.
Buy the best you can afford.
That's the...
And also pick them.
I had a Mercedes 250C that I was in 40 grand that I...
I remember that car.
Yeah, for 22 or something.
And we asked our readers, how come I lost so much money in the car?
And they all said, because you bought the wrong stupid car in the first place.
Exactly.
What is it that all the wealthy guys say, I didn't pay too much.
I just bought it too early, right?
I know.
And what Bruce Meyer says is, buy the best and you'll only cry once.
Yeah.
Well, Bruce has got quite a collection of Sobs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Sonnet, I think, that's an underrated car.
I think that's a blue chip climbing and value car, right?
The first gen, when they had the actual Sob Bonnie on it, body that looked like a troll.
Right.
That was the funniest looking car ever.
I remember there was one...
And it had a column shift on it.
Yeah.
That's right.
I've had a couple of the series, I guess there are three's, but I never gravitated
towards the floor shifter in that car compared to the column shift in the earlier cars.
Isn't that funny how a column shift sometimes can be a negative on a car, but some people,
you know, certain cars, it just works well.
Well, Alpha and their 6C2500 sedans, they had a five speed column shift.
Really?
Oh man, that could get a little wonky.
Your arm would be over here.
It's like those 18 wheelers.
I don't know that shift pattern for those semi trucks, but...
I know.
My daughter has a commercial driver's license and drives those.
Really?
Yeah.
She's head of brand marketing for Western Star Trucks, which is a division of Daimler.
Nope.
But she can drive a 40 foot semi through downtown Portland traffic and rush hour.
Wow.
Wow.
We ought to sign her up for some kind of racing thing because it sounds like she would be
good at it.
She loves her job and she's just five foot tall and just crawls up into the truck.
But they have those air rod seats, so they just come up as, you know, based on your weight
is how far they go up.
A little elevator comes and gets you.
Yeah, good.
You know, the reason I'm selling the Jag, it's been the best classic car I have ever
owned.
10,000 miles on this car.
But I'm kind of done with it.
You know, I've done all the tours.
I've done all the rallies.
Putting another 10,000 miles is not going to change my life.
No, no.
But I need an easier car to live with.
You know, that car takes three latches to open the hood.
Right.
It really takes two people.
Where with the C4S I've got, it's a modern car.
Yeah, it really is.
Even though it's, as you said, 20 years old, it's still a modern car with modern conveniences.
It's comfortable.
It's fast, but it's comfortable and a lot going for it.
And especially as we get older and it's nothing, it's not like somebody's going to look at
you and go, well, you know, that's a grandpa car because it's not.
It's a cool car.
Well, Porsche, I'm sure somebody's already written the book, but they have the magic
touch for refining their shape to keeping it modern while keeping it fresh, you know,
without it.
It's just, it's just, it's how they've done that.
How they've done all their SUVs, their four-door stands.
I mean, look, how long did it take Lamborghini and Ferrari to come up with a four-door?
Forever.
And they still, you know, didn't get it right.
Porsche got it right right out of the gate.
And I think the McCann is a great-looking car.
And I got a buddy of mine who's got a GTS McCann, he says, if you want a best all-around
vehicle you can own, he said a McCann GTS might be at the top of the pile.
I have, I take exception to that a little bit.
I was on a 1,000 mile tour and a guy loaned me his brand new GTS to drive.
And the problem is that they're so good that they're almost Korean.
Yeah, they're vanilla, they're just, yeah.
And I, you know, if I want to drive an SUV flat out, I mean, why would I do that?
Right.
Yeah, an SUV needs, because it can haul something that you need to haul or because you're blasting
about off-road.
It's not, it goes zero to 60 in 3.3.
Yeah, I don't, I think it's a great marketing move for Porsche and they've sold a lot of
cars.
Sure.
But it's just, it's just in, because it's a sports SUV, that's a contradiction in terms.
It's like a four-door coupe.
They love that nomenclature too.
So anyway, we could do this all day, but sadly the clock is telling us that we've run out
of time.
So we will talk, we'll be talking next, we'll figure out how close I got to my reserve on
the Jag.
Absolutely.
Keith Martin, Sports Car Marketing Magazine.
Thanks again, Keith.
We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.
And we'll catch you next week on The Classic Auto Mall Show.
We'll see you then.
And thanks for stopping by.
Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Music, courtesy of the Pat Travers Band, for tour dates, contact and stuff, visit pattravers.com.
Produced by CarSmart's Media, copyright, all rights reserved.
About this episode
Stewart Howden hosts a lively discussion with automotive author Russell Hayes about his comprehensive two-volume history of Aston Martin, covering the brand from its 1913 origins through to 2025. They explore the origins of the company name, the iconic winged logo, and the challenges of researching early automotive history. Hayes shares insights into his writing process, including the support from Aston Martin's historian and the decision to expand the book to cover the entire story. The conversation also touches on the value of preserving automotive history through detailed books in the digital age.
Aston Martin F1
BBS
Ferrari
Ford ownership of Aston Martin
Formula One
four speed automatic transmission
hand-built V8s
Honda
Jaguar
James Bond franchise
Aston Martin DB5
Aston Martin DB7
Aston Martin DBR1
Aston Martin DBX
Aston Martin Lagonda
Aston Martin Valhalla
BMW M3
Cadillac Eldorado
Cadillac ELR
Chevrolet 3100
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Corvette
Dodge Custom 880
Ford Model T
Ford Mustang
Mazda RX-3
Oldsmobile Toronado
Shelby Cobra
Volkswagen Golf
Original notes
Show #233 airdate 03-04-26, Stewart welcomes Author Russell Hayes who has written what some call the definitive book on " @AstonMartin - The Entire Story" available from www.EvroPublishing.com and @Amazon. Discussed are the years covered in the two volume set, the famous winged A-M logo, the involvement in the company by @Ford, the company's step into @AstonMartinF1 and his other books about @Audi, @VW #VolkswagenGTI, #VolkswagenGolf, #BeetlesandBusses. Plus KeithMartin joins to lament saying "goodbye" to his @Jaguar #V12. #JamesBond #Goldfinger #CarrollShelby #BMW @Ferrari @MB
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