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LIVE
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Bring a Trailer podcast.
Alex Porter here, coming to you from the San Francisco headquarters of the company, joined
by a man who really needs no introduction, Donald Osborn today, Donald Osborn ASA, accredited
senior appraiser, also principal of automotive valuation services and consulting director
for the Audrain Automobile Museum, classic car expert extraordinaire, Bon Vivant,
a man of many charms. Donald, thanks for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me, Alex. It's a pleasure.
We got into it right before I even pushed record. We were already talking about whether
Bring a Trailer is a piece of trash or not. So I don't know if we should start there,
or if we should start with your background or where we should go.
Well, we can start with my background. I knew Randy Nanenberg before Bring a Trailer started,
and I spent a very cold evening in Pebble Beach sitting next to Howard Swig,
talking about what we would not talk about in terms of Bring a Trailer.
But it's a very, very funny thing. I remember Bring a Trailer back when you were hired, when it was
an amalgamating site where it picked up great listings of cars for sale in various places,
almost all of which were complete POSs, but really interesting POSs.
It's something that I relate to greatly because my guiding philosophy when it comes to old cars
has always been maximum impact for minimal outlay. The weirder car you can find that nobody
else cares about the better. You can have a lot of fun using it, driving it,
showing it off to people, explaining it. It's nothing more boring than having a car you don't
have to explain. Oh, look, it's another new Porsche 911. Oh, you have to explain the color.
Okay, got it. No, you've got to explain the stitching and how all the pain you went through
to custom order. No, I'm with you, Donald. Oh, my God. So, yes, I am a long-term BAT subscriber.
I don't know if BAT actually never signed a subscriber number, so I'd probably be really
early, whatever it was. I remember one of our earliest auctions was a launch of yours,
I think that was a Miele car or something like that. I remember when you listed that car,
everyone was very excited. Yeah, I mean, I've sold, gosh, I think probably,
I'm hardly a master seller, but I think I sold probably six or seven cars on BAT,
and I bought at least four. And I have certainly assisted clients with selling and buying lots
and lots of cars on Ring a Trailer. And as we were discussing right before we started,
as an appraiser, one of my jobs, one of the jobs of a professional appraiser,
is to understand markets. And that's a very interesting thing that's happened because
people look at collector car auctions and they say, well, wow, I didn't know that a such-and-such
two-year-old car is a collector car. Well, it was at this auction I saw. I said, well,
no, that was simply a used car selling in a collector car channel. And auctions and channels
are very interesting things. And the fact that sort of price points and what you get used to,
you think, okay, I go to this market, you don't go to Whole Foods to find canned peas on sale.
And so you have an idea of what you're going to get at Whole Foods versus,
I don't know, stop and shop or someplace, whatever it might be a safe way. Depending on
it, I have to be very regional Kroger's, Harris Teeter at the cover of all the region's
stock market. It doesn't matter. But we've got Alversons out here.
Alversons. Okay. Thank you very much. And it's one of these things that
markets make themselves by their appropriateness. If people can sell an item in a market,
then they will. If people think to go there to find that item, then more people will bring
more of those items there for sale. And it's been very interesting to see how the bring a trail
market has certainly grown and broadened from the beginning of it. But I've always said to
clients of mine, when they say, well, I've got a car for sale. How should I sell it? Okay,
let's look at the car, figure out what you want to do with it, figure out who the logical and
most expected buyer might be for that car and then say, okay, this is the thing that you could do
with it. And very often people will say, well, I want to consign my car to some name the shiny
lights and beautiful curtains and wonderful chandeliers and expensive cocktails auctions.
And I say, well, that's very nice. However, your car is a not going to be accepted for consignment
by that auction company because they have X number of slots that they have to fill. And your car,
which might have a market value of $80,000, will take up the same floor space as the car
they get $800,000 for. So if you were them, which one would you pick? It's simply logical. I think
they don't like. Are you that blunt with them, Donald? Do you say it like that? 100%.
Amazing. Well, one of the things that's great, I'll take a little detour here,
is I had a wonderful moment that I think everyone gets to in their lives, some earlier,
some later, when you realize that honesty, truth and directness without being rude in any way,
shape or form is the only way forward because it makes things so much easier.
And the fact that there are people in the world, shockingly, who probably don't want to be a client
of mine. And I'm fine with that. It's okay. There are other people that they can work with. And
the clients I have, love working with me, I love working with them. And I think that if you're
not going to be honest about what is your doing when it comes to selling or buying a car, I like
the end of that a bit as well, then you're simply going to be deluded and you're going to be unhappy
no matter what happens. And so I will tell people, okay, this is your car. It's likely to sell in
this price range based on its condition, its provenance, all the things that make someone want a
car. Then I say, okay, your car also is a really fantastic car. It's only had two owners from new.
The first owner, however, replaced the engine gearbox and made the interior from cloth to
leather and changed it from automatic to five speed. It's a great car. You've enjoyed it. It's
a wonderful car. It'll be a wonderful car for the next person. But that's a lot of explaining.
And a major catalog auction in this spot, wherever it might be by the side of the ocean,
is not going to want to be able to take all the catalog pages going to take to explain that to
people. Right. Right. Oh, I have told so many people that the best way to explain a car
is to list it and bring a trailer. Because first of all, we'll give you as many words as you want.
And if you are smart, like, I'm going to go really out in the limb here. Politicians,
let's talk about politicians for a second. If you've seen a politician crash and burn because
something horrible has come out about them three months after they declared their candidacy,
you would think that these people would get up in the morning and say,
I'm going to run for office, go to the kitchen table, gather their family and friends and
neighbors around and say, I'm going to run for office. What should I tell the public? And then
they'd say, well, you know, Alex, you should really tell them that, you know, when you were in the
fifth grade, you did this and when you were in the grade, you did that. And if anyone would ever
make an announcement and say, hi, I'm Donald Osborn, I'm running for Senate. And I want to tell you
that I was arrested for shoplifting at 12. So when that comes out, I don't care, it's done.
Right. I was never arrested for shoplifting at 12, by the way.
That's an important disclaimer. Don't worry.
Please, I am safe in your store. I am safe visiting your home. It's fine. But just in the
same way that people will have something about their car that they think they don't want anyone
to find out. And they will list it. Let's just say they listed on bring a trailer and they take
lovely pictures of the car and they write a wonderful description and it's great.
And they post all these pictures and then someone in the comments says, oh, by the way,
this is a really pretty car. But that engine, of course, is obviously wrong for this, this, this,
this. If they simply mention that upfront, it takes it away. It's like it's a non-starter.
Or I would go even further because we encounter this all the time and
transparency and honesty is like the whole reason we do this. But of course,
we're talking about people selling cars, so they don't always want to be honest.
But let's say you do, let's say you do get found out in the comments during live auction.
Admit it, freaking admit it. Just say it, right? Own up to a don't backpedal, don't get defensive,
right? Just be truthful. That's all people want. I forgot that I only had four fingers. I thought
I was going to, yeah, I, who knew? Or I think a lot of people are scared of this. Admit it if
you don't know it. Some people don't know everything about their car or they find out
something new, right? Right? You must encounter that all the time. Just be truthful. You don't
know everything about your car. This works on both sides of the equation, the acquisition and the
selling. My mother was a delightful lady in many ways. We had a slightly conflicted relationship,
but that's fine. From where? From where, Donald? Where'd you grow up? Give us the brief bio.
Very brief. Born in Manhattan, New York City and grew up in New York City. In fact,
one of the things that often comes up is the fact that people ask me, oh, how'd you get into cars?
I say, well, not very naturally because my family didn't buy their first car until I was 12,
you didn't get a car in New York. So I got into cars because I had absolutely no friends as a
kid. So I spent all of my time reading my older brother's car magazines and hanging out at the
library reading car magazines and car books. So my tragic childhood led to a terrific adulthood.
All you kids out there who are listening to this podcast who have no friends,
don't you worry, you too one day can be on television internationally. It can happen,
but just don't stay in your room too long. Get out and look at cars. So it's one of those things that
you say to yourself, you have to ask the questions. Why are you selling a car? Why are you buying your
car? And if you're selling this car, everyone is selling a car because they either don't need it
anymore or they don't want to deal with what the car needs or they're desperate to buy something
else. They have to sell it. Also be honest with why you're selling it. People often ask in comments,
this is such a great car. You've owned it for a year. Why are you selling it? What's wrong? What
are you not telling us about this transaction? And my mother was a school teacher for 35 years.
And the greatest gift she gave me was to say, know what you don't know, admit it and find out
where you can get the answer. The most valuable words by which I have tried to live my entire life
or as much of it as I possibly could. And so you're absolutely right. If you don't know something,
and chances are quite frankly, not that it's difficult, but through the bring a trailer
consignment process, chances are whoever is working with you is going to challenge you on
some of the things that you have not indicated. And there was a big joke, which is no longer a
joke because it's basically happening now. I used to joke that when I retired from the car business,
I would do a seminar called how to read an auction catalog, which has very little to do with
auctions actually, but it's just about the fact that it is what's not there.
Oh, totally.
It's to concern you far more than what is there.
A thousand words on the history of Launcha and one sentence on the Launcha in front of you.
It drives me crazy, man.
Exactly. Exactly. And that's the thing. I used to back in the old days when I was younger,
and before they changed my medication, I used to write lots of descriptions for auction catalogs
for all the major auction companies. And I stopped doing it for a number of reasons.
One, because they couldn't actually afford to pay me for the time that I put into it.
And the second thing was that I would try to do more research than most of the companies wanted,
or frankly, I had the time for. I got the raw material from the consigner,
and they'd want me to shape it into lovely pros. And the best auction companies,
many years ago, got to the point where they said,
Donald, when you're writing this description, it's a two-page description.
We don't want more than 30 words about the mark or the model, right about this car.
I mean, that's the gold standard. I don't see that too often in auction catalogs,
but that's what we want. I mean, that's the whole bring and trailer listing process is
built around that. Tell me about the car that I want.
Well, Alex, going back to, again, we talked about the development and growth of bring and
trailer. How about the development growth of the catalog auction business? Because I remember
seeing my first car auction catalogs where they'd actually put in a picture of a similar car.
Oh, man.
Not even a car you're bidding on. Just like, you know, 14 paragraphs about the birth of William
Crapo Durant and Louis Chevrolet, and all this. And then you see a picture, a great,
grainy picture of a car that wasn't even the car that there was selling.
Okay, fine. The fact that also it's an emotional business, buying cars is an emotional business.
So people also see what you want to see. It's like when you write a story for publication,
and you try to proofread it after you've been working on it for three weeks,
your eye and your mind fills in the words you think are there.
Yeah. Self-editing is the hard, I mean, I used to run our production department and help
design our editing style. And the hardest thing is editing yourself, right? Like,
it's almost impossible.
I said exactly what I meant to, oh my God.
I always used to tell our writers and our editors, read it out loud sometime or read it to your
wife or something. And it's like, oh man, that doesn't read the way I thought it did.
Out loud is absolutely key. It's absolutely amazing how many times that has saved me.
I think it gets to a very specific instance of a client who I recently helped to buy a car
on Bring a Trailer. I won't get too specific about it. So if he listens to this podcast,
he doesn't know that I'm talking about him, but not gonna say anything bad, but just so that
I maintain my ethics and confidentiality. But it's a interesting point that I always ask
people who have asked me to help them buy a car. Why do you want the car?
What are you going to do with it? And people will say, well, aren't you going to tell me
how much I should spend for a car? I said, absolutely not. I have no business in telling
you what you should or should not spend for a car. I will listen to you and you will say,
I want a car that I can go out and have fun driving on weekends. I don't take very long trips.
I want to be comfortable and have to be particularly fast. And I just want to enjoy,
go out for ice cream. So I said, okay, fine. And then you say, oh, I've always liked Corvette.
Terrific. Let's try and find the right Corvette for you. And then you'll say, well, of course,
it has to be numbers matching and say, why? Yeah, ice cream parlor know what the number
of your engine is when you pull up. But if you say to me, I want to buy a car that I want to take to
national meets for this brand and this mark and this model and I want to win top prizes.
A Bloomington. Give me the Bloomington Golds, Donald. Do not buy the bargain Corvette that your
neighbor has had in his backyard that his 17-year-old son has been fixing up. But I get it still cheap.
Yes, you can. And one of my favorite phrases is, what is the right price for the wrong car?
Totally. I'm sure your buddies with Bruce Meyer, too, who once told me,
buy once, cry once, right? Like buy the best one you can. Exactly.
Precisely. And to that point about telling you what you should spend for a car,
if you've been looking for a car, the car of your dreams for the last 25 years,
and one finally comes up that fits every one of your criteria, checks every one of your boxes,
and is 20% more than you want to spend for one, are you going to wait another 25 years?
Totally. Next one kind of long at your price?
Right. Right. And lose 25 years of enjoying it. No, I've learned all these lessons the
hard way, Donald, unfortunately, myself. But, you know, going to this client,
he was referred by a good friend, another client of mine, and it was the guy who's a
knowledgeable car enthusiast, does some wrenching on his own cars, and he's had lots of very
interesting cars, some high-performance cars, and he's looking for something that he and his
wife could go cruising around in. They live in South Florida, so it's hot. And so he said,
you know, I love driving my Cobra, but you know, there are many months in the year that
more than 10 minutes in the Cobra, I'm over it. So he said, you know, want to get a nice Corvette
Resto mod with air conditioning, preferably a C1, preferably something with a hard top,
so if it's really hot, we can put the top on. Great. Maybe a little power steering,
all that kind of stuff. Exactly. All that stuff. And so he said, okay,
that's great. So, you know, what should I have to spend for that? I said, yes.
You can spend anywhere from $75,000 to $400,000, depending on what you want in the bill.
So he had done a little bit of shopping on his own, he found a couple of things,
and we went through what the various attributes of these particular cars were,
and there was a car that he found that was on Bring a Trailer, and he said, you know,
what do you think about this? And so I read the listing, I contacted the seller, asked a few
questions, and I said, this is a very interesting car. It does not have what these two other cars
have, but it does have this and this. And if it is what it purports to be, it could be a good
opportunity for you given your needs. So we then arranged for someone nearby to go and inspect the
car and take a ride in the car and look underneath it and all of this, and came back with a report
that said, yes, the car is what it purports to be. Then we had the discussion about, well,
what should I spend on it? I said, well, you've seen where the various parts of the market are,
and this seems to be sort of in this part of that market. Great. Okay, fantastic. My wife really
loves it. I said, okay. Oh, right. I know where this is headed. And so I'm watching the bidding,
and I'm driving so I can't actually watch, but I'm sort of, at the corner of my eye,
whenever I get to a red light, I'm saying, wow, okay, he's passed that particular mark that he
talked about, and he's doing it very early, very un-bat. He's knocked out. I know where this is
headed. Yeah. And so he ends up with the car. He buys the car, and we immediately, again, because
he's a guy who really is sensible and listens to advice, sometimes advice. Again, as you said,
no, I don't think myself. He buys the car. We have it picked up by a local mechanic to have
a full service done in the car before it's shipped down to him, and a sorting, and he is ecstatic.
He's paid 30% more than he said he wanted to pay for that particular car, but he is ecstatic. His
wife is ecstatic, and he knows exactly what he bought. Yeah. The fool around is to do this,
then to do that. And so it's about being aware of what it is that you're buying. Yeah. That's
all that matters. I mean, Adam, what a pro experience you gave him. That's about as good as it gets,
Donald, including inspection while it's all that stuff. That's amazing. Yeah. And as we were
discussing before, it is still slightly shocking to me that people spend six figures on cars that
they've not looked at themselves, nor have they sent anyone to look at on their behalf.
And I made the comparison, buying a house, however, seeing it. And then, of course,
I added that I just recently sold a house and the buyer of my house. I'll admit something to you.
I'll admit something to you live on the podcast. I bought a car today, an expensive one, site unseen.
Well, well done, and I hope that really works out for you. You only live once, man. I mean,
I could drop dead tomorrow. I want to enjoy myself in a car that I want to drive.
You know, you don't want to drop dead because of the car you bought.
Well, that's, yeah, no, no, good point. Well, fair point.
This is actually an interesting, I don't know if it's interesting or not. I'll let you and the
people listening to this podcast decide for themselves if it's interesting or not. But
my first professional riding gig in the car world was for Swartz Car Market. I wrote Swartz
Car Market for many, many, many years and was co-host with my friend Keith Martin on What's My
Car Worth for a couple of seasons. And the first piece that I wrote for Swartz Car Market was a
piece called Mr. Osborn Builds His Dream Car, which was a take on one of my favorite old movies,
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with Kerry Grant and Renal Loy. Great movie. Anyone who's
ever done or considered a restoration of a car or a house or a boat or anything should watch this
movie. 100% couldn't agree for people. Wonderful movie. And so the reason why I titled the article
that way was because it was about my path to an Alfa Romeo 2600 sprint. It's actually how Keith
and I met. I was a subscriber to the Alfa Romeo Market Letter, the precursor of Swartz Car Market
and a big Alfa enthusiast. And I had a 63 Alfa 2600 sprint. It's beautiful. If you don't know what
that car is, it's a beautiful, baritone-bodied, four-seater, very fast GT car. You got one behind
you there on that poster. Is that right? Isn't it behind you, Julie? Oh, aren't you good? You're
a good guess. I've been staring at that thing the whole time, Don. Three of them I have this closer.
I love 2600s. I love them. And we've sold very few on BAT. They're actually, they don't come up that
often. Oh, for good reason. You're about to explain the reason. No, I love the 2600.
This is a 1962 Swiss Market poster for the Giulia Ti in the 2600. And I had a black 2600
sprint. So this is absolutely perfect. So I wanted to buy one of these cars. I always loved them
from the time I went to my very first car show, the 1964 New York Auto Show. And I saw an Alfa
2600 sprint. Now, remember, my family did not buy their first car until 1975. Good Lord. 1975.
And so it was a long time in the future. But I felt madly in love with this very strange car
that nobody else I knew had ever heard of. And so I thought I must have one. So I'm thumbing
through the pages here. I will actually date myself of Hemmings Motor News. So before you could
buy a car sight unseen on Bring a Trailer, you could buy a car sight unseen through the pages
of Hemmings Motor News. And what you did is you looked at this little black and white print ad.
You called the person. You said, do you have pictures of your car? They mailed you pictures
of photographs of their car. And so I received these lovely little Polaroids of this white 2600
sprint in Georgia, parked outside. I knew it needed restorations. So I wanted to buy a restoration
project. God knows I want to do a restoration. So we negotiated a price. Absolutely terrific.
I hire a truck to go down to Georgia, pick it up to drive it back to my house in Pennsylvania.
The truck pulls up and unloads the car. It doesn't look too bad. It's got lots and lots of mold on
it because, you know, sitting outside and all that. And he pushed it down and I opened the door.
It is absolutely no floors whatsoever. It's been sitting outside on top of Georgia pine needles
for many years and just the top of the car looked terrific, but they were at the bottom.
So I thought, okay, so this is going to be a bigger project than I thought. So I better start
thinking about buying a parts car to take care of this. So back to Hemmings. I find another
2600 sprint also strange enough in Georgia, suburban Atlanta. I think, well, okay, so I call
the guy and say, well, you know, how's this part? How's that part? Oh, it's good. And it runs and
drives it. Oh, it runs and drives. I said, okay, I'm going to, I'm not going to do the same thing.
So I fly down to Atlanta to look at the car. I said, wow, this is amazing. Okay, fine. I'm going
to take it. Oh, I'll deliver to you. As a matter of fact, I'm driving up to Pennsylvania. I've got to
go to Philadelphia. I can meet you in Philadelphia and you can drive the car home Philadelphia to
your house. Okay, great. So he calls me on the way. I said, you know what? I think I'm going to
deliver to your house and said, okay, so he comes to the house unloads. He said, well,
the problem is that it really has no clutch pressure at all. And the brakes aren't really
good. So I didn't really want you to drive this. Okay, fine. So I realized that this car
not only runs and drives for the power windows work, all this stuff. So maybe they start to
take the 66 apart for take the parts of that to restore the other one. And so I start on this
adventure, rebuild the carburetors, the notorious Solix PHH 44 carburetors. And I'm into this thing
and I'm on a business trip to California. While I'm there, I'm thumbing through Hemings. I see an
ad for a 63, 2600 sprint, one family owner from new, black tan interior, smooth and quiet at 100
miles per hour. I say, holy cow. So I go to look at the car. And it's not exactly as described
because unfortunately, the guy actually had bought it from the original family and it painted it,
but didn't put any of the trim back on. He's just come from the paint shop. And I take it out for a
drive. It's a smooth and quiet 100 miles per hour. At the paint shop, they had like reconnected
everything so there were no loose wires. So you blew the horn and the windshield wipers. Very
done. And it was a hoop. But I said, nonetheless, I'm going to take it. So I buy this car. So I now
have three 2600 sprints. So I've affected the restoration of, for instance, by buying three of
them. So therein lies the tale. So yes, you can buy a car sight unseen. Chances are they'll be the
first of three of that particular car that you end up buying. There you go. But it was a fun
adventure. Of course. Of course. And what a wonderful story. And you probably learned a lot,
right? Like we all learn things through our misadventures. And I find that I learn these great
pearls of wisdom from people like Bruce Meyer or like yourself. And then I don't actually follow
them just like your client. When, you know, the emotion of a moment or a specific car grabs a
hold of me, all that stuff kind of goes out the window or at least has a tendency to.
Well, that's not going to happen right now. Because as we also spoke, I am multitasking here
because. Yes, tell me about the rolls. How's it going? According to this podcast with you.
And I'm watching an auction. I won't mention the auction company, but I'm watching a live auction
currently online from a location a few hundred miles away from where I am. And they're on lot 255.
So my rolls is that lot 278. And it's a car that I have no business buying whatsoever.
I don't need it. I've been in the process actually of downsizing number of cars that I have.
Because when I stepped down from my role as CEO at the O'drain last November,
I decided to, I've got a place in Italy. And so I spent five months of the year in Italy
and six months here in Rhode Island a month in California. And so undriving cars get unhappy
very quickly. And so I thought, you know, I don't want to have undriving cars any place.
So I've sold three cars here in the US. And my intention is to buy another fun car for Italy.
I've got an everyday car in Italy, a Lancia Epsilon, and I'm restoring a 1935 Fiat 508
Balila Bertone sedan, one of three built, one of two extents designed by Marie Revelle with
the Mammal. It's a really cool car. So I don't need another car. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you still have a 2600? Oh gosh, no. You were cured of 2600 love.
Well, no, I am a serial collector. So I buy a car, I experience a car, I drive the car,
I love the car. And then I move on to the next thing because I want to have other experiences.
And I also am a fairly big believer in horses for courses. All the cars that I have, I never
have lost the cars at one time, but they should all give me a different driving experience. Sure.
And there was one point when I had the 2600 spread, I also had a Lancia Flaminia Penetrina
coupe. And I thought, oh, you know, and I also had a, at not the same time, a Fiat 2300 Gia coupe.
And I thought, all these cars do exactly the same thing. Sure. And that just doesn't make a lot
of sense for me as a collector, as an enthusiast. The perfect collection I ever had, which I will
never be able to duplicate again, was when I was still vintage racing. I had a really neat
vintage racer that was based on a 1951 Crosley hot shot. I saw the Crosley Gardner Special,
is a really neat thing, built in Glendale, California, this guy named Chuck Garger.
And it was on the cover of Honk and Hop Up magazines. Wait, this isn't the little blue car
that raced at Le Mans, is it? No, no, no, no, it's red. Red car, it did all of us racing in Southern
California when it was new. The guy won his class in every race he entered in Southern California,
Nevada, Arizona, an amazing thing. And it was always a race car, always on the West Coast,
till I bought it from Fantasy Junction and brought it back east and raced in the VSCCA.
Did it have custom bodies? So my dad loves hot shots and first disc brakes. I've got that cool
little stamped engine. And every time we're at the historic, he gravitates right to the pits where
all the, you know, there's like, you probably know them, they're probably your buddies. There's
a little crew of Crosley racers. The H modified. Yes, correct. But we listed maybe five or six
years ago. It might have been Fantasy also a blue, a hotrodder in SoCal, hand hammered a blue body
and drove the car around France, made it maybe 50 laps into Le Mans before it, it sold for only
50 grand. It's got to be the cheapest car that ever raced at Le Mans. Well, yeah, that's the thing.
This car had a customized body. He was very, very clever. So it didn't look like a standard
Crosley hot. Yeah, okay. When it was brand new, it had, and this is for anything when he sold it,
it had a beautifully handmade egg crate grill. It looked very much like a Ferrari Marquetta.
And when the second owner bought it, he loved the 53 Corvette. So he chopped the original nose off
and made a new nose that looked more like a 53 Corvette. And Chuck Gardner was apparently furious
with this guy. He was like, Hey, you sold the car. You do. And the car was very inexpensive,
hardly inexpensive for a very historic thing. The neatest thing about it, and I joke that it was
the most valuable part of the car is the fact that it ran on Halibrand Magnesium Midget Sprint
car wheels. No kidding. Like 11 inches or 12 inches or something like that. What was the size?
12 inch, 12 inch, 12 inch Sprint car wheels. So, so cool. And people would say,
aren't you nervous about driving those? Like, you know, if you went around a corner too fast
and the tread ran over it, that's like, if I could get going that fast, I've got other problems to
where the size of the wheels exploding. Don't the race car hot shots today? There's a huge single
carburetor. Don't they put about a 45 millimeter Weber on them or something like that? It depends.
Mine ran on dual wevers, both side draft wevers with the requisite, Raji intake manifold and
valve cover and sump. It's an amazing car, absolutely fabulous car. So I had that for racing
for the pre-war driving experience. I had a 1953, obviously not pre-war, right? You say?
Lancia Ardea, which is the last of the series of the cars which were introduced in 1939,
fabulous narrow angle V4 engine, 800 to 50 cc, the world's first production five speed gearbox
in a production car, pillarless suicide opening doors, amazing car, absolutely fantastic car.
Then if I wanted wind in my head motoring, I say that five people listening, people don't know,
I'm bald. I had a 1960 Alfa Romeo 2000 Touring Spider, which I absolutely loved.
And then if I wanted to go fast, I had a 1969 Lamborghini Islero. So every one of the cars
offered a completely different driving experience and that was absolutely fantastic.
And I never had the discipline to quite get back to that kind of thing again.
Tell me about the Islero a little bit. I love those cars. I was at the tail a couple of years
ago when they had about 20 Isleros. It was the featured car at the tail, maybe 2017,
something like that. I've always loved them. I think they're a little bit under the radar.
I'm not sure a lot of people know about them. They're just a gorgeous car.
No, very few people know about them. I love early Lamborghinis of all kinds. And again,
the Isleros, a car that I'd always loved, again, loving the Corky. I love the 350 GT.
Awesome.
And I thought, this is really interesting. You can actually get the performance of the 350 GT
and the 400 GT in their successor that cost half as much and I think is a really handsome car.
I love the very clean styling that it has. And so I thought, I'm going to look for one
of these cars. And again, how you know when you're going to buy a car. I wanted Islero.
They're very, very rare. They made 125 of the first series and 100 of the second series.
And so they don't come up for sale all the time. So again, I was on a business trip out in California
and I went to visit my friends at Fantasy Junction and lo and behold, there was
an Islero. Wow. Took it out for a test drive. Thought, oh my God, this car is astonishing.
Went back to the showroom, went through the service records. It had probably about
three inches of service records. I went through every one of them.
That's both good news and also frightening. That's like both.
This is the part where my cleverness got the best of me. I went through every one of those
invoices. I did not find one invoice for a valve job. I thought, I'm not going to be the one
who does the valve job in this engine. Forget about it. I'll wait for the next one. Q Jeopardy
Music. So the years go by. The calendar pages fly off the wall. And finally, I see another one for
sale in Fort Lauderdale at a friend's dealership. And it was $20,000 more than what I could have
gotten the one in California for years before. But I thought, oh, okay, let me take a swing at
this. And there's a hurricane. So all the power is out in Fort Lauderdale. But I call them up and
say, look, I want to come down and see the car. Let me know when you have power. So I'm calling
and calling and calling. And I call them one morning and said, oh, the power is supposed to be back
on this afternoon. I said, great, I'll be there tomorrow morning. So I flew down and drove the
car. I said, fine, I'll take it. And he said, you know, that's amazing because I've gotten so many
calls in this car, but no one can come down yet because the power has been us and well, they're
not aggressive enough. So I buy the car. I am madly in love with this car. I take it on 3000 mile
rallies. I take it everywhere. It's an amazing car. I absolutely love it. And then I decide that it's
time for me to buy another car. I bought the Islerro in 2005. And in the summer of 2008,
I can sign it for sale at Pebble Beach at auction. And I set a world record for the car at auction,
which lasted for four years, five years, five years it lasted. And this is actually another
funny story, which I will tell, which will get both you and me into great trouble.
We talked about people that buy cars without looking at them. Now, the person that bought the
car was present in the room. And I spent a good deal of time during the preview, standing around
talking to some people that came up and looked at the car. And so I knew this car was going to sell.
I actually was so confident that I actually lowered my reserve before the sale. So I said,
I know it's selling. So the car sells. And I go and speak to one of the folks that work at the
auction house. I know you don't have to and you probably don't want to tell me who bought the
car. But I just wanted to know, was it this father and son? Because they were really tripping. I
spent a lot of time saying, no, there was this youngish guy. And he was there like with his posse.
I said, yeah, I remember this because after the car left the block, I had to take him to see the
car because he hadn't seen it. The first time he saw it was when it drove up in the block. I said,
well, does he like it? He liked it a lot. Like all the next morning I said,
did he pay for it? Yeah, he paid for it. I said, great. The person who bought the car was Adam
Corolla. So it was hysterical. When he was building his Blue Lamborghini collection,
that was one of them. So it was quite funny. So the impulse, the emotional buy is a very
powerful thing. But he probably knew who he was buying from too, right, Donald? I mean,
he knew it was your car. I don't know if he did or not. I mean, I told him years later,
we had a conversation years later, I said, oh, you buy what? You bought my islerro.
I mean, one of the things that blows my mind is how many people there are like that, right?
You know, they make up their mind in their head. They're like, I want this car and sometimes they
don't even care if it's that good, right? They're not even really that interested in it. They just
want the thing. And I mean, usually it's somebody with a lot of money and they're just ready to buy
the item and move on. I know you're an art guy and a music guy. This happens in other similar
collector markets too, right? They've got to have the thing and they're going to get the thing.
Absolutely. And I'll tell you two stories. One on the low side was in the high side.
One of the cars I recently sold was a 1953 Jaguar Mark 7, which I absolutely love.
This is a fantastic car. A car I bought slightly by accident. I was putting together with the
executive director of the Adrain, an exhibition called From the Race Director of the Opera,
Marks that did it all. We put pairs of cars, a touring or luxury car from a brand and
a racing car from a brand. So the Jaguar pair was going to be a D-Type and a Mark 7.
I thought, ah, no problem finding a Mark 7. I had to probably hunt for the right D-Type.
Found the D-Type in two minutes. Could not find a Mark 7 for love or money. I'm thinking, oh,
what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Bonin's auction catalog comes out
for Amelia Island because there's a Mark 7 in it. Wow. Isn't that amazing? So I'm down there
and everybody I speak to, I say, you should buy this Jaguar because it'll be in the exhibition
at the museum. Just buy it. It's going to go to the museum. It'll be fantastic. Everyone says,
nah, I'm good. Okay, fine. So I'm sitting at the auction, sitting in the front row of the auction.
Car comes up on the block. First bid's come up very low. I was like, oh, well, this is crazy.
Well, so I just put my hand up. I make a bid. I said, surely someone's going to outbid me.
Well done, Donald. Your car. Oh my God. I didn't mean to buy that.
That's such a fascinating story, though, because I've just encountered this recently, like
the rare car gets preserved and the commonplace car kind of disappears. So I have a speeding of
pre-war cars, two Cords, and I love them. And I was just back at the big Auburn, Indiana meat.
And I would really like a big Auburn, the full classic Auburn sedan. But all of them got turned
into speedster replicas, right? So there's all these new speedsters that weren't real,
but the plain Jane sedan, they're gone. There's like two, right? And there's like 20 speedsters.
It's an interesting phenomenon that happens, right? Like all the Mark 7 Jags, probably
everyone threw them away, but the D-Types all got saved. Exactly. And it was an amazing thing.
And this is an extraordinary car. I was the second owner of that start. To be the second owner
of a 1953 car, came with absolutely everything, the complete toolkits with the bulbs, everything,
the owner's manual, the original sales invoice, everything. And I just sold that car.
What color was it?
Dove gray with the red leather interior, bucket seats, four speed manual. And the original owner
was also someone who loved Jaguars and Bugattis. They loved performance. So when car was two years
old, in 1955, he took it to his mechanic and had it upgraded to 120 M spec. So it had the
bigger SU carburetors, hotter cams. Oh, it's an amazing car. Fantastic car.
Man, what a car.
And on the other side of it, you know, talking about, you know, people that buy, I remember
years ago, there was a three-address L Gullwing. That was a nice car. Nothing terribly special
that suddenly like set an auction record. And everyone was thinking, what the heck was that
all about? Turns out, and of course, there has to be an underbitter. So again, this is where
emotion gets in. But the person who bought the car was going to buy that car. It was built on the
day he was born. He wanted that car. So it didn't matter. It was like, my hands up. I'm not stopping.
Right. Right. I mean, some of the most wild results we've seen on the site, and one of
them we turned to a big success story and even a video was, you know, people trying to buy either
a car they literally owned before, right? Like we've seen that before. We've brought
Furman engines back together with the right 550 or one guy bought a Porsche 906 owner's manual for
his 906, right? Like they've been separated for all these years. But you know, it's either a car
they personally owned or it's like, oh no, my wife had that exact car in high school, same color,
whatever. And it's her 50th birthday. So if I need to pay 75 grand for a Corolla, that's happening.
Right. Exactly. Absolutely. And again, to me, it's the best kind of buying. It may seem irrational
to some, but I think that more buying of cars, art, furniture, whatever it might be should be
irrational because you have to buy emotionally. One of the things that I, I recently did a lecture
at a university in Italy in Milan, part of this program of collection management. And it was about
automobiles as an asset class. And I said, you know what? I would love to do this lecture because
I don't believe in automobiles and asset class. So I can't wait to do this. And so I did this,
this lecture. It was absolutely fantastic. I always say, you know, yes, they can be an asset.
Well, they are an asset. It's appreciated. A lot of times they're a liability. A lot of times they're
a liability. But you know, if going back to the beginning of a conversation, why are you buying
the car? If you're buying this car because you want to take it on these events, you want to
drive it in this way, you want to meet these people who have cars like it.
The car is going to give you incredible memories and experiences.
When was the last time you said, I'm going to take my dream vacation and spend $30,000 on
around the world cruise or the safari or whatever it might be. And you get home and say, okay,
now my vacation is going to pay me back. Right. Totally. Doesn't happen. Totally. Yeah. It's crazy.
And you see people who will go to Las Vegas for a weekend and spend $10,000 and then say,
well, I can't sell my car for less than that because I paid more than that for it.
Well, how often do you drive? Oh, I never drove it. Well, there you go.
I mean, Donald, it's like you're speaking from the inside of my brain. We talk about this all
the time at B.A.T. Cars are for using. And like if you got $10,000 of use out of it, who cares if
it lost $10,000 in value? I mean, you know, I used to fly airplanes. I used to drive race cars.
And those are both just money pits, no matter what. And I remember reading an article. It's
almost like something you could have written talking about airplane ownership and the recommendation
for the, because you can't make it make sense, even if you're flying for business.
And this guy recommended, go out to the airport, take a beer with you, go sit. Don't even take
your key to the airplane and just go sit next to it. And if you're happy to do that, then keep it.
Right? Like just, that's it. Right? Did it make you happy? Great.
Exactly. Here you go. And the other thing was a great thing in Time Magazine,
when they had Briggs Cunningham on the cover of Time Magazine and a wonderful quote from him,
describing yacht racing. He said, but on every bit of clothing you own, turn the shower on as
cold as it will go and burn $100 bills. I was going to say, light money on fire.
But what a life that guy lived. I mean, that's, I mean, that's it, right? You know,
Cadillacs at Le Mans and racing yachts in your neck of the woods there, probably right off the
Rhode Island there, right off of Newport, right? Yeah. Yes. One of the great, slightly humorous
tragedies of life is that any day I choose to, I can drive down a street called America's Cup
Boulevard. The America's Cup hasn't been here for quite a while now.
Well, you've got it out here now. These tech billionaires are, you know, racing these crazy
boats out here in the, in the bay now. There was a great, the last challenge, which didn't go very
far, was actually a boat that was headquartered here, 11th hour racing. The Penske was involved
in the syndicate. It was a boat out of Newport, but they didn't think that far. The most logical
thing to meet in the entire world are the America's Cup rules, which are obviously written by people
who never assumed they would ever lose. That's right. That's right. That's right. Some of Queen
Victoria's buddies. Did you know Briggs by chance? No, I did not, unfortunately. You probably made
it up to the museum here. I went when I was a little kid. My dad used to take me to the museum
here in Southern California, where they had a Bugatti Royale and the Le Monster and all that
stuff. That's the Collier collection, I think, largely. Correct. Miles is a good friend,
and I love going to Revs. I suggest that anyone who has never been, you must go. It's an
extraordinary place, and you feel Briggs Cunningham when you walk into the place. Miles has expanded
the collection. It's not just that. Also, I will say, and he won't mind me saying this because
it's public domain, Miles Collier. Also, I admire him so much because he's a brilliant guy and he's
a true enthusiast and he's funny and he's just great. I love him, but he also is the person who
I think made the best automotive deal in history. He buys the Briggs Cunningham collection. He then
sells the Kellner Coupe Royale for two-thirds of what he paid for the entire collection.
How come I can't do this? How come you can't do that? I know. It doesn't happen. Plus, I joke
with him all the time because the Kellner Coupe is my favorite of all the Bugatti Royales. I think
it's absolutely gorgeous. He said, oh, it was a lovely enough looking car, but
had nothing to do with anything else. I wish I could remember his name. My dad would kill me,
but the curator of that museum was a buddy of my dad's. I have this memory, Donald, from
I was probably three or four years old. I was born in 1983. The curator would balance a dime
on edge on the hood of the Kellner Coupe, and then he would get in and start it. The dime
wouldn't fall over. That was his party trick. I remember seeing that when I was a little kid,
because it was so smooth. Isn't that amazing? No, you've got me going because I can't remember.
He was a circle track racer. We have a piece of his art in my parents' house. Anyway,
really, really sweet guy, and what an amazing place. Again, another great memory that I have,
a recently made memory. Brain Motorsport is the sponsor of the Goodwood members meeting,
and every year does a tour for folks to come over. It's a week-long tour to visit various
places in the Clarence Technology Center, Buley, all these wonderful things and collections and
all this. The group has a private track day at Goodwood in which they drive the vintage cars
of Goodwood around the track. It's absolutely fantastic. One of my other great heroes, Derek
Drinkwater, was this absolutely mad Englishman who's built a perfect replica of Le Manstre,
and of the 1950s series he took to Coop as well, the Rand Le Mans. He did it with the total
blessing and the support of Miles and the folks at Rev, so it's an exact tool room copy of Le
Manstre. I drove it at Goodwood. Did you really? Oh my God, it was remarkable. Holy cow. Le Manstre
is just a Series 62 underneath, right, with the crazy body, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
It's a Series 62 underneath with one third the weight of a Series 62. Yes. One of the shocking
looking cars of all time. It is this vast thing with this incredibly powerful engine with large,
but drum brakes that you plan ahead, and it is absolutely amazing. And it's an automatic
transmission too, isn't it? Automatic transmission. Yes, what I thought, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.
Amazing. It is fabulous. It's absolutely amazing. See the guy's name again? He had a great British
name. What's the builder's name? Derek's Drinkwater. Derek's Drinkwater is absolutely fabulous.
And my favorite of the cutting-hand cars is the C4, you always get the letters wrong, the Coop,
CR4K. Yes. CR4K Coop, which is amazing. And you stand next to that car and you just
feel its presence. It's absolutely, absolutely remarkable. So, yeah. That's why people should
buy and own and have cars. This investment thing. Yeah, I know. I know. Well, you're getting me
fired up. It's good when you, I don't know if this is the case for you, Donald, but when you do cars
all day long, sometimes you're like, do I actually like cars? So, it's good to talk to somebody like
you and remember that we do. We love them. Yeah, we do. And it's a very funny thing too. And I'm
sure you, like me, having spent so much time around cars, it's very easy also to become jaded. 100%.
Oh, for our 250 GTO. Which chassis number is that? Yeah, whatever. And I'm always slightly amazed
when I'm out in the car and kids especially stop and take pictures of the car and pose next to the
car. It's like, what are you doing? It's just like, it's another one of these. Then I did something
a couple of years ago. I wrote a feature for Porsche Panorama for the PCA to commemorate Porsche's
victory in the last FIA sanctioned Targa Florio. And I was in Italy and so Porsche Italia sent
a new 911 Targa down to Sicily. And my spouse Frank and I drove on the Targa Florio route
in this new Targa. And we also shot a video and chatted with a bunch of local people, middle-aged
guys who remember the Targa Florio when they were kids and all this. What year was the last year
and where can we find this video? I'm going to watch it tonight. We can link to it. Absolutely.
It's on the PCA YouTube site and it was 1973. The RSR.
Gotcha. Okay. Right after the 908s won it towards the end.
908. Correct. Exactly. And it was amazing for two reasons. One, because I always rail on about how
giant the current 911s are. Yes. You took a Porsche pot shot up at the top of this podcast, I think.
I did. And I never understood the whole thing about all these cameras that they have around the
car. But boys, I glad I had the cameras. I was driving through the traffic in Palermo as the sun
was setting. I said, okay, fine. I'm glad to have the cameras. But the thing that I bring this story
up for was because I spend lots of time around lots of modern 911s. It's like, okay, fine.
It was an adventuring green. My favorite modern 911 color, which is nice, also blends in and
complements the scenery of Sicily very well. But you leave the coast, you leave Palermo,
you drive up into the mountains, and you stop in these little villages. And as if I had arrived
in a spaceship, kids are running down the street after me saying, oh, I'm thinking,
they're not going to see another 200,000 euro car come through their village.
Right. And I just take it for granted.
Right. And when you're in the setting and the light, I mean, I find that, you know,
I have those moments. Sometimes it's only every couple of years. And you can live off that
memory for a long time, man. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, just chatting about this now,
I'm going to go back and watch this video tonight. So yeah, it's an amazing thing.
It was an extraordinary experience. And literally, we stopped in the village of Cerida for coffee
and parked the car out in the curb, went into the shop to get coffee, came back out with the
photographer and a friend and the videographer. And there were these three guys standing around
the Porsche. And we started chatting in Italian about, you know, why were you here? And I explained
what I was doing. And I said, oh, well, you know, you said, oh, we grew up here. I said, oh, well,
tell us about the eight target Florio. And they just started talking about it. And we said, stop,
get the roll camera on this, you know, it was amazing. And they just, they just talked about,
oh, yeah, it was great, you know, during the practice or in the week, watching the cars,
and how this driver would not hit the brakes until he got to the top of the hill,
right here near the corner. And this is the place where you went to listen to the cars,
come for three miles away. And it was absolutely amazing.
Donald, what an experience. I mean, you're talking about this and it's so vivid. And I gosh,
I remember watching, there's some old period video of somebody driving on the roads and kind of
explaining. And as I recall, maybe they're in a Sunbeam Tiger, they're driving fast and they're
weaving around, you know, carts and mules and stuff on the regular road that's going to later
be the circuit. I love that kind of stuff. There are two things about target Florio that make
it absolutely magical. One was the fact that when they practiced, the roads were open. So
you are dodging everybody, they closed the roads for the race. But even with the roads closed,
they're wonderful photographs of the spectators who stand at the apex of a corner. And the track
is so amazing because this course is like nothing else that they could ever do today,
because two thirds of the course are unending curves that never ever ever straight and always
climbing or always descending. And then one incredibly long straight blast. And the contrast
was absolutely spectacular because you'd have cars like the 911 RSRs that were, you know,
they take the Ferrari 512s and leave them in the dust going up course, the hills and down the
hills, then the fries that get to the seaside and say, so long, see you later. And it was just
absolutely extraordinary. And you can today still drive two thirds of the original course.
The last third of it, actually, sorry, three quarters up, the last quarter of it, the road
is so deteriorating, you can only drive it in a four by four. But it is astonishing,
and absolutely worth doing. Man, I'm ready to jump on a plane to Sicily right now.
Absolutely. Oh, Donald, what a treat. We could go on forever. Maybe we have to talk again,
because we didn't get to, I wanted to talk architecture. I wanted to talk food. I wanted
to get into everything. I'll be glad to come back. Great. Well, it's been a real pleasure.
Let folks know, what should they know about? What do you got coming up? What does a drain
have coming up? Tell the folks what they need to know about you and anything you got on the horizon.
Well, we've just had here in Newport the annual Adrain Newport Concurrent Motor Week,
which was very successful. And it is always the first Sunday in October, so mark your calendars
for it next year, the beginning of October. I saw you hanging out with Jay and, God, who was your
Magnus and Jay, both former VAT podcast guests. Looks like an awful lot of fun.
We had a great, I put together the seminar series for it. We had a great series of seminars
talking to Ray Evernam about who's more important, the team of the driver,
Magnus and Jay and Steve Cereo, talking about modding or not modding.
We love all those guys. Maybe you'll come out. We're about to have our event in Boston with
Steve Cereo. Just in a couple of weeks, we're going to have a VAT event up there.
We love Steve. And Evernam's bought some really interesting cars on VAT. He bought
one of his old DuPont, one of the old Jeff Gordon Championship cars back on VAT.
It was kind of secretive about it and then exposed himself in the comments after the
auctions, like, hey, by the way, I know where to get spare parts for this. I was the crew chief.
Exactly. The next thing coming up with the O'Drain is in the spring is the veteran car tour.
This is a really neat 50-mile drive from Newport to Bristol, Rhode Island and back in cars 1908
and older, which is really fabulous. Do you drive in that? Do you take something out?
I do. I do. I do. Absolutely. The last two times I've done it in 1907 Ford Model S.
Absolutely fantastic. And I will be heading to Italy week after next for four days for
Alto Immolto D'Epeca in Bologna. And I'm going to be moderating a round table with representatives
from my various auction companies at the release of Adolfo Orsi's latest auction yearbook there
at Alto Immolto D'Epeca. And then coming back here, and I'll be down in West Palm Beach if
anybody's around in November for a great event called Sculpture in Motion. It's a fundraiser for
the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden in West Palm Beach. It's a beautiful show, a very carefully curated
show of wonderful cars, some great cars in that part of the woods. Then I'm off to Italy for
two and a half months and November come back in February and start all over again. Gosh,
you really know how to live life. You have to. Yeah, I could learn a thing or two from you,
Donald. Well, it's been a true pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this. I know our community,
you'll appreciate everything you had to share. So thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Alex,
and I look forward to coming back. Yes, absolutely. Part two coming soon. Thanks to everyone for
listening. As always, please feel free to share feedback, thoughts, concerns, complaints about
Donald to podcast at BrigitRailer.com. We will catch you next time.
About this episode
Donald Osborne, a classic car expert and appraiser, shares insights on buying and selling cars with maximum impact for minimal outlay. He discusses the evolution of Bring a Trailer, the importance of honesty in car transactions, and the emotional aspects of car ownership. Through engaging anecdotes, he highlights the significance of understanding market dynamics and the joy of owning unique vehicles. The conversation also touches on memorable experiences with various classic cars and the thrill of participating in automotive events.
Alex has a lively interview with none other than Donald Osborne (@zagato67 on BaT): ASA accredited senior appraiser, TV personality, principal of Automotive Valuation Services, and consulting director for the Audrain Automobile Museum. They talk about BaT's start as an amalgamation of interesting POSes; maximum impact for minimal outlay; the similarities between a car for sale and the ideal political candidacy; sage advice for sellers on BaT and elsewhere; the art of self-editing; the right price for the wrong car; multitasking, the car guy way; ignoring one's own hard-earned advice; cars as an investment in happiness; driving Derek Drinkwater's Le Monstre replica at Goodwood; and adventures in Sicily on the old Targa Florio route. We'll have Donald back for more!
