BEHIND THE SHADES: Barrett-Jackson President Steve Davis takes a look at the expanding collector car universe

September 12, 2018
Posted by Barrett-Jackson

Barrett-Jackson President Steve Davis

Steve Davis’ dark glasses protect his eyes from a light sensitivity condition – but that doesn’t hinder his vision of the collector car market.

The collector car universe continues to expand. What Barrett-Jackson prides itself on is that we not only showcase the historical categories of collector cars – classics, muscle cars, customs, European sports cars, hot rods – we also keep up with what’s happening in the ever-expanding new categories. Resto-Mods. Rat rods. Tuner cars. Supercars and hypercars. As more and more people come into the hobby, it is increasingly important that Barrett-Jackson continues to offer a diverse mix of vehicles on its docket. In building out these dockets over the past 20-plus years, one of the things I’m proudest of is the variety of vehicles we’ve offered and the overall impact they’ve had on the collector car hobby when we sold them.

If it’s supercars or hypercars you’re looking for, Barrett-Jackson’s got you covered. This 2005 Ferrari F430 Berlinetta (Lot #702) is on offer at the Las Vegas Auction.

We’ve been the gateway of putting not only the best of the best collector cars in the world on the auction block – the most expensive, the most desirable – but also the obscure: everything from Robosaurus, high-tech gravity racers and a vintage carousel to covered wagons, tractors and a Russian cosmonaut retrieval craft. Now that’s diversity!

We sell hundreds of cars at each auction, and we can’t just have hundreds of the same type of car. We need a mix that appeals to a diverse group of buyers with a wide range of tastes.

If you’re a person who has an unlimited budget and wants to buy the latest and greatest hypercar, you can do that at Barrett-Jackson. If you are just entering the hobby and want something you, your son and grandpa can work on as a family project, we’ll have something for you as well.

Resto-Mods are an ever-growing segment of the collector car world. Look for this 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Resto-Mod (Lot #455) in Las Vegas.

Interestingly, more and more people are appreciating cars that really were never meant to be collectible at all, and in many cases have a bad rap. Cars like the Corvair or the Pinto – those that experience controversy or were not necessarily a huge success when they were introduced later become desirable because of that very fact.

Let’s use the Pinto as an example. Clearly not a car one would think of as collectible, but a car that has special meaning to me personally. When I was taking that step into responsible adulthood – buying a home and so forth – I sold my custom Cougar modified for the drag strip and purchased a brand-new Grabber Blue Pinto. That’s the car I drove with my wife Janie on our honeymoon. Just because that Pinto was my everyday driver, it didn’t take away my love of fast cars and the collector car hobby – it reinforced it! I not only drove that Pinto daily, I installed a header, bored the jets in the carburetor and raced it on the weekend at Famosa Drag Strip in Bakersfield, California, making the most of what I had and enjoying every mile.

This excellent, original-condition 1976 Ford Pinto sold for a then record price of $12,650 at the 2007 Palm Beach Auction.

It’s like anything – something may not amount to much to one group of people, but to another group it could spur memories or bring back a time in their life when those cars were on the road and in their garages. They were cars the working man could afford. In 2007 at our Palm Beach Auction, we had a 1976 Pinto in excellent, original condition on our block as Lot #1. It generated quite a lot of interest and sold for $12,650 –a world record price at that time.

Barrett-Jackson is not just an auction, not something that happens mechanically. We have created an organic process that helps educate people in many ways as to what makes a vehicle desirable and collectible. I look at cars in a way very few people do, because I know if we can take a car and help people understand what makes it special, we can actually stimulate interest in the market and help to continue to grow our hobby and our love of these cars well into the future.

Another example of the diversity of a Barrett-Jackson docket: this 1981 Datsun 280ZX will be crossing the auction block in Las Vegas as Lot #9.

The moral of the story in collecting is not so much what to buy and what its potential value is going to be; it’s more about what touches your heart. If you can afford a hypercar or supercar, that’s awesome. But that in no way diminishes the fact that the same buyer may have a soft spot in their heart for a Pinto – a ubiquitous car that really was disposable. As a result, when one comes along that’s in good shape and has survived the test of time, there’s a lot of interest in that car. I can get as excited watching a mint, original Pinto sell for big money as I do watching a beautiful Shelby. You’d be surprised at how many very successful people with incredible collections also have a “Pinto” in their life somewhere.