CRAIG JACKSON AT THE WHEEL: 45 years of cars and more cars

January 23, 2016
Posted by Barrett-Jackson

People who experience a Barrett-Jackson auction via live television or perhaps even in person know it as a larger-than-life event to remember: cameras rolling, celebrities in the audience, gleaming vehicles rolling across the block, a glamorous Opening Night Gala. However, at the heart of every auction – and at the heart of the success of the company – is the fundamental element that has kept us going for 45 years now: Barrett-Jackson was started by car people and is run by car people. It’s a passion; it’s our hobby.

Craig with his brother Brian metal-finishing an Auburn fender in the family workshop.

Surprisingly, I come across individuals who see me running this company, but don’t think I am one of those car people – one of those people who enjoy getting their hands dirty. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You might say it’s in my DNA.

Many know Barrett-Jackson was started by two quintessential “car guys,” Tom Barrett and my father, Russ Jackson. My father went to General Motors Tech and restored classics. My brother Brian – who was 14 years older than me – raced cars. We had a shop where my father and brother both worked on their cars. I literally grew up in that shop – and on the racetrack under the perhaps not-so-watchful eye of my brother, who was delegated with babysitting duty.

I was only around 10 years old when my dad bought me a 1939 American Austin Bantam, which we restored as a family project. I won my class at the local car show. That’s probably when the bug first bit me. I remember as a kid, going to Pebble Beach and Hershey, often tasked with the job of hauling a wagon up and down through all the rows of cars, looking for V16 and V12 Cadillac and Delahaye parts for my father. All my family did was restore cars, show cars, sell cars. It was our way of life, and I embraced it.

Craig with his first restoration, a 1939 Austin Bantam.

I was only in 8th grade at the time of the first Barrett-Jackson auction, and my esteemed job was emptying the trash cans. The next year I was “promoted” and ran the drivers – well before I even had my driver’s license. When I was a sophomore in high school, I got my first car from my grandmother. I threw myself into that 1966 LeMans, painting it and swapping out some parts to make it more powerful and, well, cool.

I learned to metal finish early on, and learned painting from one of the best: Von Dutch. I was often given odd jobs at the restoration shop: sandblasting, steam cleaning, polishing, buffing, block sanding and stripping. You haven’t lived until you’ve done all that in Phoenix when it’s 110 degrees outside and you’re in a rubber suit! I’d like to think it built my character.

At Pebble Beach with the Hispano-Suiza J12 that he restored.

Over the years, I’ve restored more than 30 cars – many for Tom Barrett, Don Williams and my father. I worked on a pair of Hispano-Suiza cars made for the Baron and Baroness Rothschild: a K-6 town car, which was a fairly easy restoration, and a J-12, which was a lot more difficult. I had to take the car all apart – remove all the skins, reroll the back of the car and the front fenders, build bumpers. I metal-finished that entire car myself.

One of the restorations I’m most proud of was a 1947 Delahaye 135M Narval, with a body originally designed by Figoni et Falaschi. Somebody had taken it apart in Europe and couldn’t figure out how to put it back together again. It came in a container, disassembled – and I mean disassembled: engine, transmission, rear end. I mocked the car together. The top wouldn’t close, the door was a couple of inches from fitting … I saw why they had given up. I had to build new chrome for it, new hoods, new bumpers. I metal-finished the whole car and added extra chrome to make it sexier; it had been beat up pretty bad.

Craig and his son Hunter recently painting a 1971 Ferrari Daytona.

I’m now working with my son Hunter, renovating and metal-finishing a 1971 Ferrari Daytona. It’s like therapy for me. We painted it together; I’m trying to show him what all is involved with restoring a car. I hope that my passion, my hobby, continues in our family for many years to come.

Interestingly, in high school I studied construction; I wanted to be a builder. Then in college I studied business and got a degree in automotive technology. My studies refined my knowledge, but no amount of classroom learning can replace the experience of growing up around all the talented people in this business. That’s what made me realize I had a knack for this.

As a car enthusiast myself, I have evolved Barrett-Jackson to be what I think every automotive enthusiast would want to come to. I know from hands-on experience what car people want, and have always planned my business model to reflect that.

Over the years I’ve witnessed the collector car hobby evolving and have made sure Barrett-Jackson remains at the forefront of that evolution. We always strive to elevate the hobby, to bring more knowledge and credibility to the industry. We were the first auction on television, the first with an Internet presence, the first with an active social media platform. We are also the first to bring on a team of renowned industry experts, who help review certain high-end cars that may be represented as matching-numbers or documented with show provenance.

We want more people to enter this incredible hobby through Barrett-Jackson and feel good about it, from the experience they get at the auctions to the experience our experts bring to the table. We are fortunate at Barrett-Jackson to have a team full of people who are car people, including myself. That’s a key reason we have thrived for 45 years – and hopefully will continue to do so for many more years to come. There’s no other automotive event in the world like Barrett-Jackson.