Latest news with #BaT
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
How to Sell a Classic Car Online Without Wasting Your Time
Selling a classic car online isn't about casting the widest net; it's about putting your car in front of the right people. Whether it's a restored Chevelle, a vintage FJ40, or something unique and minty like a Saab 900 Turbo, you're not trying to appeal to everyone. You just need one buyer who gets it. That's why the platform you choose matters. Some sites are built for high-end, collectible, or enthusiast cars. Others are just dumping grounds for clapped-out commuter sedans and "ran when parked" listings. If you want a real shot at selling your classic quickly and for what it's actually worth, you need to list it where people know what they're looking at. Below are three solid platforms that are actually built for cars like yours. Each one works a little differently, and depending on what kind of sale you want-fast, auction-style, or fully managed-one might make more sense than the others. Despite the name, Exotic Car Trader isn't just for Lamborghinis and McLarens. They list plenty of vintage muscle, European classics, and garage-kept oddballs too. If your car has collector appeal and you don't want to deal with the selling process yourself, this one's worth a look. They take care of everything: photos, listing copy, buyer vetting, negotiation, payment, even shipping if needed. Your car also gets listed across multiple platforms, so it gets in front of a wider pool of buyers without you having to manage a dozen listings. It's ideal if you've got a strong car and don't feel like handling the sale yourself. Get a free offer quote and list your car online with ECT by clicking here. Bring a Trailer is probably the best-known name in online auctions for classic and enthusiast cars. Its listings range from museum-grade restorations to honest, daily-driven classics. You'll see all kinds of gems, like first-gen Broncos, C2 Corvettes, air-cooled 911s, and vintage Datsuns. The setup is pretty straightforward. You submit your car, they approve it, and it goes live in a seven-day auction. Some sellers write their own listings, others pay for help with photos and copy. Either way, once it's up, the BaT crowd takes it from there by commenting, asking questions, and bidding. If your listing's clean and your car is solid, you can do really well here. You can check out BaT by clicking here. If you're not trying to run an auction, or deal with any of the noise that comes with it, duPont makes things simple. You fill out a form with the car's details, they look it over, and send you a cash offer. That's it. No live listing, no waiting, no managing questions or comments. It's mostly geared toward higher-end classics, like rare builds, low-mileage originals, or cars that fall into the "collector" category. If that's what you've got and you just want to sell without all the extra steps, this is probably your fastest route. Once you accept duPont's offer, they pick up the car, handle the title, and wire you the money. You can check them out by clicking here. No matter where you decide to list your classic, get the basics right. Clean the car properly. Shoot it in good light and get full shots of the front, back, interior, engine bay, and undercarriage (if it's worth showing). If you've got a video of it running, even better. Most platforms will help you with photos or offer a pro option, so use it if your phone pics aren't doing the car justice. You'll also want your paperwork in order, which includes the title, service records, restoration receipts-whatever you've got. And be honest. If there's rust, say so. If the paint's not original, say that too. People buying classic cars expect a story-they just don't want a surprise. You only need one buyer. The key is putting your car where that person will see it. Whether you want to test the market, take the first strong offer, or hand the whole thing off to someone else, there's a platform that fits. Use one that understands classic cars. The rest is just photos, facts, and letting the right person find it. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
The Best Way to Sell a Car Online
Selling a car online doesn't have to be complicated. Whether it's a luxury vehicle or something you no longer drive, the right platform can make the whole process easier than it would be when selling to dealerships or unreliable buyers. Here's how to make the sale simple, fast, and frustration-free. Before listing anything, decide on your focus, such as the speed of the sale, top dollar, or convenience. Some sales platforms cater to sellers who want a guaranteed offer and a fast cash-out. Others are built to maximize exposure and attract competitive bids from buyers nationwide. Some even offer a fully managed experience, where you barely have to lift a finger. Where online you choose to sell your vehicle can make or break your sale, especially if your car is of the luxury, classic, or specialty variety. Whether it's a Ferrari, a vintage Mustang, or a rare Porsche, these platforms know how to market specialty vehicles and attract the right audience. Exotic Car Trader It sounds like what it is-a seller of luxury, exotic, and classic cars. Here, you get a clean, concierge-style setup that includes listing help, escrow, and shipping. They push your ad out across multiple partner sites, so you're not just sitting around hoping the right buyer finds you. It's all pretty hands-off once the listing is live. Get a free offer quote and list your car online with ECT by clicking here. duPont Registry If you just want a straight-up cash offer and don't feel like messing with a full listing, this is your move. You give duPont the details-VIN, mileage, condition-and they send you a no-obligation offer, usually within a couple of days. If you take it, they handle pickup, inspection, paperwork, and payment. It's great for high-end or collector cars if you're ready to sell fast without dealing with buyers directly. You can check them out by clicking here. Bring a Trailer This one's for people selling classic, collectible, or enthusiast cars who want to test the market a bit. You list your car, and it goes up for a 7-day auction. If it's priced right and presented well, you can get solid traction from real buyers-not the lowball crowd. You can write the listing yourself or upgrade for pro photography and help. BaT also helps arrange shipping once it's sold. You can check out BaT by clicking here. Once you've decided where to sell, make sure to prep your car. Clean the car, bumper to bumper and inside and out, and take solid, well-lit shots-nothing blurry or cropped weird. A short walkaround video can help too, especially if you're selling high-end or classic cars. And don't forget to gather your car's paperwork! Your car's listing should be honest, detailed, and written like you're talking to another enthusiast. Mention the good stuff, like special packages, low mileage, clean history, unique features. But don't hide the flaws-buyers will find them during inspection anyway. If you're using a platform that gives cash offers, you'll usually get one in a few days, and you can take it or leave it. The numbers are based on market data, so they will probably be in the ballpark, but you're not locked into anything. The choice is up to you. On the auction side, once your listing goes live, you'll watch bids roll in. Your chosen platform will usually keep you in the loop during the process, and some offer features like extended bidding if buyers try to sneak in a last-second offer. If the auction meets your reserve price, the sale is finalized and buyer and seller are connected to complete the transfer. And if you're working with a peer-to-peer marketplace, negotiations may happen directly-or be managed by a concierge who handles it for you. Either way, make sure escrow is used to protect both parties during payment and title transfer. After the sale, most online platforms walk you through the remaining steps. Many include pickup and shipping options or partner with insured transport providers. If a third party is handling the transaction, they'll often hold the funds in escrow until both sides confirm everything checks out. Make sure the payment method is secure-bank wire or ACH is common. Selling a car online really just comes down to picking the right platform, putting together a solid listing, and being upfront about what you're selling. That's all it takes! Do these things, and you can get the deal done on your terms with no pressure, no upselling, no wasted time. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Forbes
08-07-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
How Bring A Trailer Transformed An Analog Idea Into A Tech Success
Bring a Trailer showcases collector cars to the tune of $1.5 billion ore more per year. Bring a Trailer, an online auction site for collectible cars, owns a formidable internet presence. Boasting 45,000 auctions and total sales exceeding $1.5 billion in 2024, the site and corresponding app are basking in evident success. On any given day, the BaT site features an assortment of carefully vetted vehicles for sale that appeal to a wide variety of buyers. You might not be interested in a 2001 Audi S4 with a twin-turbocharged 2.7-liter V6 and RS4 hybrid turbochargers, for instance, or a quirky 1990 FASA-Renault 4 Furgoneta. But for someone else out there, that's their dream car. When he started BaT, co-founder and president Randy Nonnenberg was an engineer for BMW. Nearly two decades later, Nonnenberg had undoubtedly reshaped the collector car world with his site. Bring a Trailer offices in San Francisco, California. Bring A Trailer: Grass Roots Beginnings Today, BaT—through the site and corresponding app—has a solid command of its rotating for-sale offerings. However, it started off on the analog side. Bring A Trailer was launched way back in January of 2007, when the online world of accessing information was a very different place. Facebook and Twitter (now X) were both in the process of going global, and the Kindle e-reader was launched that same year, with more revelations to come. BaT was right in the middle of it all. 'We launched the site six months before the iPhone debuted,' Nonnenberg observes. It all started when Nonnenberg started finding special cars for friends on request. He discovered he had an aptitude for vehicles and a knack for sourcing, so Nonnenberg started a blog with a friend to feature the coolest car he could find that day. 'When I was a kid, I'd look at the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle and the middle pages of AutoWeek for sale listings,' he remembers. 'I'd go to Barnes and Noble on my bike and read.' The BaT founder learned how to use search tools on the internet to find what he wanted. Then he started scouring Craig's List and other selling sites. About a year into Nonnenberg's journey with BaT, potential sellers started contacting him to ask how they could list their car on his site. Teamed up with his friend Gentry Underwood, the two came up with what they thought was an honest and fair business model. Randy Nonnenberg, co-founder and president of Bring a Trailer. Leading Bring A Trailer With Honesty And Integrity BaT was just a hobby, a side project for Nonnenberg until 2010. At that point, he quit his day job as a BMW engineer to see where BaT could go. 'BMW was my dream job,' Nonnenberg says. 'I worked there from 2000 to 2010, starting right out of college. I learned about cars and the car business and was troubleshooting problems, which taught me a lot about customer satisfaction and sophisticated customers.' That experience proved helpful, as he says 2000-2021 was a 'golden era' for BMW. As Nonnenberg carried his passion for the German brand to BaT, he could ascertain which of the BMW models would sell well. The BaT president's knowledge lent itself perfectly to that cross-section of the collector car market, and a commitment to transparency and communication filled in for the rest. 'It's important on both sides of a car transaction for a buyer to be able to ask questions before and after the listing that lets the buyer know what they're getting,' Nonnenberg says. 'With a brand new car, you know what you're getting. But if you buy a '65 Mustang and it has 60 years of question marks, there are a million variables. Being able to get your questions adressesd is key. Before BaT, there might be a 3-sentence description and you'd go see it in person and there might be some uncertainty there.' BaT grew steadily for 13 years before the company was sold to publishing juggernaut Hearst, which also owns car-related titles like Road & Track as well as Car and Driver. That doesn't mean Nonnenberg is out of the picture. On the contrary, he's still very much involved and actively helping to make the site better than ever. For him, it's all about honesty and integrity, and he knows he is the face of that for BaT. 'A lot of people focus on how many millions of dollars go through Bring a Trailer," he says. 'There's a real answer about why we're different. If you just tell the truth, you're doing 80 percent better than the rest of the competition.'
Miami Herald
13-06-2025
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
This McLaren P1 on Bring a Trailer Can Bring Your Supercar Dreams to Life at 200 MPH
The McLaren P1, the Ferrari LaFerrari, and the Porsche 918 Spyder are considered by enthusiasts to be the Holy Trinity of cars. They were incredible, record-topping machines upon their release, and they continue to make waves to this day. If you have seven digits' worth of disposable income and the P1 is your favorite holy car out of the three, Bring a Trailer has what you desire. This particular 2014 McLaren P1 is #47 of 375 examples ever made and was delivered new to McLaren Newport Beach in Costa Mesa, California. It was later registered in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Indiana before being sold on BaT in February 2022 with 1,800 miles. It was acquired by the selling dealer in Canada in 2025 and now has 1,900 miles, an unfortunate reminder that cars like these, that are meant to be driven, aren't often that lucky. The MonoCage carbon-fiber monocoque is finished in a stunning Azure Blue over a gray leather interior with carbon-fiber racing seats, dual-zone climate control, navigation, and a Meridian sound system. Power comes from a twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V8 paired with a McLaren E-Motor mounted on the rear axle, a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, and an open differential for a total of 903 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque. The P1 can reach an electrically limited top speed of 217 miles per hour, with emphasis on the "electrically limited" part. Such power requires equally competent braking and steering components, which is why McLaren blessed the P1 with carbon-ceramic brakes and electro-hydraulic rack-and-pinion steering. All of that combined equals a featherweight 3,075 lb. Of course, we can't forget about the McLaren P1's party tricks, those being its extendable rear wing and dihedral doors. Getting into an exotic car is always a bigger event when the doors open in a snazzy manner. Despite its low miles, this P1 already had its headlights, computer system motherboard, output shaft seals, electric hybrid water pump, and a driveline damper replaced in July 2021. The suspension accumulators were recharged, and fresh brake fluid was added at the same time as the other maintenance. The Carfax report lists no accidents or other damage. As an enthusiast who strongly believes in driving your cars, no matter their value or rarity, it makes me a little sad to see people treat such cars as investments. They're not wrong by any stretch, and they will likely profit from the sale, but I never like seeing cars sit. With seven days left in the auction, this McLaren P1 is already at $1,400,000. The last time it sold on 2/3/2022, it reached $1,710,000, so it's likely that it will beat that figure this time around. Here's to hoping that the next owner racks up some miles. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Bring a Trailer's European Expansion Was a Natural Step
Randy Nonnenberg, co-founder and current president of Bring a Trailer, will be the first to tell you that eBay was his original auctioneering fix — at least until his creation was born. Follow that thread for 18 years, and Bring a Trailer has become the premiere auction website not just for low-mileage Bimmers and niche Saabs, but for those seeking to maximize their return on investment from rare, quirky, or just plain clean pre-owned vehicles across the spectra of ages, brands, and styles. But while that opportunity for enthusiasts to find the cars they really want has been limited to North America, our gearhead friends across the Atlantic in Europe are equally as invested in finding quality metal. Hence, it was only natural that Nonnenberg and the team at Bring a Trailer — which, like Road & Track, is part of the Hearst Autos group — set their sights on crossing the pond in 2024. Now, with three partner locations spread across the European Union, Bring a Trailer is ready to operate in Europe as if it had always been there. at "We have had a lot of sort of grassroots fans of BaT in Europe for a long time, some of them bidding on cars. So I would get a lot of questions of, 'When are you coming to Europe?'" Nonnenberg told Road & Track. "And we just wanted to do that intentionally, in a way that our tech was built out for it, and our team was ready to support it. And we are there now in a substantial way, and ready to grow even more," The site's three partner locations span from the Netherlands down to Belgium and across to Germany. BaT's Netherlands partner, Image Street Classics, was established last summer and offers the storytelling, imagery, and auction logistics expertise that the auction site has become famous for. Then came 1600veloce, BaT's central European partner — and perhaps its most geographically important — in January of this year. Centered between Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1600veloce's position makes the cross-continent shipment of cars easier than ever, allowing cars from around Europe to be more readily vetted, photographed, and prepped for auction. BaT's Belgium bureau, Colombo & Co, is its most recent addition, serving as a port-side hub to ship the best and most bizarre cars Europe has to offer Stateside. But not every auction success story ends in the U.S. Around 50% of cars auctioned off in Europe stay in Europe, making 1600veloce and its Germanic location a prime cross-country headquarters. (Just look at the Schipol to Dublin success story of this 1959 Mercedes-Benz 220s cabriolet.) The rules haven't changed much, Nonnenberg explained, as European buyers can bid on U.S. auctions and vice versa — but the intra-European sales mix is becoming an increasingly important part of BaT's year-end report. "We're not going to do just one in each country, but we're kind of starting there so we can get a footprint and spread it out. What those partners do is give us capability on the ground — local language spoken and local contacts — the ability to navigate the local market without us having to go set up offices all over Europe to try to do it sort of top-down," Nonnenberg said. "We're doing it sort of on a community level, enthusiast level, and from the bottom up, which is a little different, but gives us sort of a local European flavor to it. As opposed to a bunch of us coming from over here to go try to solve the way of selling in the market." The listing and buying processes remain largely the same for Bring a Trailer users in Europe. Selling your car on the site comes with a custom-written listing, a seven-day auction, and the choice to add professional photography for a few hundred dollars extra. (Nonnenberg admitted that the system of dispatching photographers across the country isn't quite set up for European operations, but that isn't far off.) Bid amounts will be translated into the currency of location, and value-added tax is calculated and tacked on for applicable transactions. Pricing is on par with the American version, too; EU listers pay the typical $99 listing fee in the form of €99, while U.K. sellers pay £79. Buyers fees stay at 5%, with a maximum of €7,500 in Europe and £6,000 in the U.K. The biggest change to BaT's operational layout from its expansion appears on its website: prospective European buyers can filter auctions by region, including European Union and United Kingdom filters. There are even more granular search options once inside of the EU or U.K., allowing for nationality- and era-tailored listings. These filters aren't exactly new, but the ability to show off Euro-market listings is one Nonnenberg is particularly excited about, and it's one that builds on the community-oriented principles BaT was founded on. With the site's bounty of regular commenters and a strong sense of community underneath every listing, Euro enthusiasts are now better represented than ever — no matter their car-buying affinities. "Some people think that Europeans just drive, you know, European marquees from their own country or something. But there are Italian car fans everywhere, and there are American car fans everywhere. And there are even Japanese cars getting shipped around and all over the place. So it's a diverse group," Nonnenberg said. "And that means a lot of need for the ability to transact the way that BaT does — which is transparent, and with low fees, and in a helpful way." 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