Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Inside Classic Auto Mall: How Stewart Howden Built One of America’s Largest Indoor Car Destinations

Transcript

Inside Classic Auto Mall: How Stewart Howden Built One of America’s Largest Indoor Car Destinations · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder, how did
• 0:16
  they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us, because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  BreakFix has always been about capturing the living history of the automotive
• 0:31
  world, the builders, the storytellers, the caretakers, and the people who keep
• 0:36
  this hobby alive one machine at a time.
• 0:38
  And tonight, we're welcoming someone who sits right at the
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  crossroads of preservation, passion, and pure automotive spectacle.
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  Stuart Howden is the president of Classic Auto Mall, one of the most extraordinary
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  automotive destinations in the country, a place where 1,000-plus classic and
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  collector cars live under one roof, where barn finds sit steps away from
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  concours-level restorations, and where every aisle feels like walking through
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  a living museum of American car culture.
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  Stuart isn't just the guy who runs the place, he's the steward of thousands
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  of stories, each one with its own history, its own quirks, and its own
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  path to the mall's massive showroom.
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  From his early days in the automotive world to overseeing one of the largest
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  indoor classic car facilities on the planet, Stuart has built a reputation
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  for connecting people with the cars they've dreamed about for decades.
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  Whether it's a survivor-grade muscle car, a chrome-soaked cruiser, or a forgotten
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  gem pulled from long-term storage, he's seen it all, and he's here to share
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  with us what it's like to manage a collection that never stops growing,
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  changing, and surprising even the experts.
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  Tonight, we dive into the stories behind the mall, the market, the
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  machines, and the man who keeps the automotive time capsule running.
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  That's right.
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  And joining me tonight is returning co-host Don Wieberg from Garage Style
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  Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motoring Podcast Network.
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  Welcome back, Don.
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  Thank you, Eric.
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  Good to be back.
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  Well, with that, let's welcome Stuart officially to BreakFix.
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  Welcome, Stuart.
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  Thank you so much for having me on the show today.
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  I've been looking forward to this.
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  I got my notes, and I'm ready to go and talk cars and go down rabbit
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  holes that we didn't even expect.
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  I like to hear that.
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  Well, Stuart, like all good BreakFix stories, there's a
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  superhero origin story out there.
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  So tell us about the genesis of Classic Auto Mall and how you
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  got into the collector car space.
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  And this is such a unique operation in the automotive world.
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  There's gotta be a big story behind the path to the mall.
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  Take us on that journey.
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  Sure.
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  So I started out like anybody.
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  I loved cars as a kid, Hot Wheels and all the different iterations of cars
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  and classic cars and sports cars and just any kind of cars I was into.
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  What really got me over the hump was The Sounds of Sebring, a record album
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  that a neighbor kid had, and we went to their house one night, and he played
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  it for me, and it was just nirvana.
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  I thought, "Oh, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard." So I always
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  wanted to be involved in classic cars, but- Never really knew how to do it.
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  Had a career path of, in music and different things and, you
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  know, just wasn't really sure what I was gonna do and how I was
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  ever gonna get into classic cars.
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  And long story short, met a guy who had an auction.
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  It was interesting, he was working with, uh, eBay Crews at the time, and eBay
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  Crews offered me a job to go to Auburn, Indiana and run this big auction facility
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  out of the blue, and I had no experience in anything automotive, collector car
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  world other than I just loved cars.
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  But that kind of started my path, and then I met so many wonderful people and,
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  uh, ended up, I had a museum in Branson, Missouri that was a tourist attraction.
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  I ended up in North Carolina for a couple years.
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  My wife and I finally ended up in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, in the center
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  of the state, working with a guy, Grant Miller, one of the finest people
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  you've ever met in your life, who did a dealer auction every week, and once
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  a year did a classic car sale and said, "Hey, I want you to come run this."
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  And it was good timing for us, and kids were in college and needed a little extra
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  income and a steady paycheck instead of being an entrepreneur and all that.
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  So we're doing that, and I get a call from a guy in Morgantown, Pennsylvania,
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  which I have never even heard of, and he says, "Hey, I hear you're the guy
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  who knows consignment classic cars."
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  And I said, "Well, I've, I've had some experience in it," and so on and so forth.
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  And he said, "Well, I, I need a business plan because I'm gonna
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  do a consignment-based classic car dealership." And I happened
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  to have a business plan already.
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  My doodling days were not scratching on a napkin, they were writing
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  out a business plan of this.
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  I wasn't sure that it was this or a mall or a warehouse or something, but
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  it was a big unlimited space building.
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  So I had this business plan already done, so I just scratched out the name
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  and put his name in and did Morgantown.
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  "Where? Morgantown, Pennsylvania, not West Virginia?" And put that
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  in and sent it to him and he bought it from me, and he bought the deal.
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  And I said, "Well, that's great." So I told my wife and I said, "We got
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  an extra little money, let's go take a vacation." About two weeks later
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  I get a phone call and the guy says, "The family has voted." And I said,
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  "Okay." And he said, "We want the guy who wrote the plan to come execute the
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  plan." And I'm like, "Eh, I don't know.
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  I'm kind of happy where I'm at and not quite sure what the plan that you're
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  talking about is, but I'll come visit you on a weekend." So a Saturday came and,
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  and I drove over to Morgantown, and it was about a two and a half hour drive,
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  and I'm not knowing what to expect.
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  I've talked to this guy on the phone a couple of times.
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  He sent me money, the check didn't bounce, so, you know, there's a good
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  start of the relationship there.
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  And I pull into the parking lot of this outlet mall that
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  was built in the early '80s.
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  There's the worst beat up Expedition Ford you've ever seen in your entire
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  life, brown with not a, with scratches and chips and all kinds of stuff on
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  it, and this guy sitting in the, in this Expedition has got a long white
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  ponytail and a long white beard.
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  And he's older gentleman, maybe 10 years older than I am
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  at the time, 15 years older.
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  Not what I expected at all.
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  I get in his car and I'm thinking, "This has got to be a prank.
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  I mean, I don't, who is this guy?
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  What is this?
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  I don't understand.
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  How can this possibly be my dream thing in this weird scenario?" Uh, long story
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  short, we came into the mall and he had bought, over the years, 400 barn
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  finds for his collection, all different types, and he had lined them up in all
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  the storefronts of the whole entire mall with pipe and drape behind them.
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  So it looked like each room was full, even though each room was
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  only maybe a 10th or one 15th full.
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  But when we went in, none of the hallways had anything in them, but
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  there was these 400 barn finds.
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  They were all in these rooms, and it was just, like, overwhelmingly
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  intriguing, number one.
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  I think if the building had have been empty, I would have never
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  agreed to come here and do it.
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  I think I would've just said, "This is too surreal. I, I, I d- I…" Be
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  careful what you wish for, you know?
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  A chocolate sundae every day for 365 days is no fun.
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  And I'm thinking, "This is gonna be just something, I don't know." But
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  he said, "We want you to come do it.
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  We w- partner up on this deal.
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  It's a great facility, 336,000 square feet on 27 acres, right on the Pennsylvania
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  Turnpike, great car country area."
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  So I said, "Okay," and then I better check with my wife, and I checked
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  with her, and she kind of reluctantly said, "Well, it sounds like something
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  worth trying." And, uh, we moved here in September of 2017 and officially
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  launched the business in January of 2018.
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  It's been a rollercoaster, unbelievable ride, and I don't mean ups and
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  downs, I just mean a wild ride.
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  It's just been crazy the way this thing has grown and built, and we got to
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  about 1,100 cars at one point in time, and it was … It wasn't overwhelming.
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  It was actually pretty cool.
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  We actually had a good system that actually made it work for us.
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  And, you know, the, the building was designed for us in 1985 by Kemmons
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  Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn, but he didn't know it at the time, but- Yeah, no
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  stairs, all the doors are big enough for cars to get through, couldn't have been
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  And it has a Holiday Inn connected to it, so we can have events and
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  have a place for people to stay, and it, it was just one of those things
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  that it was divine intervention.
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  You know, Stuart, what's interesting about this part of your story is
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  that unlike a lot of other automotive businesses, whether they're motorsport
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  or otherwise, you survived COVID.
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  You started just before and have made it out the other side
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  successfully and continue to grow, whereas a lot of other places have
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  unfortunately closed their doors.
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  So I have to right away say congratulations, bravo.
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  I mean, that's commendable.
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  COVID happened, basically we were shut down the day before
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  my birthday, March 18th of 2020.
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  We laid everybody off, including our son, who worked for us.
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  My wife is our office manager.
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  My wife and I locked the front doors of the building, and we're walking past the
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  reception area where the receptionist would normally sit, and the phone rang.
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  And I said, "Oh, hold on. Let's see what this is. Somebody
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  forgot something or whatever."
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  "Classic Automotive. Why, yes, we do have a '67 Mustang for sale.
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  Yeah?" Yeah, you're gonna buy it?
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  Okay, all right.
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  Then all of a sudden the other line's ringing.
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  I was like, "Kathy, get back over here." She answered the phone, "Yeah, we do have
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  a '71 Camaro for sale." All of a sudden the phone's ringing and it's not stopping.
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  And we're like, "What's going on? Nobody's gonna be buying cars during
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  COVID." It was the exact opposite.
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  Everybody wanted to buy cars.
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  They just couldn't figure out how to do it.
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  The good news is, is that we had at the time about 900 cars in inventory, and we
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  had the wherewithal and the f- facilities and business plan in place to make it
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  work Without ever seeing a person or touching a person or being in their space.
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  And recall, hauling truck drivers were exempt from any of that.
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  So even though a classic car was pushing the boundaries of what
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  they were talking about when they allowed essential trucks to travel,
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  here we are, we're doing business.
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  We're literally sliding titles and checks in between the glass doors
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  of our front of our building to the consignor, and truckers are coming up
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  and we're leaving the keys in a box outside, and they're grabbing the key.
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  I mean, we were business as usual.
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  We called our sons, said, "Come back to work." Now, the downside,
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  or good side of downside, 900 cars to 400 cars in about six months.
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  All of a sudden we were down on inventory drastically, but we survived.
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  We made it.
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  And of course, we learned so much of our business during COVID,
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  of things that we could do and do better and more efficiently.
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  And we brought everybody back, you know, whenever we came back.
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  I can't remember the exact date it was, J- July or August.
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  Everybody came back and we went back to full staff, and we started
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  turning again, and then events started happening, and we were back in business.
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  And, uh, it was, uh, one of those things that I would have
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  I, I just knew when COVID hit, I was like, "Well, you'd think something
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  like this would ruin it," you know?
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  Something just so beyond your control.
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  And, uh, it turns out it couldn't have been better.
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  It worked out really well.
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  And that's a really important point you make, because we saw a shift in the
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  collector market from that time forward, and we s- we're still riding that bubble.
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  And I know this is something you talk about on your show all the time, but
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  there's another thing I wanted to pull on.
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  There's a thread.
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  There's something you said.
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  You said that album, The Sounds of Sebring.
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  Right.
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  And what I find interesting, for those that are watching this behind the scenes
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  on Patreon, your office is full of racing memorabilia, and you're a classic car guy.
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  Explain that to me.
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  Well, first of all, my office is a five-year-old me with an unlimited budget,
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  so … And I've always been into race cars and European sports cars, believe
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  it or not, so I'm into Porsches and BMWs and Mercedes, and that's what I drive.
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  But I have just a fond af- affection for classic cars, whether it's a '57
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  Thunderbird or a, or a 1960s whatever.
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  I mean, I'm, I've got a passion for all things automotive, cars, trucks, vans,
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  motorcycles, sports cars, race cars.
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  But for some reason, my office leans heavily on race
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  cars, and I don't know why.
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  It wasn't by design or a plan, it just kind of happened somehow, some way.
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  I just ended up with a lot of race car stuff.
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  He says with the most subtle sarcasm.
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  First of all, he's a Porsche guy.
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  He's sitting in a 911 GT3 seat.
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  That's not, like, some bargain basement, bought it off Amazon.
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  I could recognize that right away.
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  I'm gonna go out on a limb.
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  You're a Tifoso.
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  That's, uh, Ferrari Formula 1 stuff behind you, is that right?
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  Jacket and some Formula 1 pictures there, and the 3.0 BMW CSL, which is in
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  the background up there, which is one of my favorite race cars of all time.
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  I knew you were a true Ferrari fan, Stuart, when I saw the 499P
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  at Le Mans up on your wall there.
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  So you know, we're kindred spirits.
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  It's all good Funny how you lean towards certain things and then your respite
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  is something completely different.
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  Like, I worked in country music, and I'd have to literally, when I left our
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  live performance theater at night in Branson, Missouri, I'd have to get in
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  my car, and on my way home, I'd have to listen to Iron Maiden to kind of
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  equal myself out from the country music.
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  So you listen to country music all day and all night, and then you
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  turn some Iron Maiden on, and then eventually you kind of just balance.
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  So that was my thing.
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  And, uh, you know.
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  I tell you, the other thing that got me into cars a little bit
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  later on, but it kind of solidified it, there's a great picture.
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  I was talking to our guest yesterday about this.
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  There's a great picture.
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  There's an advertisement for Lotus.
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  It's a picture of Colin Chapman sitting on the hood of a Lotus Esprit in gold, and
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  his 414 Cessna twin engine plane in black and gold livery is parked right behind
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  him, and he's in a three-piece suit.
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  And I thought, "Oh my God, that is it." If you could ever
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  get to that, that's nirvana.
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  That's game over, mic drop, whatever we used to call it back then.
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  You know, Stuart, I have that ad framed in my garage.
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  No kidding.
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  I love that.
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  I do.
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  Yeah.
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  It's also in Cromback's biography of Chapman and his machines, so
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  it's a very, very famous picture.
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  Yeah.
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  Before we move on to talk a little bit more about the mall itself, I have one
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  question I have to ask, because, you know, as a tifoso, as a Porsche fan,
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  we're gonna ask you a classic Pit Stop question from Brake Fix, and the only one
• 13:30
  we're probably gonna ask on this episode.
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  You are at the head of the boardroom when two designs are presented in front of you,
• 13:36
  and you have to decide which one to build.
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  And that is the space age Porsche 959- Or the passionate Ferrari
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  F40, which one do you choose?
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  You know, it's funny, we had a conversation about the 959 on my show
• 13:49
  yesterday because my guest has a 959.
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  It was, uh, interesting, and it was, it was one of those ones that was
• 13:56
  done by Canepa, so they added more horsepower and all the different
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  things, 'cause they're a little crude from the era of when they came in.
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  But I wrote a paper on the 959 and the F40 when I was on my third
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  version of trying to go to college.
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  And, and, uh, that's a whole long story in itself.
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  I got three and a half years done and then waited too long to go back, and
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  they said, "Well, you have to start over because you waited too long." So
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  I wrote a paper on the 959 and the F40.
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  I have to say, as much as I love both cars, from a value standpoint,
• 14:24
  you'd say the F40 because look at the value that it's become.
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  But we didn't know that back in the day when we were sitting at,
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  in the boardroom making a decision.
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  So I would've picked the 959 at the time, just because it was so, you know, 444
• 14:36
  horsepower, twin turbo, all-wheel drive.
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  Looked like a Porsche, but, and most people wouldn't know the
• 14:41
  difference between it and a 911.
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  It would look the same to them and, and that's no different
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  than a 288 GTO and a 308 Ferrari.
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  But I love 935 Porsches.
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  And I don't even think I have a 935 on my wall, which is kind of surprising.
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  It's funny, now I'm thinking about this.
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  I love the 935, and purists will say, "Oh, that's not a purpose-built car. You gotta
• 15:01
  love the 962 or the 956 or, you know, the 917." I don't know, the 935 was my era.
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  I went to Riverside in 1982 and watched John Paul and the Whittington
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  brothers and all the guys racing back in the day, and Riverside was just
• 15:17
  like, I couldn't be a, in a f- cooler place if I dreamt of it, you know?
• 15:21
  I couldn't have made it up to be any coolers.
• 15:23
  So the, the, uh, 959 would get the nod back in the day.
• 15:26
  Today, eh, I might err towards the F40.
• 15:29
  So you are in a very small group of people that have picked the 959.
• 15:33
  The F40, like hands down, usually gets picked because it's so raw and raucous
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  and as close as to a, you know, a street-going race car as you can get.
• 15:41
  You know, that's not a bad thing, but it's really interesting the people that
• 15:45
  choose and then how they articulate and justify their choice of the 959.
• 15:49
  So good job.
• 15:49
  That was really well done.
• 15:50
  You know, I think the sophistication of the 959 is what got me.
• 15:54
  I love raw horsepower and raw, raw power, but there's something about
• 15:57
  a well-balanced vehicle that did it for me, and especially the 95-
• 16:00
  And I've never gotten to drive one.
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  One of these days, hopefully, uh, I'll get to drive one if I become friends
• 16:05
  with somebody who's got one close to us.
• 16:08
  All right.
• 16:08
  Let's switch gears.
• 16:09
  Let's talk a little bit more about the mall itself.
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  Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a first-time visitor to Classic Auto Mall.
• 16:17
  Some might say it's like stepping through an encyclopedia of American
• 16:20
  car culture, but how would you describe a trip through the mall?
• 16:24
  What do you see?
• 16:25
  How did you guys organize 27 acres of space?
• 16:28
  So what we did is, as we started the consignment business in 2018,
• 16:34
  as I said- We were taking cars.
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  We were just, we were advertising that, "Hey, this is what we do.
• 16:39
  We'll sell your car for you.
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  This is our program.
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  This is how it works.
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  This is…" And of course, everything that we did, we started out on
• 16:45
  the lower scale, the quality of cars, the amount of commitment
• 16:49
  that you had to make, all of that.
• 16:51
  So we don't charge admission for you to attend and come to the mall.
• 16:54
  We don't charge any upfront fees for you to consign your car.
• 16:56
  That was the only fight that my partner and I ever had, by the
• 16:58
  way, was not charging admission.
• 17:00
  He wanted to charge some kind of admission because he had it in his head, you have to
• 17:03
  charge admission to these things, and my theory was, no, I want more bodies through
• 17:07
  the building because even if it's a, you know, a, a group of senior citizens,
• 17:11
  they all have kids and uncles and nephews and different people that are into cars,
• 17:16
  and it'll be a way to spread the word.
• 17:18
  But anyway, back to your question, we tell people all the time, we're at these
• 17:21
  shows and events talking about Classic Auto Mall, we'll say to a guy, "336,000
• 17:25
  square feet." Well, you might as well say, "I jumped over the moon." They have no
• 17:29
  idea what the reference point of that is.
• 17:32
  It doesn't mean anything.
• 17:33
  We have 1,000 cars in the building.
• 17:35
  Okay, if you say so.
• 17:36
  You know, it just, it doesn't have any kind of bearing on reality to
• 17:41
  people, but the greatest is when they walk in the door and they go, "Oh,
• 17:45
  wow, I knew that there was cars in here, but I didn't real-" I mean, it's
• 17:49
  just, it's cars everywhere you go.
• 17:51
  It's like a mall for cars, literally.
• 17:53
  And when they get to the very center and you can do a 360 and pivot and
• 17:56
  look down each of the hallways, and each one is full of 70, 80, 90 cars
• 18:01
  in each hallway in addition to what's in the rooms, it's overwhelming.
• 18:04
  It's one of those things that you see the guys and they look at their watch
• 18:07
  and they go, "Oh, I didn't plan enough time for this. This is, I've got way
• 18:11
  less time than I thought to go ahead and see all these cars." You have, like,
• 18:15
  a little golf cart to get you around?
• 18:16
  I have a personal golf cart because I don't have time to be walking
• 18:20
  this daggone mall, and I'm lazy.
• 18:22
  Uh We actually have all the guys, we probably have seven or eight electric
• 18:28
  golf carts, and we have three electric John Deere Gators, and then we have
• 18:32
  a, a little electric trolley tram type thing that, uh, we've kind of outgrown
• 18:37
  because we, I mean, we can't fit it around the corners like we could before.
• 18:41
  But it's a spread out space and, and if the guys were walking all day to doing
• 18:45
  this, they'd get half of what they get done in a day on a regular basis because
• 18:49
  they just, there's only so much…
• 18:50
  Uh, steps matter, you know?
• 18:52
  We all know that in any kind of business, how many steps you take is- Mm-hmm … in
• 18:55
  a relation to how much money you can make.
• 18:57
  And a big part of your business is barn find cars, isn't it?
• 19:00
  Yep.
• 19:00
  You're not just dealing with late model collectibles, you're dealing
• 19:03
  with pretty much everything, but barn finds are a big part, aren't they?
• 19:06
  Obviously, the most cars we had in the building was the
• 19:09
  400 barn finds of my partner's.
• 19:10
  We've sold off a couple of hundred of those since we started, and there's about
• 19:14
  100 that he's decided to keep that, you know, no amount of money will buy it from
• 19:17
  him, even if it doesn't have any value, it's just, it has sentimental value.
• 19:20
  Okay.
• 19:21
  So we've done well with barn finds, and we actually still sell quite a
• 19:25
  few, but the ratio is not as strong as it was when we first started in
• 19:28
  '18 and '19 and '20, just because we've sold a lot of these collections.
• 19:33
  We have a few more that are coming up.
• 19:34
  We have an auction coming up in a week that will be about half barn finds,
• 19:38
  and that's mostly how we sell those.
• 19:40
  They're tougher to sell.
• 19:41
  In the old days, you could put a barn find on eBay, no title, no keys, no
• 19:45
  battery, no reserve, and the guy would sell it, and you'd do pretty well on it.
• 19:49
  Nowadays it's a little tougher.
• 19:50
  It's harder to get titles for cars.
• 19:52
  It's not the same world as it used to be if there's a missing title.
• 19:56
  So our focus has been always barn finds, but we take a $5,000 El Camino just
• 20:01
  as seriously as we take a million five Ferrari, and everything in between.
• 20:04
  We give everything the same program, take the same set of pictures.
• 20:08
  We do the same detailing of it.
• 20:10
  We promote it the same way.
• 20:11
  We're equal opportunity here, and we don't look down our nose at
• 20:14
  anybody's dream car because, you know, everybody starts somewhere.
• 20:17
  Right.
• 20:18
  And a $5,000 El Camino guy could be a $50,000 Corvette guy who
• 20:22
  could be a $150,000 Jaguar guy.
• 20:25
  You know, blessing of this place was is that when we first started, we had no
• 20:29
  idea- How many classic cars were in this part of the world within 100 miles of us?
• 20:33
  There was nobody who was saying, "Oh, Southeast Pennsylvania,
• 20:36
  there, that's the car world.
• 20:37
  Forget California, forget Florida, forget Scottsdale." Nobody was saying
• 20:41
  that It's interesting to me, I'm constantly looking at cars for sale.
• 20:45
  I can't afford any of them, but I look, and it's amazing to me the percentage
• 20:49
  of them that come from Pennsylvania.
• 20:52
  That is one amazing, amazing car state.
• 20:54
  It really is.
• 20:55
  Yeah.
• 20:56
  We waited five years in our business before we did a, a, a deep dive into
• 21:00
  where our consignments were coming from.
• 21:02
  We, we advertise, you know, we promote where our sales go to.
• 21:05
  We'll do on the r- on the podcast show, we'll say, "Ah, this week we sold a car to
• 21:09
  Houston, Texas, and San Jose, California, and Denmark, and so on and so on."
• 21:13
  But we never really deep dove into where the cars were coming from, and
• 21:16
  we should have done it, but I didn't really wanna know the answer, I think.
• 21:19
  I, I ultimately just didn't wanna know where our cars were coming from, how
• 21:24
  far of a distance they were coming from.
• 21:25
  And what we found was after five years, 80% of our cars were coming from within
• 21:31
  75 miles of where we sit, which was encouraging and both frightening at the
• 21:35
  same time because it's like, oh, wow, I would've thought it would've been 150
• 21:40
  miles on average, and it was really not.
• 21:43
  It was 75 miles where 80% of our cars came from, and we
• 21:46
  didn't know that starting out.
• 21:48
  So, you know, God bless whoever was looking after us for that deal.
• 21:51
  Are there any barn find stories that really kinda turn you on?
• 21:56
  The, the ones that you can't forget, they just give you goosebumps
• 21:59
  when you think about them?
• 22:00
  My partner found a 1923 Chevrolet Weedman Motorhome And there was a
• 22:07
  tree growing through the middle of it.
• 22:08
  It's a wooden back.
• 22:09
  It's got a, it's a Chevrolet, which is surprising it's not a Ford in 1923.
• 22:13
  Yeah.
• 22:13
  It's a center seat for driving the vehicle, so it's literally in the dead
• 22:17
  center of the- Mm-hmm … the windshield, like a McLaren F1, only different.
• 22:20
  It has an armoire in it, and it has a bed in it, and it has these cool flaps that
• 22:26
  open up to allow a breeze to come through the top of it, and it has a slide out.
• 22:31
  Unlike- What?
• 22:31
  Not unlike a Prevost of modern era buses that have these big electric slide outs.
• 22:37
  It's got a fold down kind of tent piece that folds out, and you've
• 22:41
  got, like, a canvas top on it.
• 22:43
  And you would sleep there, and then you had your armoire and all this.
• 22:46
  And this was something that you never see these things.
• 22:49
  It's still in our building.
• 22:50
  It's still probably the most popular vehicle of all the types
• 22:54
  that we have in the building.
• 22:55
  People gravitate to this thing more than just about anything, and I
• 22:58
  love it, and it's great to see kids and grandpa, grandma, and mom and
• 23:01
  dad, and the kids all just equally flock to this thing and go, "Whoa."
• 23:05
  Where do you see something like that?
• 23:07
  And you could put the prettiest, shiniest whatever right next
• 23:09
  to it, and nobody would care.
• 23:11
  Absolutely.
• 23:12
  Very cool.
• 23:13
  You said something interesting there.
• 23:14
  You put the prettiest, shiniest whatever next to it.
• 23:16
  So how do you guys organize the cars?
• 23:18
  So you have a thousand cars.
• 23:19
  Are they just hither to and everywhere, or are they broken down
• 23:22
  by year or genre or by country?
• 23:26
  Like, how did you guys organize the collections?
• 23:28
  My guys will ultimately, for some odd reason, try to put all
• 23:32
  the Corvettes together, try to put all the Mustangs together.
• 23:35
  Right now, we have, I think, 57 Corvettes in inventory, and probably 45 Mustangs.
• 23:41
  What my goal has always been is to have everything spread out in
• 23:44
  kind of a hodgepodge, $5,000 car, a $15,000 car, a $50,000 car.
• 23:49
  No rhyme or reason to it, because I was always taught in business is
• 23:53
  that you didn't want to pigeonhole yourself into having a person that
• 23:56
  came into your grocery store and only go to one area, and then they leave
• 24:00
  and they never see the rest of it.
• 24:01
  Because we have guys who come in looking for a Corvette, and then they see a Fiat
• 24:05
  Spider that their wife has always wanted, and if they, every car was in its own
• 24:10
  little area, they may have just gone to the Corvette room and that was it.
• 24:13
  But now they're walking through, seeing the rest of the cars,
• 24:15
  there's a Fiat Spider, "My wife's always wanted one of those.
• 24:17
  I hadn't thought about one of those in 25 years, but here it is right here.
• 24:21
  I can buy it today," and they'll buy that.
• 24:23
  And all of a sudden you'll have a sale that you never anticipated.
• 24:26
  The guy was coming to look at a Z06 Corvette.
• 24:28
  So we kind of gave up on trying to put them in any sense of order because it
• 24:33
  just, it's one of those things, you know, like herding cats, it just make you crazy.
• 24:36
  You just would never… I have so many anal retentive qualities about
• 24:41
  myself that if I let them start doing that, I would get on the bandwagon
• 24:45
  very quickly, and then I would just go nuts about anything that was
• 24:48
  out of place or anything like that.
• 24:50
  I'm a Disney clean and green guy in an old, dusty building that really, I mean,
• 24:57
  not many people would buy a building like we're in because they're afraid of
• 25:00
  the maintenance and the upkeep and all that, because it's an older building.
• 25:03
  But my partner loves these older buildings, and it doesn't cost nearly
• 25:06
  as much to maintain them as you would think, although the electric bill is
• 25:09
  quite steep here, but So for the cars that are staying permanently, that are
• 25:15
  not for sale, have you set them up in such a way that maybe they're, like, in
• 25:18
  a diorama, or you, they're surrounded by their own type of memorabilia,
• 25:21
  like, like a Buick room, or you have an Oakland room or something like that?
• 25:25
  No, we really, we only have a handful of vehicles that aren't going anywhere.
• 25:29
  Uh, we've got the, the aforementioned, uh, Weidman camper.
• 25:32
  We've got a Volkswagen replica of a Volkswagen bus that was at Woodstock,
• 25:36
  that sat up on the hill at Woodstock, and they completely did a replica
• 25:40
  of that, and it's really cool.
• 25:41
  Not for sale.
• 25:42
  But 99.999% of our vehicles are for sale in the building, and mostly American-made
• 25:49
  Mustang, Camaro, Chevelle, Thunderbirds, uh, is, is our bread and butter.
• 25:55
  Would I love it to be filled with a Riva boat like I have over here,
• 25:58
  or a, or an F40, or a 959, or a Testarossa for- Of course I would.
• 26:04
  But the practicality of it is, is that to do something in this scale, you got
• 26:09
  to have your bread and butter stuff.
• 26:10
  You got to be like Walmart.
• 26:11
  You got to sell a ton of widgets at a nickel profit and, uh, you know,
• 26:15
  you'll do good in the, in the long run.
• 26:17
  You sell more Fords than Ferraris You mentioned the electric bill being high.
• 26:21
  Is that because of all the battery tenders you have to run for 1,000 cars?
• 26:25
  It's that and the heat and the air, and we don't keep it
• 26:27
  It, it ain't cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
• 26:29
  Trust me.
• 26:30
  You wear your jacket in the winter, you'll probably leave it on, but you
• 26:32
  gotta keep it somewhat climate controlled.
• 26:35
  We have 157 HVAC units on our roof.
• 26:38
  Yeah, so it, it's a big old place to … A- and just the lighting bill,
• 26:42
  you know, and just, just for the lights, forget the heat and air, is expensive.
• 26:47
  So let's sort of switch gears and talk about the collector
• 26:49
  space from your vantage point.
• 26:51
  Sitting on top of an inventory of 1,000 cars, you saw everything go up, up, up,
• 26:56
  up, up, and used car market went crazy.
• 26:58
  Even, you know, your off rental car Nissan Altima- Right … is three times more
• 27:02
  expensive than it should be right now.
• 27:04
  Hopefully, that bubble maybe will correct itself in the
• 27:06
  future, but what are you seeing?
• 27:08
  What are you thinking?
• 27:08
  What do you think is cooling?
• 27:10
  Where do you think things are going?
• 27:11
  Well, I can tell you that the one thing we've felt from COVID just happened
• 27:17
  within the past six to eight months, and that is the cyclical nature of
• 27:21
  people collecting one or two cars at a time is about a five-year window.
• 27:25
  So everybody that bought their car in COVID, post-COVID area within,
• 27:31
  you know, four to five, six years ago, is now at that crossroads
• 27:35
  where they're ready to sell the car.
• 27:36
  They wanna step up to something else, and this is a huge part of our market.
• 27:40
  But guess what?
• 27:41
  In
• 27:44
  2020, when they bought that Chevelle, the market was $50,000 for that
• 27:48
  car, and guess what it is now?
• 27:50
  Not 50.
• 27:51
  It's 40, or maybe it's 35.
• 27:54
  So now, all these guys that bought at the top of the market, which was, uh,
• 27:58
  inevitable it was gonna happen, are now thinking, "Oh, I'd like to get rid of this
• 28:01
  car. Now I'm upside down in it. I got, you know, more money in it than it's worth."
• 28:06
  The old a- you know, I promised my wife we'd make a profit on every car we bought.
• 28:10
  Uh, I knew we were gonna hit it on run, the market was never gonna shift.
• 28:14
  Didn't really happen.
• 28:15
  The market's still a little bit soft and just, dare I say, generic
• 28:20
  classic cars being a, a '70 Chevelle with a 350 in it, not the original
• 28:24
  motor, not the original transmission.
• 28:26
  Nice car, number two-and-a-half, three condition, nice paint job,
• 28:30
  has flaws, great driver car.
• 28:33
  You know, the market on those is just not gonna be very good now.
• 28:36
  And will it come back?
• 28:38
  I don't know, it's hard to say.
• 28:39
  I mean, we don't see the '55, '6, and '7 Thunderbirds ever coming
• 28:42
  back to the prices they were at.
• 28:44
  We don't see the '39 Ford Deluxes convertibles that
• 28:47
  were, you know, 80, $90,000.
• 28:49
  We don't see them coming back.
• 28:51
  But the Duesenberg market ain't suffering.
• 28:53
  The Ferrari market ain't suffering, you know?
• 28:56
  Let's talk about that, because I'm sure you've been keeping
• 28:58
  track like everybody else.
• 29:00
  Kissimmee was a big move forward in the Ferrari space.
• 29:04
  Yeah.
• 29:04
  There, there's been obviously incremental rise in investment
• 29:08
  in the Ferrari space for years.
• 29:09
  It's never a bad bet, you know?
• 29:11
  It's sort of like nobody got fired for selling IBM, but, you
• 29:13
  know, you never really lose money buying a Ferrari, but that Bachman
• 29:17
  collection sort of reset everybody's focus on Ferrari for this year.
• 29:20
  What are your thoughts?
• 29:21
  Well, when you see an Enzo go for $12 million that, you know, was going for
• 29:27
  3 and 4 million not that long ago, and I mean, I know not that long ago,
• 29:31
  in my mind, is usually a lot shorter time than it actually is, 'cause
• 29:35
  yesterday to me is five years ago, or five years ago is yesterday, you know?
• 29:39
  The thing that surprises me most about the Ferrari market, I get the hypercar stuff.
• 29:44
  I get the whatever five is, FECTA, uh, where you got the 288 GTO, the La
• 29:49
  Ferrari, the F40, the F50, and the Enzo.
• 29:53
  Every guy who collects Ferraris who's got any money, that,
• 29:55
  you have to have those five.
• 29:56
  You know, it has to be part of your collection.
• 29:58
  I get those going up in value.
• 30:00
  I get that they're gonna continue to increase in value, uh, just because, you
• 30:05
  know, they're amazing cars and limited production, and not everybody that wanted
• 30:09
  one could get one, and so that leaves a lot of room for marketability out there.
• 30:13
  What I don't understand is a 400i that brings $150,000, or a
• 30:18
  308, which are, pardon me, are not very nice cars to drive.
• 30:22
  They're not very fast.
• 30:23
  They're not very reliable.
• 30:24
  They're not very much of anything.
• 30:26
  And for them to bring $100,000-plus, I remember when a 308 Ferrari,
• 30:31
  you'd buy for 20, and then you'd go put 20 in it, and you'd have a
• 30:35
  car that was worth 15, so- I don't understand that segment of the market.
• 30:40
  I get the upper end of the market.
• 30:41
  There, you know, listen, the wealth in this country, and the world for that
• 30:45
  matter, is immeasurable in, in, compared to what it was even 25 or 30 years ago.
• 30:50
  And the amount of money that people can go and spend, I mean, standing next
• 30:54
  to a guy at an, at an RM auction and all of a sudden a $12 million bid, and
• 30:58
  it's the guy next to you you've been chatting with, who you thought was
• 31:00
  just some guy, and here's this guy, you know, buying a $12 million car.
• 31:04
  And it happens on a regular basis because of all the cars that we know
• 31:08
  about that sell at all the high-end auction houses, and sell with us, and
• 31:11
  sell with, you know, some of the other classic car dealers, uh, in the world,
• 31:14
  there are probably double that in private transactions, 'cause most rich guys
• 31:19
  are very protective of their identity and what they are and who they are.
• 31:22
  You remember when the Forbes list first came out, they had a hard
• 31:25
  time getting anybody to admit that they had a million dollars.
• 31:28
  People didn't wanna even talk about it.
• 31:29
  People, when I was growing up, the rich people drove Buicks and Oldsmobiles and
• 31:33
  the middle class guys were the ones who drove the Cadillacs and the Lincolns.
• 31:36
  Uh, we didn't have any idea that our neighbors were as wealthy as they
• 31:39
  were because they didn't show it.
• 31:41
  They didn't flaunt it.
• 31:42
  They didn't wanna be on some list telling me how much money I got.
• 31:45
  It'd be funny to go back to the Forbes 400 list on the very first year that it
• 31:49
  came out and see what the top level was.
• 31:51
  It was probably, you know, like 30 million or something.
• 31:54
  Stuart, the guy you're talking about, the neighbor you don't
• 31:57
  know how rich he is, that's Eric.
• 31:58
  That's Eric
• 32:01
  Hit him up for a loan, he'll do it to you.
• 32:05
  Only if it's a hot hatchback, Don.
• 32:07
  Only if it's a hot hatch.
• 32:09
  You know, that's the problem.
• 32:10
  You know, when we talk about this hobby, we want to get the kids involved, we
• 32:15
  wanna keep the involvement of people who may have not been collector car people,
• 32:18
  but it's difficult if you wanna send somebody to go, let's say, Amelia Island.
• 32:23
  And I'm not picking on Amelia Island, I love that concourse, it's a great event.
• 32:26
  But the Ritz Carlton, if you wanna stay at the host hotel, it's 2,700 a
• 32:30
  night, and it's a three-night minimum.
• 32:31
  I don't care how much money you have, at some point in time, you know, we
• 32:34
  may have to say, "Enough is enough." We're go- not, you know, we're not we're
• 32:38
  mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore, like Network the movie,
• 32:41
  but we're gonna say, "I'm not gonna pay $2,700 a night, even if I can."
• 32:45
  Don't get me in a grocery store, 'cause I'm just, I don't even understand this.
• 32:49
  What happened to the good old days?
• 32:51
  Well, let's not solve that problem tonight.
• 32:54
  Let's, let's talk about something else.
• 32:55
  We had this discussion, Don, on several What Should I Buy episodes
• 32:59
  that we've done in the past, and that is thinking about grandpa's car.
• 33:02
  And that is a generational shift, and the shift is occurring now, right in
• 33:07
  front of our eyes, where when we were growing up, grandpa's car was from the
• 33:11
  '50s, maybe, that he drove every day.
• 33:14
  You kind of looked at what grandpa drove every day versus what grandpa aspired to.
• 33:18
  To your point, Stuart, from earlier, those Duesenbergs and the Packards and
• 33:21
  the cars of the '20s that they grew up with, you know, things like that.
• 33:24
  So when we keep shifting down the line, kids today, my girls as an
• 33:28
  example, what did my dad drive?
• 33:30
  Well, cars from the '90s.
• 33:31
  Right.
• 33:31
  Cars from the '90s are really popular right now, which is really
• 33:35
  interesting, because they have not yet bubbled into this escalation
• 33:39
  curve that we're talking about.
• 33:40
  But I don't want to sit here and debate the end of the Middle Ages- Sure.
• 33:44
  with '90s cars.
• 33:45
  What I wanna talk about is the cars that are coming out right now.
• 33:49
  In your opinion, with your wise eyes and all this experience,
• 33:53
  what is collectible today?
• 33:55
  What's gonna be grandpa's car 20, 30 years in the future when I'm a grandpa?
• 34:00
  The short answer is I don't know, and my reason for not knowing
• 34:03
  is, is not understanding exactly how the technology of the side
• 34:08
  is going to work in the future.
• 34:10
  Not because technology, because cars will be so technologically
• 34:14
  advanced, it's because the electronics will be technologically advanced,
• 34:17
  and for a 1990 Lexus, they're not gonna make any of that crap.
• 34:20
  They're not gonna make any of the parts for that.
• 34:22
  So maybe that begets that to become collectible because it's gonna become
• 34:27
  to the point where you can't buy the little computer box that went on a 1991
• 34:32
  Infiniti Q45 because they don't make them anymore, and nobody wants to make
• 34:36
  them because there's no value in it.
• 34:38
  And my answer to that, I said it on another episode, there's an LS
• 34:41
  swap ready every where you turn.
• 34:43
  Right.
• 34:44
  Exactly.
• 34:44
  There will always be crate Chevy motors.
• 34:46
  That's the beauty of, of what that is.
• 34:48
  But you know what?
• 34:49
  The cars that I gravitate towards still are '90s cars, '93 through
• 34:53
  '95 928 Porsche GTS, a BMW 850CSi,
• 34:58
  Supra twin turbo.
• 34:59
  I love those cars because the '90s for me were the interim years.
• 35:03
  I had cool cars when I was a kid, you know, 16 through 20-something.
• 35:07
  Then I couldn't afford anything during that era when they had those cool twin
• 35:11
  turbos, and the good news is, is it gave me hope that if I ever did figure
• 35:15
  out a way to make any money, that they were still building cool cars, 'cause
• 35:18
  we thought in the late '70s, w- if you drove a '77 Plymouth Volare, you would
• 35:23
  realize that the death of the automobile was near, and it was coming- There was
• 35:27
  no way there was gonna be anything cool made anymore But Corinthian leather, Stu.
• 35:31
  Corinthian leather You know what's funny about that?
• 35:34
  Let's say, let's take a 1978 Corvette.
• 35:36
  Those of us who are car people go, "Well, you know, that's a '78 Corvette,
• 35:41
  underpowered, the malaise era.
• 35:44
  There wasn't much to it.
• 35:45
  180 horsepower in the L48, 220 in the L82.
• 35:49
  It just was not… But if you stop and back up about 25 feet and
• 35:54
  look at a '78 Corvette, take every preconceived notion about how well
• 35:58
  it performs and does and doesn't do this, that's a good-looking car.
• 36:01
  It is.
• 36:02
  When you dress 'em up, yeah.
• 36:03
  We forgot that because we were, "Oh, well, those, you know, that old
• 36:07
  '78 Corvette's nothing." You know, the solution to the '78 Corvette
• 36:10
  problem is still the same, Stu.
• 36:12
  LS swap.
• 36:13
  Yeah.
• 36:14
  Done.
• 36:14
  The LS swap solves everything, right?
• 36:16
  That's right.
• 36:16
  I would love to say, what I wanted to talk about is actually a few steps
• 36:20
  back from what Stuart was saying about the electronics of these cars.
• 36:23
  And, you know, I was a believer in that, too.
• 36:25
  I thought, "Yeah, all these cars with their whiz bang stuff going on,
• 36:28
  they're gonna just basically become extinct because nobody'll be able to
• 36:32
  fix them." You know, one car I really like, and a lot of people, you know,
• 36:35
  i- i- it's one of those polar cars.
• 36:37
  People either really like it or they really hate it.
• 36:39
  No, don't worry, I'm not going after that one.
• 36:42
  Okay, good.
• 36:43
  It, uh, it's actually the Aston Martin Lagonda.
• 36:46
  Oh.
• 36:47
  Yeah, it's a big wedge of a brick of a sedan.
• 36:50
  And the early ones, as you know, they were hugely technological for the '70s.
• 36:55
  Hugely.
• 36:56
  They had stuff going on in there that was ready for NASA.
• 36:59
  It had two fuses, Don.
• 37:01
  Two fuses.
• 37:02
  Two.
• 37:03
  And, you know, really, they only needed three, but Lucas said, "Let's
• 37:07
  save some money." But it came with that smoke in a jar, remember?
• 37:11
  Yeah.
• 37:11
  It's good stuff.
• 37:13
  That's good stuff, yeah.
• 37:14
  But I'll tell you, though, it was, it was one of those English magazines, and I
• 37:18
  was reading an article, and I bought the magazine because it had this article about
• 37:22
  this guy who also likes these Lagondas.
• 37:24
  And he was younger, he was in his 30s, so he buys, uh, I forget what year, '77, '75
• 37:30
  Lagonda, filled with electrical problems.
• 37:33
  It just had electrical problems all over the place.
• 37:35
  He's younger.
• 37:36
  He's like Eric.
• 37:38
  He grew up techy nerd, and so he understands wiring and all this stuff.
• 37:42
  The next thing you know, he's pulling this car apart to figure
• 37:45
  out, what can I do to fix this?
• 37:47
  He finds out that in the '90s, Nissan was using a whole bunch of
• 37:52
  products and components that were very similar to what the Aston
• 37:57
  Martin was using back in the '70s.
• 37:58
  So he started Mickey Mousing it together.
• 38:01
  It became one of the most reliable Aston Martins.
• 38:03
  It's still running around in England right now.
• 38:05
  He became a member of the club.
• 38:07
  The car became almost his daily driver.
• 38:09
  This thing is solid as a rock.
• 38:10
  It's incredible.
• 38:11
  While I was reading this, I'm saying to myself, "Okay, great, there's hope for
• 38:14
  this car. Not that I'll ever be able to afford one, but there's hope." The younger
• 38:17
  people who are used to computer controls, they might be the ones who fix this stuff.
• 38:22
  I mean, look at the World War II birds.
• 38:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:24
  They were, what?
• 38:26
  Exposed to the airplanes, exposed to the Jeeps.
• 38:28
  And what did they have to do when they were over there?
• 38:30
  Keep 'em running.
• 38:31
  'Cause guess what?
• 38:32
  There's not a repair shop around the corner.
• 38:34
  You have to keep this thing going, okay?
• 38:37
  So based on that, what'd they do?
• 38:38
  They became little engineers.
• 38:39
  They knew how to keep the Jeeps going, the airplanes go, God forbid the airplane
• 38:43
  breaks down, but you see what I'm saying.
• 38:44
  It's the same thing, it's just advanced.
• 38:46
  Now it's computer stuff, and there is, again, a young person who was exposed to
• 38:51
  computers his whole life, and now he's not afraid of going after this Aston Martin.
• 38:56
  And not only that, because he had experience with Nissan cars, he's looking
• 38:59
  at the Aston Martin stuff saying, "God, this is so familiar. This looks just
• 39:03
  like what was used on the 200SX." Mm-hmm.
• 39:05
  "This looks like this, this looks like that." So they were able to put it back
• 39:08
  together, and I think that's what kinda gives me hope for some of these cars
• 39:11
  that are coming down the line that I look at, and I'm sure you guys, too.
• 39:14
  I look at 'em, I think, "Holy cow, I don't want anything to do with
• 39:18
  that." Well, yeah, because I was raised by World War II people.
• 39:22
  The difference in thinking is there, but these kids aren't intimidated
• 39:25
  by him, not by a long shot.
• 39:27
  I like the 200 SX reference, too.
• 39:29
  I know, right?
• 39:30
  Great car.
• 39:32
  Since we're in the middle of car show season- Yes
• 39:35
  and car week is turning into car month, as we all know, and we get to
• 39:40
  bask in its glory every year, there is often a debate that percolates to
• 39:44
  the surface all the time, and that's restoration versus preservation.
• 39:48
  And I wanna get your thoughts, especially with 1,000 cars at your disposal, where
• 39:53
  you guys find yourselves in that argument.
• 39:55
  I love the preservation side of it, if it's within practical and within reason.
• 40:00
  There's impractical restoration and preservation, unfortunately.
• 40:03
  A four-door 1940 Plymouth Sedan is not practical to restore.
• 40:07
  It's a shame that it won't be preserved in any way, shape, or form.
• 40:11
  And it shouldn't always be about value.
• 40:12
  But we always tell people, "Buy what you love, restore what you love, spend
• 40:15
  whatever you feel comfortable spending. If you get some of it back, you've
• 40:18
  hit a home run. If you don't get any of it back, you were okay with it to
• 40:21
  begin with." But I love original cars.
• 40:24
  I love low mileage cars that, you know, have been preserved
• 40:28
  and are mothballed, if you will.
• 40:29
  '78 Corvette pace car comes to mind, just, uh, out of the blue, when p-
• 40:33
  people were saving those, or the last year for the Cadillac Eldorado
• 40:35
  Convertibles that weren't particularly collectible when things turned around
• 40:39
  and people started saying, "Oh, I've got a '78 Corvette with 20 miles on
• 40:42
  it." And it didn't have the impact that everybody thought it was gonna have.
• 40:45
  And then you have others, remember the Ford GT when it came out in 2005?
• 40:49
  It tanked.
• 40:49
  I had one with 80 miles on it that I was begging to get rid
• 40:53
  of, and got, finally got it sold.
• 40:54
  It had all four options, in that midnight blue, and got it sold for 90 grand
• 40:57
  and was thankful for it to be gone.
• 40:59
  And of course, you know, we all know where those went.
• 41:02
  But- You know, the right car, I think a ZL1 aluminum block 1969 Corvette
• 41:09
  four-speed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I think that should be preserved
• 41:13
  to the nth degree because it is such a important part of the history of the
• 41:17
  automobile and where we were able to go.
• 41:19
  Most of us didn't even realize back in the '60s you could check a box
• 41:23
  that would get aluminum 427 in a car.
• 41:26
  No, we didn't know any of that.
• 41:27
  We just go, "Oh, that looks cool. That's what I'd like to
• 41:29
  have." I bought a '75 Trans Am.
• 41:31
  It was the worst year to possibly buy it.
• 41:33
  '76 would've been better.
• 41:34
  This was in '78.
• 41:36
  '74 would've been better.
• 41:37
  I could've gotten an SD455 probably for the same price.
• 41:39
  I didn't know anything.
• 41:40
  I just thought, "Hmm, that looks cool.
• 41:41
  That's what I'd like to own." I mean, it leads from preservation to
• 41:45
  restoration to restomods too, so you got that element of it as well too.
• 41:51
  And my position is, is that there's room for all of it, A,
• 41:55
  and B, it depends on the subject.
• 41:57
  I mean, you could put two cars side by side of each other that were
• 42:00
  restored, and they're not the same car even though they have the same specs.
• 42:03
  You can put two SS 396 Chevelles with four-speed Muncie M20s, and
• 42:08
  they're both red, and they both have Kroger wheels, and they both
• 42:10
  have this, and they both have that.
• 42:11
  But the level that one was done and the level that this one was done, it's,
• 42:15
  there's so many different variations.
• 42:17
  So I would say that it has to be almost done on a case-by-case basis.
• 42:21
  Obviously, there's no committee that rules who gets to… You know,
• 42:24
  you don't have to come before me to determine whether you restore it,
• 42:26
  keep it at original, or restomod it.
• 42:28
  But it's gotta be almost on an individual basis because there's
• 42:31
  reasons that, you know, obviously, you don't chuck a DZ302 out of a '69 Z28.
• 42:36
  I know crate motors are the answer, but at some point in
• 42:39
  time, that needs to be restored.
• 42:41
  You don't wanna let that engine go by the wayside.
• 42:43
  Well, since you went there again- … what's your number one car you'd
• 42:47
  be like, if ever that came across, you're like, "That needs a restomod.
• 42:51
  That needs an engine swap.
• 42:52
  Don't care what condition it's in.
• 42:54
  There's no preservation of that"?
• 42:55
  Right.
• 42:55
  You talked about the Volare.
• 42:57
  Is, is that your restomod car?
• 42:58
  Like- Yeah.
• 42:59
  I think somehow, deep down in, in the nether world of my body, somehow Volare
• 43:03
  is… I, I keep talking about it, so there must be something about it, right?
• 43:07
  There must be a reason I'm talking about it.
• 43:08
  I've always wanted to have a Pro-Touring second gen Camaro.
• 43:13
  Oh.
• 43:13
  I love that body style of the second gen, '71, '70 or '71 through, 70 and
• 43:18
  a half through '77 or whatever year that they kinda changed them a little
• 43:22
  bit from there, '80, I guess, or so.
• 43:24
  I always loved those second generation Camaros.
• 43:26
  I always thought it would be fun to have a, a canyon-carving restomod to run
• 43:30
  Mulholland Drive in, with a great stereo, with Corbeau seats, Alpine cassette deck
• 43:35
  that, you know, slid it out of your hand and dropped it easily into the thing.
• 43:38
  There was so many cool things that you wanted to do to make a restomod out of it.
• 43:42
  Just it's so modern but yet so retro-looking.
• 43:45
  I think that would be my, my one guilty pleasure of that.
• 43:48
  But I, I see cars all the time that I think, "That might make a cool restomod."
• 43:52
  And I don't even like restomods per se.
• 43:54
  I don't have any fault with them.
• 43:56
  They're just not my thing normally.
• 43:57
  Do you think there's a point, Stuart, where- You can't keep
• 44:00
  the car original anymore.
• 44:02
  You've got to restore it.
• 44:03
  Maybe even if just for the next generation, you have to restore this
• 44:06
  thing You don't want a car to, to just disintegrate, A, and B, at what point
• 44:11
  do you realize that you'd rather have radial tires than bias-ply tires?
• 44:15
  What point is it where you'd rather have four-wheel disc
• 44:16
  brakes on the car to make it stop?
• 44:18
  What point is you'd like to be a little more comfortable and add
• 44:20
  vintage air, if you could do it in a way that wouldn't disrupt the
• 44:23
  dash or the firewall or all that?
• 44:25
  There's all those questions.
• 44:27
  Th- they're all hard to answer because knowing what I
• 44:30
  I, I mean, I have a friend of mine who buys, he has a dual Ghia.
• 44:33
  Mm. And he put vintage air in it.
• 44:35
  I mean, who does that?
• 44:37
  Nobody does that.
• 44:39
  I had a friend of mine who's got a V16 Cadillac, put vintage air in it.
• 44:42
  He wanted to drive it.
• 44:43
  He wanted to use it.
• 44:43
  He wanted to enjoy it, but, you know, his wife wouldn't go
• 44:46
  because she's just miserable.
• 44:47
  You know, it's black interior, black exterior.
• 44:50
  You know, most car shows are on warm days, and she said, "You know what? I,
• 44:54
  I'm just not enjoying this," and so he put air in it, and everybody's happy.
• 44:57
  Is that harmful to a V16 Cadillac?
• 44:59
  Uh, I don't know.
• 45:01
  Probably.
• 45:02
  Does it matter to him?
• 45:03
  No.
• 45:04
  He doesn't care.
• 45:05
  At the end of the day, we hope that we're all just stewards of these
• 45:07
  cars, but we also get to enjoy them and use them, and if, God forbid, we
• 45:10
  take one out and run it into a tree, that's our prerogative, even though,
• 45:14
  you know, we didn't do it on purpose.
• 45:15
  I mean, you can't mothball these things.
• 45:17
  I mean, you can, but we all know that engines and not running, and suspensions
• 45:22
  and not being driven, modern electronics and not being used spell disaster.
• 45:27
  Very true Well, as we look ahead to the future, and as we're on the precipice
• 45:32
  of celebrating Classic Auto Mall's 10-year anniversary, we're getting
• 45:35
  very close to that initial, a meeting with that preservation class Ford
• 45:39
  Excursion that you described earlier.
• 45:42
  Let's talk about the next decade, new programs, new experiences, new things
• 45:46
  on the horizon for Classic Auto Mall.
• 45:48
  What's your business plan for 2027 through '37?
• 45:52
  Our business plan is to become the, the one place you go when it's time
• 45:57
  to sell the collection or to sell Dad's estate or Mom's estate or
• 46:01
  whoever's it is that's collected the cars, because it's such a slippery
• 46:06
  slope in the collecting side of it.
• 46:08
  There's, like, three schools of thought for collectors.
• 46:10
  There's the collector who says, "I mapped out the whole thing.
• 46:14
  This is where this car goes.
• 46:15
  This is where this car goes.
• 46:16
  Every year, I update the value based on the trends in markets.
• 46:20
  This is the insurance policy.
• 46:22
  This is what's done to it.
• 46:23
  This is the history of the car.
• 46:24
  This is where the hardtop is up in the attic.
• 46:26
  This is the build sheet that goes with it." There's those guys.
• 46:29
  Then there's guys who are like, "Uh, well, I don't really care.
• 46:32
  Whatever ha- you know, let them deal with it.
• 46:34
  They'll have to deal with it." And we see that more often than
• 46:37
  we see the earlier version.
• 46:39
  And then there's the guy who's kind of the, the hybrid,
• 46:41
  the in-between guy of that.
• 46:42
  But the guy who says, "You know what?
• 46:45
  Let's leave it to them," is also the guy on his deathbed who grabs his wife,
• 46:50
  pulls her down close to him, and then says, "Honey, whatever you do, don't
• 46:54
  sell the Corvette for less than 60."
• 46:58
  And it happens all the time.
• 47:01
  Here's the problem with it, Mom and the kids or whoever the, I'm
• 47:04
  not profiling here, just, I'm just using that as an example.
• 47:07
  Mom and the kids now are left with Dad's 10 or 12 cars.
• 47:11
  Nobody knows anything about them.
• 47:13
  There may be one in a restoration shop down the street and nobody knows about.
• 47:16
  There may be one that was at a museum on loan.
• 47:19
  There may be parts to a car that are, you know, a tri-power set up for a
• 47:23
  427 that the guy took just to put a, a four-barrel on because he didn't want to
• 47:27
  deal with the tri-power, but you don't want to get rid of it 'cause the original
• 47:30
  intake and, and carburetors, and that's valuable, hugely valuable, maybe $10,000.
• 47:35
  And they have no idea where any of this stuff exists.
• 47:38
  It's an emotional time.
• 47:39
  Part of the, most of these cars were part of the family.
• 47:41
  They need somebody who can step in and say, "We're gonna take over.
• 47:45
  We've got you.
• 47:46
  We're gonna take every car you got, whether it's a $500 rust bucket in the
• 47:50
  backyard that Dad was slapping parts off of, or whether it's a $5 million whatever,
• 47:55
  and everything in between, and we're gonna take it and we're gonna handle it,
• 47:57
  and you're gonna wait for us to give you a call, and then you're gonna bring us
• 47:59
  the title, and we're gonna hand you a check from Classic Automotive, not some
• 48:02
  stranger, not people coming to your house.
• 48:04
  We're gonna make this so simple for you." So that's our focus is really right
• 48:08
  now, is really marketing to the, that clientele because we're coming upon a
• 48:12
  time, you know, in the old days, guys collected, a guy had a, one Ferrari, or
• 48:16
  he had a Camaro and a Harley, or he had a Chevelle, or he had a Thunderbird.
• 48:21
  So many people have so many multitudes of 20, 30, 40 cars.
• 48:25
  It's commonplace now, and it requires a whole lot of thought
• 48:28
  and process to get to that.
• 48:30
  So our goal in the next 10 to 15 years is, there should be some retirement in there
• 48:35
  somewhere, I'm certain, but probably not, is to really cater to the collections
• 48:40
  and estates, whether you're pre-planning and thinning the herd, or whether it's
• 48:43
  been left to you and you don't know what to do and there's no plan or whatever.
• 48:47
  We want to be able to come in and say, "We got this.
• 48:49
  We got transportation.
• 48:50
  We got the insurance.
• 48:50
  We got the parts.
• 48:51
  We got this.
• 48:52
  We know where that is.
• 48:53
  This needs to fix.
• 48:53
  This you shouldn't fix.
• 48:55
  This you should sell it just like it is.
• 48:57
  This should go to this auction.
• 48:58
  This should go to Classic Automobile.
• 48:59
  This should go to the junkyard."
• 49:01
  The option may not always be us, but we want to be that go-to who guides you in
• 49:05
  the right direction, even if it sends a car to Bring a Trailer or, or RM Auctions.
• 49:10
  I mean, there's certain cars that we do better with here, and there are certain
• 49:13
  cars that might do better at another venue, and we're not afraid to say that
• 49:17
  because ultimately what we want to become is the thing that people think about when
• 49:21
  they think, "Oh, it's time to do this, this dastardly task that we have to do."
• 49:25
  That's where I see what we're heading towards.
• 49:27
  Collectibility of cars, I don't know.
• 49:29
  It's hard to say.
• 49:29
  I, uh, I've given up on trying to predict what's next 'cause I thought Duesenbergs
• 49:33
  were never gonna come back from the early 2000s, and boy was I wrong about that.
• 49:38
  Based on this, Stuart, uh, if somebody wanted to sell a, a
• 49:42
  collection through, uh, Classic Automotive, what's the process?
• 49:46
  What, what are the steps they gotta take?
• 49:47
  Are there any rules involved?
• 49:49
  What, what, what do they do?
• 49:50
  Yeah.
• 49:50
  Let's assume they're not in their hospital bed, you know, their dying breath.
• 49:55
  Right Basically, it's just a phone call.
• 49:57
  Pick up the phone and call me directly.
• 50:00
  I'll take any phone call.
• 50:01
  You know, if you wanna yell at me or if you wanna give me praise
• 50:04
  or if you wanna be somewhere in the middle, I'm okay with it.
• 50:06
  Pretty thick-skinned.
• 50:07
  I've pretty much been doing this so long that nothing really trips me up usually.
• 50:11
  I've pretty much got it down to a science that guys walk into my office and they
• 50:14
  go, "What about this?" And I go, "Well, you just do that, that, and this."
• 50:16
  And they go, "How do you know that?" I go, "It's not that I'm smart, it's
• 50:19
  just that I've thought through every part of this that I possibly could."
• 50:22
  So what I tell people is, look, if you're g- having a, a collection of
• 50:26
  cars and you're thinking that it's time to thin the herd, to get rid,
• 50:29
  to downsize, to go from 20 to two or four, pick up the phone and call me.
• 50:33
  Let's talk about it.
• 50:33
  We've got a program, involves lots of different elements of the process,
• 50:38
  but a lot of it we will do on the cuff if we get a collection of cars.
• 50:42
  If somebody's gonna bring us 10 or 15 or 20 cars for sale, we'll work with them.
• 50:46
  We'll work with them on transportation.
• 50:47
  We'll work with them on helping, uh, make some minor repairs.
• 50:50
  And, and what we do, we evaluate cars, but we don't tell you
• 50:53
  to spend $500 to gain $100.
• 50:55
  We tell you that if you spend $500 to fix this car, it's gonna
• 50:59
  get you another 2,500, then we're gonna guide you in that direction.
• 51:02
  If it's not gonna mean anything to fix something, then we
• 51:05
  don't tell you to fix it.
• 51:06
  We're not in this to try to nickel and dime you to, you know, replace
• 51:09
  every little fuse and this and that, and the particulars of this and that.
• 51:12
  There's so many things that are better off to be left unfixed, A, and B, believe
• 51:17
  it or not, it's easier to sell a car that you can tell people some problems
• 51:21
  of than to sell a car that you say is perfect because there is no such thing
• 51:25
  as a perfect car, and I can prove that.
• 51:26
  Any car you wanna sh- well, even cars that come off the showroom floor.
• 51:29
  I got a new Bronco, and it's got orange peel on the roof.
• 51:32
  It's like- Well, as you said earlier, Stuart, Classic Auto Mall has become
• 51:36
  a destination for enthusiasts, for clubs, for families, and so when we
• 51:41
  think of Classic Auto Mall as more than just a destination, how are
• 51:45
  you guys sort of flipping the script and reaching out to the broader car
• 51:48
  communities in the resounding areas?
• 51:50
  What are you doing to sort of give back?
• 51:52
  Well, we have probably 15 to 18 pretty large car shows
• 51:58
  at our facility every year.
• 51:59
  We have the Camaro Nationals here, which brings 700 cars, 700 Camaros to our
• 52:03
  building, in addition to the however many we have in inventory at that
• 52:06
  particular time, 800, 900, 1,000, 1,100.
• 52:09
  There's no charge for any of these events to use our facility.
• 52:11
  Obviously, it's good marketing for us.
• 52:13
  You bring a bunch of car guys to your parking lot, darn, what could go wrong?
• 52:17
  Nothing.
• 52:17
  It's, they see your facility.
• 52:19
  The thing I'm most proud of in that what we do is the fact that I'll see
• 52:23
  a group of four or five guys come in.
• 52:24
  There's one who's kind of the leader, and he's showing everybody around and
• 52:27
  telling them the lay of the land, and, "Hey, you gotta check out that room,
• 52:29
  and this is that. And oh, there's that Chevrolet camper that we saw
• 52:31
  before." And then the following week, I see a splinter group of that group.
• 52:36
  One of the guys that was in that group has now got five of his buddies, and
• 52:39
  they're coming in, and they're walking through and talking and telling and going.
• 52:42
  And sometimes I literally will be standing in the mall way, and I'll hear
• 52:47
  a guy talking, and he'll be explaining Classic Auto Mall- To his buddy.
• 52:52
  And I turn around, and I don't know this guy.
• 52:54
  I've never met him before.
• 52:55
  I've never even seen him before in my building, and he knows our program as
• 52:59
  well as anybody could know it And I'm like, "Wow, that's making an impact."
• 53:04
  That you know that you've made an impact when you can do that.
• 53:08
  And last, but certainly not least, is seeing the father and the son, the
• 53:12
  f- grandfather, the father, and the son, the grandfather and the grandson,
• 53:16
  the daughters, and all coming in and, and falling in love with cars
• 53:20
  and, and getting the nickel tour with Grandpa or Dad, and learning about
• 53:25
  this, and hearing Dad explain to him.
• 53:26
  And Dad may get it wrong on a couple of points about a '71 Camaro or a
• 53:31
  '77 Volare or You know, he might get it wrong, but it's okay because he's
• 53:37
  sharing the hobby and the passion, and ultimately, that's what we wanna
• 53:40
  do, is we wanna share and perpetuate.
• 53:42
  I know to call it a hobby is a little, uh, obviously it's not a hobby.
• 53:46
  It's gotten a little bit bigger than that.
• 53:48
  It, it still is a camaraderie.
• 53:50
  Uh, as I was saying, when you're at an auction and you're standing next to a
• 53:52
  couple of guys, and the guy on your left turns out to be the janitor, and the
• 53:55
  guy on the right is a CEO, and you're just the in-between middle manager
• 53:58
  guy, and, and everybody's talking and getting along, and nobody cares who has
• 54:02
  more money or less money or has this job or has this title or none of that.
• 54:06
  None of that matters.
• 54:06
  We're all talking cars.
• 54:07
  How fun is that, you know?
• 54:09
  I, I think that, uh, the hobby feels like it's still doing well.
• 54:13
  The next 10 years will be interesting.
• 54:14
  It'll, I, I, I don't really know what to think it will happen.
• 54:18
  God forbid, petroleum could be outlawed.
• 54:20
  Who knows?
• 54:20
  California has their way, you won't be bu- able to buy tires for the cars anymore.
• 54:23
  Right.
• 54:23
  But we'll leave that where it is.
• 54:25
  Thank you.
• 54:27
  But with that, Stuart, we've reached that part of the episode where I like to
• 54:30
  invite our guests to share any shout-outs, thank yous, promotions, or anything
• 54:34
  else that we haven't covered thus far.
• 54:36
  Well, I gotta say a great shout-out to all my buddies at the Radnor Hunt
• 54:40
  Concours de Elegance, which is right here in our backyard, and was an event
• 54:45
  that I've known about long before I was in this part of the world.
• 54:48
  And they've graciously put me on their board of directors, which is,
• 54:51
  you know, a pinch me kind of moment.
• 54:53
  And it's one of those things that, uh, unless you're a car guy, you probably
• 54:57
  wouldn't understand, "Oh, oh, they put you on a board of directors, how…"
• 55:00
  No, it's, it's this prestigious event that I've been following for all
• 55:03
  these years, and now I'm a part of it.
• 55:05
  We knew that when we came to this market that we wanted to target the
• 55:08
  church parking lot car shows, we wanted to target the Concours de Elegances
• 55:12
  and all the events in between, the Philly Auto Show that we did for years.
• 55:16
  We wanted to focus on all of those events because our best marketing for what we do
• 55:21
  is not a full-page ad in Sports Car Market magazine or Auto Trader or any of that.
• 55:25
  It's one-on-one at an event.
• 55:26
  It's setting up our little dog and pony with our truck and trailer,
• 55:29
  opening up the canvas, turning on the video, showing the drone fly-through
• 55:33
  footage of our building, and talking to people about how our process works.
• 55:37
  You know, you don't have to know cars to be a car specialist
• 55:39
  for Classic Automotive.
• 55:40
  You have to know our process, because the guy you're talking to probably knows
• 55:43
  more about cars than you'll ever know, or about the particular car he's looking for,
• 55:46
  than you'll ever know, and that's okay.
• 55:48
  And my son, who's 33 years old, uh, wanted to be a car specialist about three years
• 55:53
  ago, and, uh, I wanna give a shout-out to him because he said- "I can do it."
• 55:57
  And I said, "No, you're too young. These old guys are gonna not listen to
• 56:01
  you, and it won't happen." But what I didn't realize is for years, and years,
• 56:04
  and years, he sat at dinner with us every night, and hears me and my wife
• 56:07
  talk about the day, and what happened, and the process, and the procedure.
• 56:10
  And I see him walk up to a client, and at first they've got their arms
• 56:13
  crossed like, "Who is this young kid?"
• 56:15
  And within 30 seconds, their arms are wide open, and they're just
• 56:18
  absorbing what he's telling them, 'cause he's telling them the process.
• 56:21
  How do you get your car shipped?
• 56:22
  How do you pay for it?
• 56:23
  Where do you take it to get it fixed?
• 56:24
  Where do you do this?
• 56:25
  Not about what the timing needs to be set at, and, you know, what the contents
• 56:29
  of this are, and how to set the valves, and he doesn't have to know any of that.
• 56:32
  He has to know the process of it, because, like I said, the guy standing
• 56:36
  in front of him knows all that, so.
• 56:38
  And our staff is amazing.
• 56:39
  I mean, we have a spec writer, and a photographer, and a description
• 56:43
  writer, and transportation guys, and, you know, the car specialist, and my
• 56:48
  wife is the office manager, and, uh, administrative assistants that are all
• 56:51
  just, you know, they're mostly car people, and they enjoy it, and they love it.
• 56:54
  And, uh, most of them came from a different background than cars.
• 56:57
  It wasn't their path, but it's worked out to be great here for them.
• 57:01
  And I think before we close out, Stu, we probably owe a shout-out
• 57:04
  to our mutual friend, Rob Parr, over at Collector Car Guide, for
• 57:08
  connecting us all these years ago.
• 57:10
  So, I know he listens to the show, so Rob, if you're listening,
• 57:13
  thank you for connecting us.
• 57:14
  We've been a supporter of Rob since I think the first edition came out in 2020,
• 57:18
  or whenever it was, I don't remember.
• 57:20
  You know, I'm amazed at these race car drivers who say stuff like, "In 1969, I
• 57:24
  was passing Jackie Stewart, and it was an off-camber curve, and there was a little
• 57:27
  bit of oil on it." I was like, "How do you, how do you remember that stuff?
• 57:31
  I can't remember that stuff." Every guest on Brake Fix brings a different
• 57:37
  lens to the automotive world, but few offer a view as wide, as varied, or
• 57:42
  as surprising as the one you get when you walk through Classic Auto Mall.
• 57:46
  Stuart reminds us that behind every car, whether it's a concours restoration or a
• 57:51
  dusty barn find, there's a story waiting for the right person to hear, and places
• 57:56
  like the mall keep those stories alive.
• 57:59
  That's right, and if today's conversation sparked your curiosity, you can dive
• 58:03
  deeper into the world Stuart oversees by following Classic Auto Mall online.
• 58:08
  They share new arrivals, behind-the-scenes finds, and some truly wild automotive
• 58:12
  time capsules across their channels on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and
• 58:16
  TikTok, all found under @classicautomall.
• 58:19
  So, with that, Stuart, I can't thank you enough for coming on Brake Fix
• 58:22
  and sharing your story with us.
• 58:23
  And again, it's great to reconnect with all of our friends in the auto sphere.
• 58:27
  And even though I haven't personally made it out to Classic Auto Mall
• 58:30
  yet, it is definitely on my list of places to visit, so I look forward to
• 58:34
  reconnecting with you in person again outside of a car show, and maybe getting
• 58:38
  a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility.
• 58:41
  Absolutely.
• 58:42
  We'll be glad to give you the nickel tour, and I might even let
• 58:44
  you ride in the golf cart, so.
• 58:51
  The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine.
• 58:56
  Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors,
• 59:01
  continually delivering information about automobilia, petroliana, events, and more.
• 59:07
  To learn more about the annual publication and its new website, be sure to follow
• 59:12
  them on social media @garagestylemagazine
• 59:16
  or log on to www.garagestylemagazine.com.
• 59:22
  Because after all, what doesn't belong in your garage?
• 59:26
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcast, brought
• 59:30
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 59:32
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• 59:35
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• 59:39
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