While in Scottsdale in January taking in all the different collector car auctions and reporting for the SL Market Editor Olson and I attended Sports Car Market Magazine’s Insider’s Seminar held at theGooding and Company auction site early on Thursday morning, January 16th. We enjoyed attending the SCM Insider’s Seminar at Pebble Beach last Summer and signed up early to attend the seminar in Scottsdale. The Gooding and Co. auction is always a wonderful venue for the event.
Sports Car Market Magazine publisher Keith Martin was, as usual, the moderator. David Gooding spoke for a minute, welcomed us and generally exchanged pleasantries with the group.
Things started with a talk by SCM “Legal Files” contributor and attorney, John Draneas entitled “The Taxman and Your Collector cars – How Do You Keep Them Apart?”. I wasn’t quite prepared for 45 minutes on tax law and ways of minimizing taxes when it comes to your collector cars, but it was, in the end, interesting, and quite pertinent to many of the guys in the room who actually have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars worth of cars back home in their garages.
Keith turned the focus to the panel of car guys and regular contributors to Sports Car Market Magazine for a discussion entitled “How do you define a Blue-Chip Collectible?” Which was pretty straightforward… each panelist went through the things that make a car a blue chip in their mind, all pretty clear in my mind as well. They must be rare, technologically innovative in their day doesn’t hurt, they must have presence… these kinds of things. While an Aston DB4 is certainly a collectible car… a DB4GT with Vignale body work is a Blue Chip collectible.
(L to R) Keith Martin, Simon Kidston, Carl Bomstead, Donald Osborne and Steve Serio. This photo may lead you to believe this is the most serious group of car guys on the planet… you’d be wrong, there were plenty of laughs and even some light hearted ribbing… really… there were.
Eventually we got to what I thought was the most fun and entertaining portion of the seminar… each panelist was asked to reveal their ‘Perfect Four-Car Collection: One under $50k, one under $250k, one under $1 million and one under $10 million” In other words according to Keith, the ‘I just won the lottery collection’.
For this exercise Keith laid out a few rules for the panel… to make things interesting and an additional rule for each pan elist, sort of taking out their go to marques.
For the entire group: No Ferraris, Maseratis or Cobras. No Lancias for Donald, no Aston Martins for Steve (except Lagondas), no Duesenbergs for Carl and no Lamborghinis for Simon. So, working in these ‘very tight’ constraints, each panelist was able to come up with some pretty nice collections.
Reflecting on Keith’s exercise in Scottsdale, I thought I’d choose my ultimate four-car Mercedes-Benz collection using the same parameters as Keith used in the Seminar. Of course, if Keith were to handicap my choices, I’m sure the rule would be ‘Dave can’t have any Mercedes’.
I made the choices below based on a couple of things… but largely, based on how I use cars, or how I’d like to use them if I had them… eligibility for event usage, potential for concours participation, but mostly I’d use them for tours and rallies or just to cruise around in.I think it’s really important to ask yourself the question ‘What do I want to do?’ when it comes to the collector car hobby. It sounds simple, but I don’t think everyone asks themselves that question often enough.
The first thing I ask myself when considering a car is “What do I want to do with it? How will it fit into my car hobby life style?” I’ve never thought of myself as a show car guy… Concours d’Elegance style anyway, but it wouldn’t bother me to try that. I am attracted to cars I can really drive and have fun in, but having all this ‘Keith Martin Play Money’ to spend… I’ll expand my horizons a bit. These are my choices… I’ll work on having Editor Olson complete the same exercise for publication here on the website.
Here goes… my ‘Ultimate Four-Car Mercedes-Benz Collection”
Under $50,000 – 1964 230SL
It’s hard to imagine that the Pagoda SL is a 50 year old car at this point, from behind the wheel, they feel like modern cars. You can literally hop in, turn the key and drive away, no drama… no choke, no carburetors. They’re comfortable, easy to drive and reliable. They seem to do all the things that other old cars can’t do, regularly anyway. Much of the collector car world seems to think the 280SL is the only W113 car to buy, but I disagree. The 230, 250 and 280 each have unique personalities, but they’re all ‘good cars’. I like the pure, no headrest, no side marker, look of the early 230s best. Someone once told me that the 230SL is a Mercedes that drives like an Alfa. That alone is why the 230SL is my pick for my under $50,000 car. You can still get a very nice example for the high forties and drivers still exist in the $20,000s, but maybe not for too much longer. And oh yes, make mine a manual transmission car in a unique two tone (body / hard top-hub caps) combination.
Under $250k – 1951 220 Cabriolet A
Sometimes a car just speaks to you, the 220 Cab A is one of those cars for me. Mercedes-Benz was essentially still producing pre war cars well into the 1950s, but it’s that styling, the styling of this particular car that I find so appealing. It’s fairly racy looking and supremely elegant when I think about what was being produced in the United States in the early fifties. With their 6 cylinder engine, as opposed to the 4 cylinder in the very similar looking 170 series cars, the 220s have enough power to keep up with modern traffic making them ideal for tours and local Mercedes-Benz club events. There were just under 1,200 examples built, so the chances of running into another at an event is pretty slim. The car pictured above is owned by my friend David Steingas here in Minneapolis. David brought his 220 Cab A on the Inaugural Walleye 1000 Vintage Rally a couple of years ago and had a ball putting about 600 miles on the car over two days of rigorous driving, and he did so in extreme style. There aren’t very many of these on the market at any one time, and it’s getting tough to find good examples under about $150,000… but it still seems like a lot of unique car for the money to me.
Under $1 Million – 1955 300SL Gullwing
Before you call foul at my choice for a car ‘below $1,000,000’ I would contend that is still possible to find a driver quality, steel bodied 300SL coupe under a million dollars. I’m not expecting a perfect car… maybe I’m looking at a color changed car that was restored 30 years ago that’s showing it’s age… that’s fine… that’s exactly what I’d want in a steel bodied coupe. I want a Gullwing I can drive and enjoy, and that’s what I’d do with it, I’d drive the hell out of it. Sure, the coupes might be warm in the Summer, but I live in Minnesota and it isn’t hot here very often… and I’d feel so cool just driving the thing, I wouldn’t worry about my body temperature. Olson’s study of prices and values of 300SLs over the past 30 years has shown that they all appreciate in a fairly similar manner from a percentage standpoint regardless of condition, save perhaps, for the very best of the best or rarest examples which see larger increases. 300SLs are accepted at many different motoring events around the world, from the Mille Miglia to the Carrera Panamericana and the high end rally / tours as well. And the design! These cars are so gorgeous, but also significant in terms of technological innovation and they were successful racing cars in period… that ticks three boxes that can only spell ‘Blue Chip Collectible’. There should be a 300SL (probably a coupe and a roadster) in every car collection, and that thought is probably what’s driving the prices up so quickly of late.
Under $10 Million – 1936 540K Special Roadster
Is this the ‘easy’ choice for a big time collectible Mercedes? Probably. There are so many reasons this car should be on my list I’m not sure where to start. This kind of car, built in Europe pre WWII and its contemporaries from Bugatti, Delage, Talbot Lago, etc. are so incredibly over the top, blatant, outward symbols of power and wealth, I don’t think there is a comparable material thing today… maybe the super yachts that software company founders build, maybe. The engineering and craftsmanship that went into cars like the 540K was incredible, their performance, even by today’s standards is enviable. They are true works of art, so much more than cars. Cars like this were reserved for international royalty, Kings and Queens, Dukes and in the case of this particular example, a Baroness. Then World War II broke out, these cars were scraped, confiscated, stolen and hidden. All kinds of intriguing stories surround them, each one has a different story to tell. I don’t know a better way to spend $5 – $8 million on a car. If you have one of these in your garage, it is more or less your ticket to any car event in the world. The car pictured above was at Pebble Beach this past Summer, but it was constantly surrounded by a crowd 4 deep, so any kind of decent photo was almost impossible, the image above is courtesy of Octane Magazine.
So that’s my short list… I should mention that I have one alternate. Coming back to my ‘How will I use these cars’ point. A modern car might be a nice thing to have, something with good air conditioning and neck snapping speed for the occasional cruise around Road America during a lunch time touring session or just a cross country drive. For that, I would offer up this alternative in the ‘Under $250k’ category. Interestingly enough, this photo was taken in my driveway, next to my Volkswagen Westfalia camper. I ‘drew the short straw’ when I worked at Sears Imports Mercedes-Benz to take this SLS roadster home for the evening in order to drive to a local car show early the next morning as a representative of the dealership. There was a fairly drastic temporary increase in my home’s value that evening.
2012 SLS AMG Roadster
The Sports Car Market Insider’s Seminars are always informative and certainly entertaining, they’re free for subscribers and are a great opportunity to talk cars with real enthusiasts, students of the market, while strolling through the Gooding and Co. auction cars, discussing each one.