Purchasing a Vintage or Collectible Racing Car

Alfa Romeo 33TT12 Group 6 Car

There are several ways one can purchase a vintage race car.

·         Classified ads

·         Owners

·         Auctions

·         Websites

·         Brokers or Dealers.

We will go through the first four rather briefly.

Classified ads appear in motorsport magazines, Facebook Marketplace and sanctioning groups or club websites. Usually a short description, with a few photos, contact information and not much more.  Maybe not even enough to catch your interest. These are usually private owners. Hopefully they will respond to your inquiry in a timely manner.

Owners, these are the guys with the “For Sale” sign on the car when it appears at the track or concours events. What is nice here is that you get to meet the owner. There is nothing better than meeting the owner in person. The personality of the seller could mean everything when purchasing a race car. You can meet a wonderful guy that is enthusiastic, helpful and informative. Someone you can go have steak and beer with. Others can be aloof, distant, know it all types that would not provide help to you after the purchase. Even the best car, best deal can be destroyed by a personality.

The auction house is not your friend, nor are they the seller’s friend. They will often give the seller an extraordinary estimate of the “hammer” price to expect. This is just to get the seller committed to paying the money to be in the catalog. In the catalog, they will describe the car, but with a lot of filler material that tells you very little about the car.  More chaff than wheat. Then you have people in the audience with bidder numbers whose sole task is to bid the price up. You, the buyer may find yourself paying more than it is worth and that is before you pay the buyer’s premium.  I have been told a few stories about where the seller took the car back home. Recently I saw a race car sold at auction in January, only to see it back up for auction in May. This was done by the same auction house.

Websites, there are number of websites selling racecars. These are website operators. Some of them quite large selling everything you can think of and with all kinds of ad space to peruse. Many of these are like the website Auto Trader. These act as a 3^rd party clearinghouse. You make an inquiry into a particular car, and they pass your contact information onto the seller. On one occasion, I inquired about a race car. The seller did not get my contact information for a week.  Recently I made two inquiries about a March 722 Formula 2 car.  I never got a response. We, at Indy Competition Services, have a website too. We are not website operators; we are professional race car guys who can answer many of your questions. Sometimes questions that our own client cannot answer. Unless we are traveling to an event, response to a potential client’s phone call or email is that day.

Brokers and dealers.  We recently had an experience with a large classic car dealer. These guys sell everything, 1965 Mustangs, Corvettes, 1950’s pickups Ferraris, whatever.  Someone placed several race cars for sale with this dealer. Most of these were incomplete, rolling chassis cars.   These guys know nothing about racing cars, that is just not what they do. They had to call or email us for answers to questions. Then after they made a few sales of these cars, we had the buyers calling with questions. The biggest question was “what will it cost to make this car a runner?”. Many people experienced buyer’s remorse when told what it would be.  Lastly, you have the very high-end brokers who take on limited clients.

Most of their offerings are from several hundred thousand dollars to the millions.  These guys are knowledgeable and easy to get along with. But again, they are not race cars guys, they dabble in them but that is not their bread and butter. We just had an experience were a man purchased a Dallara Formula 3 car. They could not get it to run. The Magneti Marelli engine management system was not operating. We did not have a solution for him, but we found someone who could help them. This is because a broker needs to have a support network to assist the buyer.

Antares Chevy Indy Car