Auction fever – don’t catch a cold

Yesterday we spent most of an unfruitful day at the auction, watching even average cars make way above average money! There were probably 30% less cars than usual in the line up and roughly the same amount of extra people there, so at least the canteen trade was brisk. On entering the hall it immediately became obvious that this was not for the faint hearted, you needed to seriously want to buy a car to pay the kind of money being paid for cars today.

We watched our particular best seller a 53 plate mini one make £1,100 more than we thought it was worth and some Volkswagens make that and then some more, even Renaults and Peugeot and obscure late plate 4wd were having their day in the sun. You couldn’t help but get the feeling that where this place used to be the domain of the trade buyer, the auctions are getting so good at it that private buyers can now buy with confidence, thus pushing prices to the limit. Whilst this was happening there will be no doubt that somewhere in the UK there were meetings being held about potential redundancies and cost cutting measures, which only go to show the extremes of selling record numbers of used cars and a virtual trickle of new examples.

We witnessed the stark reality of auction fever, of buyers not really thinking straight but simply having to be the best bidder. We just hope that if things slow down in the near future and they look at those same cars gathering dust on the line up – having been discounted for the 3rd time – that they don’t live to regret it.

Subscribe to Motor Trade Insider by Email