#BringATrailer

The Fast and the Furious franchise was the spark the dry powder keg in the Japanese domestic market (JDM) enthusiast world needed. Huge action and impressive racing scenes exposed newbies and diehard fans of other types of cars to models like the Nissan Skyline, Mitsubishi Lancer EVO, and the now-unobtainable Toyota Supra. We don’t see these cars coming up for sale often, but a whole load of impeccable Japanese metal is heading to auction on Bring a Trailer. 

I wrote earlier this week about how BAT has broken me.

In the post, I mentioned how I browse for Fox-body Mustangs. I do this because my dad owned one when I was young and I owned one for a few years between high school and early college.

I suspect many of us have one, two, or even three models we look for when we browse sites like BAT.

Like most automotive journalists — and car enthusiasts in general — I have three ways of goofing off online that involve the cars. One is reading sites like this one. Two is building and pricing cars from mild to wild — from affordable to only if I win the lotto — on manufacturer’s consumer configurators. The third is browsing the auction site Bring a Trailer (BAT) to see what’s for sale that day. Someday, the just-right Fox-body Mustang will be available and within my budget. Someday.

It’s no secret that wherever enthusiasts — of any person, place, or thing — get together, mad money soon follows. Look at the huge money being commanded for certain rock n’ roll memorabilia, or rare artwork by a noted painter. Your author just bid obscene money for a frame containing handwritten liner notes, a platinum record, and a picture signed by some famous Canadian musicians. My bank account weeps but my office walls are happy.

It is the same, of course, with cars. Some recent models have skyrocketed in value, while a few others have traded on famous names. What’s been your biggest surprise of late?

The very first Honda Civic Type R is being made available to U.S. buyers via auction, and it’s probably going to go for a small fortune. While my sensible side wants to urge you to save your money and wait for the second or even third Type R to hit our shores, the premium you’re paying to be numero uno is going to a good cause. Honda donated the Civic to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and all the proceeds will go to the charity.

That gives you the right to install the most obnoxiously loud exhaust system legally allowed and rev up that homely hot rod in your driveway day and night. If your neighbors complain, you can tell them that your car helped save the lives of children before asking them what their CR-V has done for the world.

Bring A Trailer rarely disappoints, but today is an exceptionally fruitful day. Not one, but three delightfully kitschy relics of the Reagan era are on sale, offering something for a broad spectrum of tastes, whether you like new wave, metal or the burgeoning urban genre known as “hip-hop”.

George writes:

Hello again, Steven,

You may recall our email last March regarding our 1992 Lexus SC300 5-Speed. Thanks for the reply; guess the timing was bad for you with tax time coming up. As you may recall, the car is all original, black with gray interior, looks and runs great, and has slightly less than 25K miles. Here’s the back story:

As a teenager, I idolized Tom Wolfe after reading Bonfire of the Vanities. By the end of high school, I had read every single book read by him, and his too-brief description of the muscle cars of American astronauts in The Right Stuff instantly came back to me (along with the smells of my high school cafeteria) upon seeing this ad.

One of the neighborhood characters growing up was “Toyota Van Man”, a middle-aged gentleman who drove a denim blue Toyota van. We never knew much about him, but assumed based on his vehicle choice that he was some kind of pederast. More likely, he was a hard working immigrant from Vietnam who lived on top of our local pizza joint and we were a group of overprivileged adolescent brats.