1:14 pm, July 18, 2015
HONOUR among thieves, band of brothers, call it what you like, but in the motor trade there is, for the most part, a certain amount of respect between traders, even when we’re direct rivals.
I was reminded of this the other week at my local auction house, to which I’d made a special journey (on the bus, as I was planning to drive home) because there was a car coming through that was right up my alley – a very clean, service-historied 2002 Jaguar XJ6 V8.
Cars like this are always dirt cheap at a conventional auction, and my regular customers are very much the type of punter who, like me, love a big, old, wafty Jaguar in lovely condition. I knew as soon as I saw it that, providing the bidding didn’t go silly, I’d be cruising back to Solihull in supreme comfort.
Finished in unusual ‘Seafrost’ metallic (light green, to you and me), and with less than 100,000 on the clock, a receipt for a significant engine rebuild just two years ago and good quality, branded tyres all round, it was clear that the Jag wasn’t an unloved old shed, and had seen some serious dollars over the years, even in its later life.
If ever there was a candidate for a ‘future classic’, this was it, and that was the very wording I planned on using in my eBay description.
I’d mentally valued it at about £1,800 on the hammer, which would translate to a forecourt price of £2,995 (and cheap at that!), so I had £2,200 of crisp foldies in my jacket pocket to cover my absolute top bid.
It sold for £1,750. But not to me.
Why? Well, it comes down to that aforementioned honour. Just before the Jag rolled into the meat market, a long-standing rival of mine, who we’ll call Les (because that’s his name) wandered over.
‘You want that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘You know me,’ I replied. After all, you never come right out and say it.
‘Only I have a buyer waiting, and I’ve come to look at it especially for him. The deal’s as good as done, if you see what I mean?’
I did.
So, I retired from the bidding and watched, with a little tinge of envy, as Les bagged himself the bargain of the sale.
Before you think I’m going soft in my old age, perhaps I should elaborate. The auction houses don’t like this practice, but I’m pretty sure it goes on at sales all over the country, week-in, week-out. If, for example, Les and I had entered into a bidding war and I’d have gone all the way up to my £2,200 ceiling, then whichever of us had the balls to go all the way would have spent a fair old chunk of our profit margin on a car that was lovely, but no longer had quite as attractive a return attached to it.
And while Les and I are absolute rivals, with car lots across town from each other that specialise in exactly the same kind of vehicle and price level, neither of us wants the rich to get richer at the expense of our small businesses.
The Jag had come from a very large dealer group as a part-exer. I’m guessing, but I reckon its stand-in value against a brand spanker, because that’s what the car’s only previous owner would have treated himself to, was marginally more than £1,500, or perhaps two grand if they’d managed to get him close to list price on the new car. Either way, the last thing either of us would have wanted would be for it to sell for more than it was worth ‘in trade’. Les knew what he could sell it for, and I knew what I could sell it for, and while I don’t know for definite, I think we’re close enough in profile to have achieved pretty much the same result.
Besides, Les had agreed to pay my bus fare home.
‘Bus fare home,’ incidentally, turned out to be the difference between the car’s sale price and what Les was planning to pay for it anyway. So it came as no surprise to me that, shortly after the Jag went through the block, Les beckoned me outside to join him for a cheeky smoke. I wandered back into the hall £150 better off. Not as much as I’d have earned from selling the Jag, but not a bad return on precisely no work whatsoever, and all conducted with a gentlemanly handshake.
Of course, no car trader worth his salt catches the bus home from an auction. So instead, I waited for the next bargain. Anybody in the market for a 2001 Volvo V70, dark blue with 110,000 on the clock and a decent service history? An oldie but a goodie, first £1,000 cash drives it away…
MORE: Baggott: Why a lost parrot made me think of the farce of pre-registered vehicles
MORE: Clocking risk would increase if MoT period was extended, says HPI
MORE: June’s fastest selling cars revealed by Auto Trader
