Well, another year has come and gone of my selecting each week the perfect 3-car garage from Bring A Trailer. One is a dedicated sportscar, one off-road vehicle and a car that is suitable for road-tripping.
Last year I created a post that wrapped up the previous year’s cars and now I’m sort of obligated to do it again. Unlike last year when I had to look back at every week to collect data, this time I have kept the spreadsheet updated as I have gone along. This means it will get posted about a week sooner than the last one.
Like last year I once again picked 156 cars, which is three times fifty-two, but unlike last year I missed picking cars one week. We were on our second day of a two-week driving vacation and I forgot (I did remember for the second Monday though.) So how did I end up with the same number of cars? For something different on Christmas week, I decided to pick a dream garage of red & green. To get an even amount of each color I decided to go ahead and pick one of each color for each of the categories.
If I actually won all auctions of the cars I chose during the year I would have spent $9,695,567. Making it an average of $62,151 for each vehicle. This is down around $1.5 million and nine thousand respectively.
The most expensive car I picked was once again in the Sport category, a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT Pinin Farina Coupe at $491,000. The most expensive auto in the Off-Road category was, like last year, another Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG at $205,000. The highest priced auto in the Touring category was a 2021 Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 at $253,000. There were 18 vehicles that went for over six figures. Last year there were 23, with two of those over a half million and one went for $1.1 million.
The least expensive car I picked was yet again from Off-Road category, a VW Beetle based 1977 Fargo Dune Buggy at a measly $5,100. The least expensive Touring vehicle was a no reserve 1999 Chevrolet K1500 Suburban LT 4×4 that sold for $9,300. The least expensive Sports car was a 1973 Porsche 914 that sold for $12,000. There was a 1969 Datsun 2000 Roadster that I “bid” $8,000 on, but there was no sale as the reserve wasn’t met. These four cars were the only ones that went for under five figures.
The oldest car I chose was a 1931 Ford Model A Pickup Hot Rod that set me back $68,000. There were 2 more cars selected from the 30’s, four more from the 40’s, 20 from the 50’s and twenty more from the 60’s. There were two dozen vehicles selected from the 70’s, 17 came from the 80’s, sixteen were from the 90’s and the 2000’s was the most popular decade again with a total of 25. There were 18 picked from 2010-2019 and the 2020’s accounted for the last nine of the 156 total. The newest cars were from the year 2022, and 3 of the 4 were just because one Monday for kicks I picked brand new cars and priced them to MSRP. Taking all vehicles into account, the average model year car was 1985 compared to last year’s 1986.
The cars came from 43 separate manufacturers, two more than last year. The most popular make was a tie between Porsche & Chevy with 16. The runner-up was another tie, VW & Ford came in at fourteen. Jeep was third with 11. There were 20 manufacturers with one car chosen and 10 more with just 2 models. Last year I picked only one car from Mazda, a lonely Miata, but this year there were 8 from Mazda, including four Miatas.
The most chosen model name this year was Type 2, AKA VW Bus with 7, Land Cruiser & Wrangler were the runners-up with 6 and 3rd place were Bronco, Cayman & Corvette with five picks. A little less than half, 76, were one and done model names.
Now, using fuzzy logic, the most popular car of this year, if it existed, would have been a 1957 Porsche Type 2 that costs $22,500 and the most random car, if it existed, would be a 1978 Mercedes-Benz Patrol that costs $50,500.