If you’ve been reading this space for any period of time (yes, I’m talking to both of you), then you’ll know that I’ve been occasionally whinging about parting with my 1962 Triumph Spitfire racecar. With the car essentially finished, but not track tested, I found I was kind of trapped in an automotive no-man’s land. In order to get top dollar, I really needed to do the final fettling and get it out on track, but I also knew that the more I worked on the car, the more attached to it I became. And so it sat in my garage, covered, serving no higher purpose than being a convenient folding station for the clean towels when they came out of the dryer.
Call it desperation, or trying to break the automotive inertia I had slowly become immobilized by, but I recently decided I’d roll the dice and put the Spit up for auction on Bring a Trailer. In case you’ve been frozen in a glacier for the past 10 years, Bring a Trailer—or BaT as it’s known to the kids—is a genius web site designed to let automotive aficionados auction off interesting vehicles. I believe a large part of its success has been that the cars are curated by a very savvy team of enthusiasts, so there’s just the right mix of classics, modern sports cars, beaters, trailer queens, oddballs and racecars. As a seller, it cost me $99 to list my Spit for an auction that would be open for one week. Interestingly, after you submit a certifiable crapload of pictures and information, they go through it all and then come back to you with suggestions on how to make it better. “We’d like to see images of the logbook,” “Do you have pictures of the rear suspension,” “Can you provide more details on the car’s race history.” You certainly won’t get that on eBay.
