18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY august 15-21, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com to auction them. That person in the audience knows about the car. My job is to make them want to be there, make them want to bid.” Although the three come from varied backgrounds and adopt different styles, they all wield a common tool, one that both works the room and drives bidding. “I believe I’m pretty well known for ridiculing people,” Landis says with a laugh. “They like it. The crowd just eats it up.” When Landis senses enthusiasm flagging, he has been known to drop the cadence momentarily and ask for a show of hands from first-time Mecum attendees. As people respond, he returns to his patter, quickly pointing at unwittingly outstretched arms with a rapid-fire: “I have $30,000, now 35, 40, 45…” A chorus of laughter rises as the crowd catches on to the ruse. If humor isn’t common to all auctioneers, Ross believes that it should be. It can be tricky, he admits, to balance professional auctioneering and little quips in an atmosphere where cars are trading in the millions of dollars. But the room is the target audience. “I do have fun,” Ross says. Once, when a bidder wavers, Ross delivered a good-natured scolding. “You don’t want to wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I nearly bought a Ferrari,’” he told the man. “That’s no good.” An auction is a show, one with a cast of steel, chrome or carbon fiber characters. There may be only a few audience members keen to bid on a particular set of wheels, but there are many wanting to catch the action. Over this, one central figure presides. Or, in the case of Mecum, a team of four. The Wisconsin-based auction house is broadcast live on television, often for stints of six hours. So Landis and his team rotate on the stand, 30 minutes at a time. If Landis is known for his banter, fellow Mecum auctioneer Matt Moravec catches attention because of his attire. He never takes the stand without a cowboy hat. “You can’t have four that are exactly the same or you’re not changing the tempo of the room,” Landis explains. “If I were to stay the entire day, the crowd would get bored with me.” In recent years, the room the auctioneers refer to has expanded. For decades, there were three avenues of bidding—those in person, those on the phone and the auctioneer’s book, meaning absentee actors who enter maximum amounts in advance. Mecum began broadcasting in 2008, opening a new audience. In the same decade, the internet came into play. Online bidding is not instantaneous, so auctioneers must be aware of fractional delays before banging the gavel. “But more importantly,” Minoff says, pointing out the most significant change to the psychological and entertainment aspects of his role, “the auctioneer has no insight into that bidder’s mood.” Minoff, Landis, Ross and quite likely the auctioneers of Broad Arrow and RM Sotheby’s see auctions as human interaction, as entertainment and business in one package. The presence of television in Mecum’s case and the ubiquity of online bidding just adds a different dimension to their multitasking. “There’s so much going on, but it’s all second nature to me,” Landis says of the rush of information directed to the stand and back to the crowd, the constantly escalating numbers and bids coming from different directions. “But I can’t remember where I put my keys.” For dates, times and locations of auctions in Monterey County during Car Week, see listings, p. 28. Charlie Ross identifies a bidder as the figure for a 1972 Lamborghini Miura climbs well over $3 million. The Gooding & Company auctioneer recently published his autobiography, titled Sold! copyright and courtesy of Gooding & Company Car Week When most people think of car collectors, they might think of those who meticulously maintain their collection in a climate-controlled garage, wiping off every flake of dust. Actually driving them? Forget about that. That may be true for many of the baby boomer-aged collectors. But the collector world is in the midst of a transition, where a new generation of enthusiasts are buying older vehicles to—*gasp*—use them. Jeremy Malcolm, public relations manager at Hagerty, a company that provides insurance for classic vehicles and tracks market trends, falls squarely in the millennial generation as a 31-year-old. Malcolm has been involved with many events surrounding Car Week, such as interning at the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance. Yet Malcolm loves his 2003 Porsche Boxster S, a car that can be had for well under $20,000. “It’s affordable to maintain and it’s reliable,” he says. “I’m the type of enthusiast that drives as much as possible. I love to just be going places.” That’s important for millennials (used to describe those born between 1981 and 1996), a generation that’s generally had less disposable income than its predecessors. A 2024 study published by the University of Chicago found that the average millennial has 30-percent less wealth at 35 years old compared to baby boomers at that age. Millennials crave experiences on the cheap. Malcolm says rugged SUVs such as Ford Broncos and Chevrolet Blazers from the 1960s-’70s are particularly of interest among millennials, as well as Gen-Xers who want to go off the beaten path in a relatively simple vehicle that doesn’t require specialized training to maintain. Millennials also grew up on a healthy diet of racing video games such as Gran Turismo and movies such as The Fast and the Furious, and their car-buying habits are reflective of that—Mitsubishi Lancers and Nissan Skylines are high on Hagerty’s list of the vehicles showing the most interest among the generation. In 2023, Hagerty reported that Gen-Xers surpassed boomers as the generation that requested the most insurance quotes for a classic vehicle. Millennials and Gen Z (born Gen Next Younger collectors are flooding the market—and they’re not buying your grandparents’ cars. By Erik Chalhoub A young crowd takes interest in a car on display during the 2023 Exotics on Broadway in Seaside. According to reports, Gen-Xers are beginning to outnumber boomers in the collector car world. Gen continued on pg. 20 Steve Souza
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==