Bring a Trailer’s 100,000th Auction Saw a 240Z Go for Crazy Money
- Bring A Trailer, the little ad-sharing website that is revolutionizing the way classic cars are bought and sold, just hammered on its 100,000th auction.
- The car sold was BaT’s own 1973 Datsun 240Z.
- All profits from the same go to BaT’s charity, The Piston Foundation, which helps get youth into the collector car trade with scholarships for colleges and trade schools.
The little website that started out as a way to share cool car ads among friends just held its 100,00oth auction. Bring a Trailer just sold a perfectly nice 1973 Datsun 240Z for a cool $124,240. Is it possible they picked those final bid numbers? Who cares? All the money went to the BaT charity called The Piston Foundation, which is “…a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing post-secondary educational opportunities and funding to students interested in pursuing hands-on careers in the collector car industry.” So, a worthy cause.
The bigger picture here? (Car prices have officially gone nuts? Yes, that’s part of the big picture. It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t give away an original Z. Nissan resold them 20 years ago when it wanted to distract the world from the fact that it didn’t have anything like a Z, let alone a GTR or other fun sports car in its lineup, but that’s another story.) The big news here is that this once-humble ad-sharing site has ballooned! (Full disclosure: BaT is part of the Hearst Autos publishing juggernaut, the same benevolent entity that owns Autoweek.)
The car in question—along with its just happening to be the 100,000th car sold on BaT—was not a coincidence.
“The 1973 model 100,000th auction car was acquired by Bring a Trailer in 2018 and has since been used for cross-country road trips, BaT alumni gatherings and rallies, as well as being displayed in the company’s San Francisco office,” BaT said. “The car has become well-known among the enthusiast community and is part of the BaT brand.”
BaT is huge—last year it sold $1.35 billion in cool cars, up 63% from the year before. Last year a Ferrari LaFerrari sold on BaT for $5.35 million, the highest price ever paid for a car on the internet. So some sort of celebration was inevitable.
“Our community of enthusiasts has been the backbone of BaT’s success since the beginning. In considering how to recognize this milestone, the only option was something that would enable us to give back and help fuel the passion of the next generation of auto enthusiasts,” said Randy Nonnenberg, co-founder and president of Bring a Trailer. “We chose our 240Z not only because it has served as a mascot for our brand over the past several years of growth, but also because it highlights the roots of the company. It’s the type of diverse, eye-catching, modified vehicle that the BaT community loves to see.”
Indeed, the car was a good one, repainted in lime green on the outside with a Rebello Racing 2.7-liter straight-six, triple Weber carbs and a five-speed manual. Other features included a limited-slip differential, four-wheel disc brakes, lowered suspension and 16-inch Panasport wheels with new Michelins. Okay, maybe Zs were fun to drive.
If you want one of your own, most 240Zs sell on BaT for just above or just below $20,000, so most of the time you’ll be saving a hundred grand. Or you could get almost any car you have been dreaming of your whole life: There are three Saab 92s on the site right now, 20 different Ford Mustangs, nine Camaros, 62 different Porsche 911s, and so many Corvettes that you have to pick which era you want before it’ll show you all of them.
There was a time when the only place to find cool collector cars for sale was in the Autoweek classifieds (remember those???). Now, as the world slowly converts from analog and print to full digital, it’s appropriate to take a minute to offer congratulations to our friends at Bring A Trailer on this milestone. Okay, everybody back to work!
