How To Sell Your Car At Auction: Part 2

Selling your classic car has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. Where once it was all about magazine classifieds, phone calls, tyre kicking and buyers endlessly driving around the country, now you may not meet, speak or even have contact with the winning bidder until they arrive to collect the car. That fundamentally changes how you sell your car at auction online.

Car & Classic is the largest marketplace for online classic cars. We were a pioneer in the world of online classic car auctions, and we’ve been continuously refining and improving the process ever since.

As part of that process, we’re putting together a series of guides to help you sell your car at auction. By sharing our consignors’ experience of online classic car selling, we want to help make the process easier for you and, crucially, for you to achieve the best value for your car with the smoothest possible transaction.

In Part 1 of our ‘How To Sell Your Car at Auction’ guide we provided five key ways to do exactly that. In this Part 2, we’ve put together five more.

1) Be Honest

When you sell anything, there is always a temptation to present it in the best light. And, of course, that is important. But when you’re selling ‘virtually’, where the buyer may not see the vehicle before collection, it’s crucial to be transparent and honest. That’s one reason why we recommend getting an MOT or health check. But it also applies to how you describe the car.

When you provide details of your car to us, we recommend being fair and accurate in your description. What you may be tempted to avoid mentioning, buyers will definitely spot, either in the photos or when they collect. It is far better to mention issues than to wait for someone to spot them. Because they undoubtedly will.

Above all, we want you to get the best price for your car. And we want to make sure the sale completes. Honesty, transparency and completeness are key to achieving that.

2) Tell Us As Much As You Can

When people buy cars remotely, they want as much information as possible. That’s why we create a huge deck of photos that takes the place of seeing the car in person. The same applies to what you tell us on the form we use to write your listing.

The more detail you provide, the better we can write your listing. Key information that isn’t immediately visible in photos, like the car’s history, maintenance and servicing highlights, is all vital information. An interesting history or plentiful recent maintenance are very effective ways to engage interested bidders and help secure the best value for your car.

A few minutes spent checking the history and completing the form will pay dividends with your car’s final auction value.

We make this process as simple as possible. You can complete our short online form, email us with information or speak to us by phone. If you want to write a history and summary of your vehicle, that is also useful.

Our writers will then put together your listing using a format and approach that is honed from our experience selling thousands of different classic cars.

3) Answer Comments

We work hard to keep our large community engaged with Car & Classic. That’s why we introduced the Comments section that sits under each listing. This is a chance for interested bidders to ask questions about the car. It adds an extra dimension to the listing that is designed to give added reassurance and extra transparency for buyers.

The Comments section is your chance to engage with buyers. We recommend answering comments quickly and as fully and honestly as you can.

Our auctions team are available to help with comments and answers. If you are asked a question that isn’t covered in the listing, you can answer that directly. Where buyers query something that is in the listing, we’ll act quickly to answer those questions with you. If you’re not sure how to answer or what to say, feel free to get in touch with us, and we’ll gladly assist.

4) Consider Your Strategy

Here is the hardest part of selling any classic. It is the ‘do it up or sell it as it is?’ conundrum. Choosing your sales strategy begins with being realistic about what you have to sell and what your car is worth ‘as is.’ Car & Classic’s sales consignors can help here. We also offer a valuation tool that assesses condition based on objective data from auction houses.

Once you’re clear on what it is worth to you, as is, you can then assess the value of addressing any cosmetic or mechanical issues or MOT faults. If you have a fundamentally good car that otherwise requires little work, it may help the final value if you sort minor test advisories. That saves the buyer time and avoids an undue penalty for easily repaired imperfections. We’re thinking here about misted headlights and perished tyres.

Alternatively, your car may require more significant work that isn’t justified by market values. Cars like that can do well ‘as is’ because they provide a cheaper way into a classic for someone who knows they can do the work themselves. The key to this kind of car is adjusting your valuation expectations accordingly.

Whichever route you choose, it starts with being honest and realistic about what the car is worth.

5) Timing Is Key

Seasoned classic car owners will tell you there is a ‘right’ time to sell a car. Usually they’ll plump for Spring or Autumn, the former because winter is over and convertible season is arriving, the latter because holidays are over and buyers seek an emotional top up before Christmas drains their funds.

There’s logic to all that. But the simple rule is that there is no good time to sell any car, just the right time to sell yours. While it makes sense that convertibles sell in better weather, that does mean that those times are much more competitive if you do have one to sell. It’s also when many convertible car owners get their cars out of the garage and realise it’s either too costly or lack the time to use it properly.

The right time to sell your car depends on your car and on you. A good car will always stand out, whatever the time of year. It can be misleading to think that most buyers are ‘seasonal.’ The reality is that serious buyers, whether dealers or private people, are always looking and will constantly pounce on good cars. In that sense, quieter periods, around Christmas and over the summer, can be good times to sell as they offer less competition.

Like at car shows, auctions for rare and unusual cars will always draw crowds, whatever the time of year. For more common cars, reputable auction houses like Car & Classic will carefully schedule similar cars so that they don’t ‘cannibalise’ bids from each other.

If you’re unsure when the ‘right’ time is to sell your car, ask our consignors. We want to get the best price for your car, so we’ll give you honest advice.

Online classic car auctions make buying and selling easier and simpler. They’ve changed the rules of buying and selling. In this article and the previous one, we’ve shared some trade secrets to help you maximise the value of your car when it goes to auction. We hope it’s useful. Our consignment team is also available to answer questions and give you the benefit of their years of auction experience.