The clock is counting down and
I’m smashing the refresh button,
desperate to know who will win
the prize at stake: a fire-truck
red 1970 Jeep Grand Wagoneer,
jacked up like Dwayne Johnson
and impossible to miss. Over
the past six days the seller has
been pelted with questions
from a multitude of commenters
on bringatrailer.com, the
online auction site whose
constantly changing inventory
of automobiles—ranging
from legendary to cultish to
endearingly WTF—has made it
a car-geek buffet piled high
with air-cooled Porsche 911s
and mint ’80s BMWs.
See, some of the people
following the auction own
this same model, they know
everything about it, and while
they aren’t saying there’s
some bullshit afoot with the
suspension, they’re not not
saying that, either. Also, FYI,
one commenter knows a guy
on eBay who makes carbon
copies of the original gas pedal,
if whoever wins the auction
wants to get it back to stock.
And here, during the final two
minutes, the bidding is flying
hot and heavy out in the open,
in the comments section, as the
seconds pass—$12,250, then
$13,750, then $15,500.
We can all agree that the
internet sucks, except when
it doesn’t, which is when it
fulfills its highest purpose:
uniting a splayed community
of like-minded obsessives in a
single safe and unselfconscious
corner. One of those gleaming
pockets of Good Internet, for
me and hundreds of thousands
of car nerds like me, is Bring
a Trailer (shortened to BaT by
the locals).
Sellers have to pitch their
cars to be included on Bring a
Trailer, which rejects more
than half of the submissions it
receives. Which is why all
the cars that make it through
are special, in the broadest,
most exuberant sense: They are
iconic (a 1977 Ferrari 308 GTB in
Fly Yellow), or they are on trend
(Toyota Land Cruisers). Or they
are unloved but maybe worthy
of love once more (any Porsche
911 996 with the fried-egg
headlights). Or they’re esoteric
(a stunning 2008 C8 Spyder
from Spyker), or nostalgic (you
can find a Mercedes SL for all
ages), or completely mundane
and middle-aged, yet jaw-
droppingly pristine. This version
of special may be my favorite.
I don’t know what I want more:
the 1992 Toyota pickup (no
model name!) with only 104,000
miles and extremely ’90s
graphics on the sides, or a beer
with the Washington State guy
who owned and babied it for
28 years. Bring a Trailer turns
every car auction into a full-
blown pageant, and many of theentries are affordable, in the
four and low-five figures.
These are vehicles beloved
by a new crowd of gearheads
whose enthusiasms were
stoked by Sony’s Gran Turismo,
tuner culture, and not having
enough money. A lost generation
that’s been thrilling in lonely
ways to the offbeat ’70s, ’80s,
and ’90s cars that have only
ever ascended to cult-classic
status—e.g., John Hughes–era
BMW 3-Series fit for feathered-
haired rich-kid villains; stuff
that’s only starting to get
its due, thanks to alt-car shows
like RADwood, where the rides,
once laughed off by purists and
yacht-rock aficionados, finallyget love. All these vehicles have
found on Bring a Trailer the
exact audience that loves them.
Nowhere else will you see
a 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL
Gullwing (sold for $1,234,567—
a very BaT bid in its heh-ness)
sharing pixels with an
immaculate 1995 Chevy Impala
with only 202 miles (sold for
$30,250), both of which have
been afforded, by the sellers
and the commenters alike, all
the reverence of a Vermeer.BEFORE THERE WAS ever a BaT,
there was Randy Nonnenberg
sending a more or less nightly
email—first in college, then
in the early aughts as a San
Francisco–based engineer
for BMW—featuring a single
automotive diamond he’d
discovered while digging in the
mines of local Craigslists and
used-car sites. He’d send hisgold-flake finds to an expanding
group of friends, who would
forward them to other friends,
and so on. They all appreciated
that he was doing the hard work
of unearthing cool cars for sale,
shoveling through mountains
of beige Camrys with dirty
cup holders and sagging Chevy
Tahoes and sellers posting
cell phone pics inexplicably
twisted 90 degrees, all so he
could locate, say, a single-owner
1995 BMW 5-Series with a six-
speed manual for sale in some
Midwest suburb. Nonnenberg
did it purely for sport.
Then, in 2007, BaT became
a website, cofounded by
Nonnenberg and his friendBring a Trailerturns everycar auctioninto a full-blownpageant.Gentry Underwood, with a
real-deal daily newsletter and
stories about the treasures
Nonnenberg unearthed. A
year or so later, the site began
letting people sell their rides,
Craigslist-style, but BaT didn’t
fully self-actualize until it
launched auctions in 2014.
This is its inflection point, like
when the American Revolution
happened—or the second
season of The Office.
“A lot of what made it
attractive to people was the
weird mix,” Nonnenberg says.
“BaT mirrored my broad and
somewhat schizophrenic taste
in cars, from cool pickup trucks
to lowered racing Datsuns to
new stuff. And the big change
that drew a lot of audience in
is that a car doesn’t have to be
super-expensive to be cool.
I was talking about $10,000 cars
as being the coolest thing ever.”
This, of course, sets it apart
from the traditional car-buying
sites dotting the internet.
High-end-car auctions are
usually live multiday affairs
catering to boomers with
automotive boners for American
muscle and pedigreed Ferraris
that hadn’t been driven a
mile in decades. Craigslist and
eBay are filled with scams.
Used-car apps overflow with
junk. Nonnenberg has invented
the perfect marketplace for the
gearhead lost generation—a
site with some simple
economic incentives and
institutional rules.
The obvious reason why
those sellers line up: financial
motivation. Bring a Trailer takes
$99 from the sellers as a posting
fee, whereas most high-end
auctions take much more: say,
10 percent of the final selling
price. BaT is kind to buyers
too. It charges an extra 5 percent
of the gavel price or $5,000,
whichever is less—whereas
big-money auction houses
demand around 10 percent from
the buyer. Bring a Trailer is
built as the most fiscally sane
place to sell or buy, whether
you’re in the market for your first
Miata or your 40th Porsche.
These days the 25 or so
employees of Bring a Trailer
work out of concrete-floored