Today, June 29, is Real-Time Used Car Auction Day in Japan. It commemorates the anniversary of the first time dealers across the country could bid on a car live. The inaugural auction took place long before the world wide web was available for public use, on June 29, 1985 and was conducted via Laserdisc. Prior to the 29th, the auction company mailed out Laserdiscs to participating dealers. On auction day, dealers inserted the Laserdisc into a specialized terminal connected to a telephone line. As a specific cars came up for bidding, the central system would send a data command via the phone line telling the dealer’s Laserdisc player exactly which frame to pull up on the screen. It was a crude system, and at the time bidding without seeing the car in person was a novel idea. Four decades later, it’s the norm.
What’s your best story about buying or selling a car via auction?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “How has The Fast and the Furious impacted your local car scene?“.
My earliest recollection of The Fast and the Furious was my friend downloading a trailer via Napster when it was still under its working title, Redline. As a long-time enthusiast of Japanese cars in a not-very-import-friendly part of the country (pickups still wore “No Jap Shit” bumper stickers there in 2001), I felt seen and was excited for a movie about the cars I loved. Then I saw it. I came away, in the words of Kevin Sorbo accidentally reciting a stage direction, disappointed.
Most of the comments from last week share a similar sentiment about it. In @ye‘s neck of the woods it made the car scene instantly uncool. Negishi no Keibajo‘s simple three-word answer summed it up nicely.
Possibly the most charitable response came from Land Ark, who recalls true excitement from the theater crowd on opening night. The Dutch JNC scene isn’t something we truly understand, so we’ll take streetspirit‘s word for it when he likens it to cornbread.
Most readers think of the F&F movies as both a blessing and a curse. Tomas David gave us a Dickensian explanation of how it was both the best and worst thing. Similarly, TheJWT correctly pointed out that it opened people’s eyes to Japanese cars, but is it worth not being able to afford them? Bryan Kitsune also found more acceptance for Japanese cars in his area, but it attracted a crowd he didn’t want to be a part of. Likewise, Howard D. wanted to appreciate the cars without enduring the questions about NOS and underglow.
The winner this week was Jeff who noted that the effects in his area were short-lived and that any notion of these movies being about the car scene left a long time ago:
It did initially… and then did not.
Premier weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse theater here in Austin, TX was packed with JDM cars — the lot was full, and the highway out front had racers going by at high speed. I took my S2000 and really liked the film — it had that certain something that made it a classic, especially with the Supra build scene. But the police didn’t agree… the madhouse was soon ended.So for my second viewing that weekend I took my Explorer. I didn’t want the attention.
There really wasn’t any JDM scene here to begin with or after — it was just a subset of the local car shows.
And let’s face it — the 2nd F&F was terrible… the audience at the premiere was visibly disappointed. The 3rd F&F was terrific — what it should have been. But there wasn’t any JDM crowd parked out front.
After that… well… F&F left us — not the other way around. And it hasn’t been a real car movie ever since. There has been industry talk that the last film in the series coming up might go back to roots… we can only hope so, but I very much doubt it.
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
When Cars & Bids was still new in 2020, I often checked it out for good and local deals. I spotted a red Miata NB2 I liked that was just 30 minutes north of me, and I thought I should keep an eye out for this one. Fast forward to the day of the auction close: I was part of a leadership team in the largest prison in my state, and on that day, we were learning about and trying out our new tasers that would be used inside. We were in a classroom setting, and I had my laptop open to the site for the class and to keep up with the auction since it was still a deal one hour prior to closing. And just so happens that when the gavel was about to come down (and with my luck), I was called to be the first to be tased among the team.
So before I went up on stage, I made a bold final bid offer since I was going to miss bidding while it was my turn, and I went to get tased (bro). I was given a scenario where I was laying down on all fours, simulating being tripped and still chasing bad guys. I was crawling on the floor and… zap! The dual prongs deployed onto my back and butt, and I was riding the lightning for five seconds that felt like five minutes.
It was a crazy feeling; for those long five seconds (“or less, you’re free”), you cannot move your body—essentially paralyzed. LMAO! I was sweating and trying to finish the exercise and was told by my fellow coworker that I kept yelling out, “Did I win? DID I WIN!?!” 🙂
It was an excruciating experience. I eventually made my way back to my computer to find out I won! LMAO! I still have that red NB2 today (the 7th NB ever sold on that site).
I’ve sold a few bikes at auction, but never bought anything. I do have a story about the Japanese auctions though…
When I was living in Okayama, I was the only foreigner at my gym, or so I thought. One night, a Japanese/Pakistani guy came up to me and asked if I spoke English… We hit it off quickly through our love of cars and he mentioned he bought and sold cars at the auctions for a living. We became good friends, and eventually he let me come with him to the ISS Okayama auction hall. It was awesome to see, and something that not a lot of foreigners are able to do. It looked just like the videos I’d seen- rows of computer monitors with clicker buttons to bid and multiple auctions going on at once. I don’t think he bought anything that day, but we did stroll up and down the lot checking out the cars for sale.
After I moved back to the US, he bought a Suzuki Carry truck to send here for me and another friend to fix up and sell. We picked it up from the Port of Baltimore ourselves and kept it for a while before selling it, probably for a few hundred dollars less than we had in it. He’s still a good friend of mine, and he’s planning on coming to the US for my wedding next year.
Well, there was the time I bought a 2006 Pontiac GTO on eBay sight unseen and then flew down to Florida and drove it home to Virginia without thinking to at least check to make sure it had oil in it before setting off.
But, the more interesting story would be selling my 1990 Nissan Maxima SE on eBay way back in 2002. The Maxima was a hand me down from my step mother so she could get a new car (Acura TL) and I could have a car after my Sunbird’s head gasket blew.
The Max (as I called it) was a fantastic car. It had something like 75k miles on it, it was fast and I thought quite fetching. The problem was that it came from New Hampshire so it was very rusty. So rusty that it probably wasn’t terribly safe to be driving. The rockers were gone and a friend of mine who I’d gotten to help me replace a cv axle told me never to bring it back to him. Later, another shop told me there was no way they could replace the shocks and springs because nothing was going to come apart.
And then the fuel filler neck followed by the rear seatbelt anchor rusted off the car. I got the fuel filler neck replaced under an open recall. The seatbelt was also covered by a recall but I never got around to getting it replaced.
So I replaced it with a 97 Audi A6, still the worst car I’ve owned. I listed the Maxima on eBay and noted all its horrors for a few hundred bucks and it ended up selling for around $1,700. A local kid had bought it and soon after his mom contacted me saying the head gasket on it was blown. Now, I didn’t have any issues with it before selling but rather than get into an argument, I agreed to give something like $500 back so he could fix it. The joke was on them though, if it hadn’t sold, I was just going to give it away.
I’m certain he was the final owner of that car. It was a great car but that one in particular belonged in the scrapyard.