Hemmings Motor News has spent the past 65 years building a solid, trusted reputation in the collector-car community. And now we’re bringing that reputation to a whole-new online experience via Hemmings Auctions.
Finding cars online is easy, from social media to catch-all, freebie ad sites that offer everything from used couches to apartments to pets to cars of all stripes. There are even online auction sites that are a combination of the world’s largest yard sale and biggest clearance sale all rolled into one. Are there interesting cars to be found there? Surely, but it’s also about as personal as taking a number at the DMV.
What if you had a chance to regularly browse—and bid on—a smaller, hand-chosen selection of truly interesting cars? A site where everything is personal, from the carefully hand-selected inventory to the best customer service in the business?
That’s where Hemmings Auctions comes in. Hemmings has never been a used-car lot and we don’t plan on making it one now. As we launch this new service, the number one goal is to provide a level of personalized attention the rest of the Internet just can’t deliver. With literal decades of experience, our dedicated staff on the auction team knows the collector-car world inside and out—we’ve practically grown up with the entire industry.
From submission to acceptance to the live auction and post-sale follow up, a Hemmings Auctions staffer, dedicated to your car, will walk you through the entire process and will be available to speak with via telephone. Even as your supermarket does away with actual human beings ringing up your groceries—let alone the impersonal mega sale sites on the web–Hemmings Auctions will still do things the old-fashioned way. We’ll introduce the team in the next couple of days.
Wanting to ensure that we keep delivering the quality Hemmings experience, we are taking an approach we are calling “Crawl, Walk, Run.” So, we are starting with limited inventory, only selecting cars that stand out as interesting rides at the affordable end of the collector-car spectrum. We’re a long way gone from the days when Hemmings Motor News had only Model T, Model A, and “Other” sections in the magazine. Today’s sophisticated buyer scans the globe for cars that catch his or her fancy, the sort of machines that are as important for the driving experience as they are for their value proposition and style prowess.
We will also be selecting the type of cars that will spark deep conversations with our readers. Unlike our standard classifieds, we will allow—no, make that embrace—commenting. The body of knowledge, and, well strong opinions, of Hemmings Nation is well known to the readers of the Hemmings Daily. Expect the same sort of in-depth observation at Hemmings Auctions. But, just in case you really want to know more about a car, there will be a separate section for asking the seller questions, if you don’t have time to read through everyone else’s experience and just want to get to the heart of the matter. Even with that dedicated section on each listing of our proprietary, ground-up auction platform, Hemmings staff will be right there, making sure our sellers and bidders are up to date on the latest questions. Who else can offer that sort of personal attention?
When we launch Hemmings Auctions we’ll start with a handful of new auctions each day, focusing on quality of experience over quantity. Each auction closes a week from its start time, with last-second bids adding additional time, resetting the clock for a few minutes. You can bet we will be following these sales and staying in close contact with the sellers during this process. We will also be available to help bidders as needed. Even after we are done crawling, we don’t plan on changing that extra-attentive level of service.
After that first week, we will continue with a steady rate of hand-picked inventory, making sure the process is as smooth as possible. Hey, we’ve been in the game for a long time, but this new twist has us doing everything we can to make sure this new service runs as flaw-free as possible. If there are issues, we want to fix them in the most expedient manner possible.
More than anything, we want everyone to enjoy the process and have confidence that we are doing it right, from sellers to bidders to Hemmings Nation that will be watching right along with us. Get ready for a whole new ride at Hemmings Auctions. The Pursuit is on!
