1963 Triumph TR4

This 1963 Triumph TR4 sold for $97,200 at the Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach sale held on March 31 and April 1, 2006.
When I walked past this car at the Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach sale, it immediately caught my eye. An unusual color, well sorted under the hood, sharp interior, very good gaps. In short, a well-restored example that stood out for the quality of the work, but also a car that even a non-car person could see was clean, crisp, and tidy.
Perfect? No way. As-new? In some ways much better than new; in others, not quite as good. Had this 1963 Triumph TR4 sold for $17,200, $27,200, or even $37,200, you’d have heard sports car fans yawning across America. Instead, it sold for $97,200 and became one of the most talked-about cars of 2006.
Hearing of the sale, a friend and well-known British car restorer said, “Would you like three (restored that nicely) for $97,200? Because if you want them, I’ll build them!” He was laughing, but not kidding.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will now reveal to you one of the true secrets of the collector car world. Information passed down from father to son for generations, learned from the ancients. This information is so powerful, so vast, so fulfilling, so earthshaking that some have compared it to The Holy Grail, the Honus Wagner Rookie card, or that upside down airplane air- mail stamp. All of them put together.
Ready? It sold for $97,200 because it did. That’s right, someone decided that it was worth that much to him or her. And remember that this was just one bid more than someone else made. That’s it. Period. End of story.
Hopefully, you can handle that information and we won’t have to send out the SCM hit squad to splatter you with oil leak balloon bombs or pummel you with parts collected by the giant magnet we always drag behind our British cars.
At auction, we veteran observers like to speculate why someone bought this car or that, talk about what a great buy someone got, or state the ubiquitous, “What the hell were they thinking?” It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it’s free (once you pay to get in), and it’s ever-present.
The auction process, in a way, is the ultimate reality show, or, the way I like to look at it, a novel with perhaps 100 or 200 or even 2,000 chapters, each waiting to be written as each car approaches the block. Will it sell? How much? Who will bid on it? A well-known dealer? The nice young couple in the bleachers? The older man with his perky personal assistant? Two buddies getting together for an investment? It’s all there, it is more fun to watch than a train wreck, and no one gets hurt. Except perhaps financially, and you can only assume that someone who has $100k to drop on an old car isn’t spending his mortgage payment. More likely his lunch money.
I’ve learned quite a bit about human nature in my years at collector car auctions. The most important lesson-and one that has been hardest-is that sometimes something is worth a lot more to the next guy than it is to you.
Maybe he has more money than you, and just feels like spending it.
Perhaps he knows something about the market that you don’t.
Could be his wife or girlfriend wants “the pretty blue one.” Could be he wants “the pretty blue one.” Possibly he’s an idiot, and he has no freaking idea. Conceivably he is intensely competitive and will “win” his car at whatever cost.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s what he always wanted, he fell in love with it, and he just has to have it, knowing full well he is paying way too much. And that’s OK, too.
And now, the final question, the one that everybody with a TR4 wants to know. Was the car “worth it” at a few dollars shy of 100 large? Is my TR4, more correct and with a “better” color, worth more? Does this new ceiling mean the floor has been forever raised? Should we be running out and buying every well-restored (and maybe unrestored) TR4 in the known universe?
My one word answer is no. Sorry, but markets don’t work that way. One sale, way high or way low, does not change the norm, but rather, is a market anomaly. It remains that way until a few (5? 10? 25? 300?) similar cars change hands, and the market moves in that direction, be it up or down. When buyers and sellers as a whole agree, markets move. It’s all about the perception of value.
For now, this car is a blip on the radar, the one in the list with an asterisk beside the price that references “crazy price.” However, whatever the price, this was a superbly presented car, and if someone is going to pay the 3X price for a Triumph TR4 and end up with just one set of wheels, this was the one.