Barrett-Jackson’s Bugatti Veyron Snafu Spotlights Lessons Learned

By Sam Barer

Sound Classics

Sports Car Market sent our a report this week detailing an unfortunate issue with the high bidder of the 2008 Bugatti Veyron at the Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas Auction. After the gavel fell on live television, this winning bidder backed out of the $770,000 purchase (including premium), which was the top seller at the event.

Back in 2007, a minor firestorm resulted from an issue between B-J and a seller of a ‘Cuda at its flagship Arizona auction. After finger pointing, many media reports, tons of comments on blogs and chat boards, a lawsuit, a settlement, and too much time and headaches, the issue was solved. But lessons were learned on all sides about how similar disputes might be played out in the future.

Evidently, Barrett-Jackson was on the ball for the latest round of auction snafu. While an entirely different type of issue, B-J did exactly what they should have done: immediately announce the problem, get ahead of the story, and find a quick solution: offer the car for sale again. Even as the deadbeat bidder was leaving the event, Craig Jackson announced he would buy the car to maintain the sale. Later a B-J customer inquired about buying the car from Mr. Jackson, although it is not clear if the deal for the car has been finalized.

Kudos to Barrett-Jackson for doing what many large businesses often fail to do: learn and evolve to deal with the next crisis. They played this one perfectly.

Here’s the story from SCM:

A 2008 Bugatti Veyron, which sold for $770k, including buyer’s premium, was high sale of Barrett-Jackson’s September 23-25 Las Vegas Auction.

But the deal was far from ordinary. The winning bidder reneged on his purchase, which is a very rare event at collector car auctions. All this happened on live television, as the auction was on the SPEED network.

Barrett-Jackson has given SCM this timeline of what happened next:
After the 2008 Bugatti Veyron (Lot 6580) sold for $700,000, the winning bidder immediately went to the auction office and tried to claim that he had not intended to purchase the car. The winning bidder’s credentials were revoked and he left the auction arena.

Rather than taking the harshest legal route and requiring the winning bidder to honor his contractual obligation to pay for the Bugatti, Barrett-Jackson elected to announce to the audience at Mandalay Bay and live on SPEED that the buyer was walking away from the purchase.

Barrett-Jackson gave the audience an opportunity to re-open bidding on the car if there was another interested buyer in the audience. The under-bidder had already left the arena, and no other buyer stepped forward. At that point, Barrett-Jackson CEO/Chairman Craig Jackson announced live on SPEED that he would personally purchase the car. Within an hour of this occurring, one of Barrett-Jackson’s VIP customers who had been watching the auction on SPEED called and inquired about purchasing the car.

Barrett-Jackson’s highest priority in this situation was transparency and fairness to its customers. The company wanted to reveal exactly what emerged in real time so everyone in attendance and watching on television would have accurate information as it unfolded.