Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach, FL Lot 124...

[130fe]

I took these pics on Saturday, there was a lot of advertising on those cars.

[130fe]

Another pic.

[buickfunnycar.com]

Nice placement...I'm thinking they got their money's worth.

[NOT A TA]

Originally Posted by buickfunnycar.com

Nice placement...I'm thinking they got their money's worth.

Apparently Barrett Jackson also saw an opportunity as a BJ banner seems to appeared over the booth overnight Fri. in perfect alignment for all the pics being taken.

[jarhead]

I like the model pictures the best

[MotorCityMuscle]

Hey John --- Good to connect with you again --- and Hey everyone,

I was the one who bought the yellow car from John, and was the chief marketing officer for Social Discovery Ventures (SDV), owner of the online dating site, AnastasiaDate.com. Although I left the company last November, I was the one who managed our sponsorship in the Gumball 3000 rally, and I know a bit about how the auction was managed by the company.

Well, it's always hard to know why a car didn't bring more money. Was it the stickers from Gumball 3000? Well, Barrett-Jackson strongly asked to keep them on there for the auction, as they insisted it would bring more money, and also SDV wanted them on there to bring more publicity, too. Was it the A/C? Well, easy enough for a buyer, don't turn it on. ;-) Was it the tailpipes? Easy enough to cut them off in 10 minutes if someone wanted to. As for the assertion that it could've brought $45K all day long if it had been left in the original Trans Am mode, I can't necessarily agree, as that car had been for sale for 6 months when I bought it for $46K, although admittedly, it had been priced higher earlier. It's interesting to note that the Velocity TV announcer mentioned on-air during its auction that "why did someone put upgraded brakes on the front, but left drum brakes on the rear? Why didn't they complete the build?" So, it seems that not everyone appreciates the whole "Trans Am" build aspect. I personally think that the most egregious omission from the auction description was the fact that the motor was extremely powerful, at 540 HP, and pulled hard. I really stressed to my former team to get B-J to list that, but they somehow didn't. ;-(

The cars (there was a red one also, i.e. the yellow one's "twin") got great reviews and attention, especially in Europe. Given that Gumball is stuffed with supercars (I counted 11 Ferrari 430 cars), they really stood out. Having said that, most people seemed to like the red car better, somehow, based on the attention we observed. Most of our team at the rally perceived that people just like red better than yellow in this particular car.

Having said that, I drove both cars a lot, both before, during, and after the rally, and by far, the yellow car was my favorite. The best memory I have during the rally was blasting down the German autobahn from Hamburg, Germany through to Amsterdam, Netherlands at 136 MPH (220 KMH) in the yellow car. With the 4 speed in it (later replaced by a 5 speed after the rally), it was revving at about 4,500 RPM, and it was screaming loud. And with the road noise, the engine noise, and wind noise, I couldn't hear when my passenger was speaking. ;-)

Regardless, and most importantly, the company and I got fantastic value out of them, both before, during, and after the rally, and at the auction, as John stated. We surpassed all of our brand and PR metrics. The cars (and our brand name) were listed all over the web and in print in numerous publications, as we had nearly 20 reporters with us during the rally. We let them drive the cars and then they wrote about them.

By the way, the Lamborghini we rented the year before for Gumball 3000 rally (in 2014) cost us $25,000, not $75,000. Each Camaro, net net, cost us just a bit over that but we got much more value out of them.

If you're interested, you can view a few professional videos we made. Before the rally, we made 2 videos to use across extensively across social media:

30 Second Version: http://bit.ly/1TPWUvI
60 Second Version: http://bit.ly/20zNqFJ

And, we had a professional film crew with us during the rally. They put together this cool, nearly 10 minute "road movie." http://bit.ly/23sHPWO. Or if you want to see only the 30 second teaser, view http://bit.ly/23CA7WX.

And, here is a link to the short (1 minute) videos we captured each day on the rally at http://bit.ly/23sHPWO.

Anyways, had an awesome time working on the Gumball 3000 sponsorship. It was almost 12 months of work but ultimately, a cool project, and I'm a bit sad that the cars and project are out of my life . . .

Happy to answer any questions anyone may have . . .

Anthony

P.S. And no, neither of the blond models at B-J were the blond model (shown in the photo on page 1 of this thread) who was at our photo shoot prior to Gumball Rally . . .