The Vicari Auction Company

• Let’s talk about The who/what/where/when/how of Pete Vicari. Let’s go back to those early memories, what turned you into a car lover? Especially a fan of the Corvette.
• Hurricane Katrina – the aftermath? What was lost, how did you rebuild?
• Let’s talk about racing for a moment… You have a sponsored Vicari Rail Car, also known as a Drag Racing car. Tell us about the build. How did you get into Drag Racing?
• Why go into the business of auctions? And How did you get that going?
• Your biggest event is held annually in Biloxi, MS – how did you settle on that location, being from Louisiana?
• Why auctions over direct car sales?
• What do you see as the hot trend right now in auction sales? Where do you think the market is going?  The 90’s and JDM/Imports (Asian cars) have become of big interest, trucks have followed that trend, what do you see as the next big thing?
• What is Cuisin’ the Coast?
• What’s next for Pete Vicari & Vicari Auctions?

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder, a. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Our guests love for cars. Started at a young age when he bought his first classic car, a 1940 Ford Coupe for just $20 working alongside his brothers-in-law to restore it. He got hooked on classic car ownership and restoration. His passion for Corvettes was ignited when he traded in a sensible Oldsmobile for a 66 Corvette convertible during his college years.

However, he had to sell it when family responsibilities called. Pete Akari became heavily involved in the auto auction scene, starting with local [00:01:00] sponsorship, and eventually establishing the Akari Auction Company. Today the company employs professional auctioneers and holds annual auctions in conjunction with events like Cruise in the coast, and he’s here with us tonight to tell us all about it.

With that, let’s welcome Pete Vicar to break fix, along with my co-host William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace. How y’all doing guys? Good to be with y’all.

William Ross: Thanks. We appreciate it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, like all good break fix stories. Let’s talk about the who, what, when and where of Pete Akari. Let’s go back to those early memories.

How were you turned into a car lover, especially a fan of Corvettes.

Pete Vicari: I have two older sisters. We lived on a lot of acreage and on Sundays, My sisters would barbecue for their friends. Well, her friends boyfriends came over and it was like a car show every Sunday at my house with all these badass cops.

And because I was younger and they had boyfriends coming around the time, let’s say mid sixties, you know, maybe [00:02:00] 64 to 70. So all the American muscle cars, they had some really bad cars. I mean, they had three 90 Mustangs. One of ’em had a boss, 4 29 Mustang. Like one of ’em had a 65 Belvedere that he ordered brand new.

And listen to this guys. It was a 4 26 lightweight four speed car. And then when my brother-in-law got married to my sister, my dad made him sell the car. ’cause he said, you’re not gonna put my daughter in potentially a family in that car. I begged my daddy to buy it and put it in the warehouse and he wouldn’t.

Years later, we were outta sale on one sold for like $400,000. He said, I wish I’d listened to you. That’s how I started because of the influence from my older sister’s boyfriends within, they got married and then they went about brother-in-laws, but. From that, you know, it was on, once I bought my first car and my brother-in-laws helped me with the 44, we tore it all apart, repainted it, put a 2 83 in it with [00:03:00] automatic, and within about two months I was 15 years old driving in the neighborhood without a driver’s license.

But anyway, it was fun back then.

William Ross: So do, uh, your brother-in-law still have a lot of cars? Are they still having stuff like that or toys or they kind of go the path where they had to get rid of ’em ’cause of family?

Pete Vicari: No, they older now they’re in their almost eighties and you know, they drool over stuff like that.

But you know, they don’t have cars anymore. I’m the only nut that still does it. Quite honestly, at one point in my life, my collection was almost 70 cars, all Corvettes. You know, it just got to be too much and I sold ’em to a friend of mine, most of them. But I kept a lot of the rare stuff

Crew Chief Eric: starting out with that early Ford and some of the other cars.

You gravitated toward Corvette very quickly. Why the C two? Why the 66 in particular? Why the stingray? What drove you to the car and how did you end up with your first one, and how did that turn into a lifelong passion for Corvettes?

Pete Vicari: I was at my dad’s office one day and a friend of his there [00:04:00] had, I wanna say, a a 69 or 74 door Oldsmobile.

Big thing, I mean, a big lanyard thing. And he heard I was going to college the next week and he says, look, I want to give you this car. As a graduation. I was taking it to trade in ’cause my wife don’t like it. It was a brand new car it was too big for, and my dad said, no indeed not Bob. I can’t let you give that card to my son.

He turned to me and he said, how much money you got in your pocket? I might have had a hundred dollars on me. He said, give it to me. It’s your call. I didn’t want to go to college in that. Well anyway, I ended up with the car and ne very next weekend when I was coming home from college on a used car lot with just 66 carve 3 75 horse car, automatic four speed, $1,200 on the windshield matching number car.

Now, back then we, who knew about matching numbers, anything like that? So I pull in there and I didn’t know what I was really buying. All I knew was a 66 Corvette convertible with two tops. I told the guy, I said, look, I’ll trade you even up. I’ll give you this call for the Corvette, [00:05:00] because I was like a hundred dollars on the call.

So he said, okay, good, good deal. So we go in, we getting ready to do the paperwork. He looks at the title, well, I didn’t know it, but the guy was a friend of my dad. He looks at my name and he says, I can’t do this deal. And I said, why? He said, because your call is worth twice what you want and your dad’s gonna be upset with me if I do this.

So, and the guy was being honest, he wasn’t taking advantage of a 17 year old kid. I left there, I went to my girlfriend’s house. My girlfriend’s daddy said to me that week, he liked the car. So I told him, I said, you wanna buy this car? Gimme $1,500. He took $1,500, gave it to me. I sold him that car and I went and bought the carve for 1200.

That’s how I ended up with it. That’s what started it. And man, 60 something Corvettes. Later. I’ve got some of the rarest Corvettes around prototype Corvettes.

Crew Chief Eric: I wanna ask one of our more popular, what we call pit stop questions, and that’s the sexiest car of all time. Question for you. Is that [00:06:00] the Corvette, is that specifically let’s say the C two, one of the other Corvettes, or is there something else out there that you’re like, wow, that’s a really good looking car?

Pete Vicari: I like my Corvettes. Okay. I will say that, but I do have a replica of a 1957 Bugatti Atlantis. My wife and I drove in the great race, the cross country race. I used to sponsor that. I can’t go anywhere with that car. People follow me. They’re on the side of me. If I go to a gas station, I’m there for 20, 30 minutes telling people about the car.

It was a hit through the whole race, and that I think is one of the coolest looking cars, you know? But I still love my vets. I will say that.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’ve lived through almost the entire evolution of the Corvette. If you kind of think about it and you look over it’s long history. It’s celebrating 70 years this year.

Yes. Of all the Corvettes, which is the best, and what do you think of the new C eight?

Pete Vicari: Well, the best Corvette to me is the C twos. I like the midyear. I did have a few L [00:07:00] 89, covets 69, but the midyears are the are one I like now the C eight. Believe me, I think GM knocked it out the park on that for the money for what you get.

That is a great call. I just can’t see me owning a new Corvette, though. I sold ’em in our auction and I tell people all the time, they’re great, but I got a bad back and I can’t get in and out of ’em like I used to.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you think Corvette should have gone mid-engine earlier? Do you think it was a little late waiting to the eighth generation to put it out there?

Pete Vicari: I think

Crew Chief Eric: so.

Pete Vicari: Yeah. It should have came out a little earlier. Hey, they knocked it out the park. I really think they’re great. Cause all my customers, they end up buying ’em. They love it. I have a nice lady that bought one kind of when she bought it at the auction, when it sold, I turned and gave her a hundred dollars outta my pocket and she said, what’s this for?

I said, that’s towards your first ticket. She, her husband came back a few minutes later, he gave me a hundred dollars back and said, if she gets a ticket, this call’s coming back to you. But [00:08:00] she’s been good. I’ve seen her lately, and she hasn’t got a ticket.

William Ross: They did a great job on that. You don’t hear many negative comments of reviews on that ca as we’re coming out with the subsequent upgraded models, you know.

They’re just improving on it that much more. And yeah, it’s a fabulous looking car. I haven’t had the opportunity to drive one yet. I’d love to, but yeah, it actually knocked it outta the park with that.

Pete Vicari: They did.

Crew Chief Eric: The Corvette really is a Swiss army knife. It caters to everybody. If you want a sports car, you want a show car, you wanna a race car, it could do it all.

And it’s proven it time and time again. I mean, when you look at the Corvette’s history, it’s absolutely amazing. There’s very few cars. Think the nine 11 and a couple others are in that same category where it’s pretty much in every person. And every motorsport type of vehicle where you can find a Corvette out there, no matter what the situation is, you

Pete Vicari: can look at the price.

A normal guy can afford it,

Crew Chief Eric: you know? Exactly. Sometimes there’s a storm cloud in every story. And you being from the deeper south, especially in the New [00:09:00] Orleans area, we all remember Hurricane Katrina being a car collector, I’m sure there was, you know, an impact you, there’s a lot of devastation in the area, especially in the French Quarter, et cetera.

How did Hurricane Katrina impact you and your business and your collection, and how did you bounce back from that?

Pete Vicari: The neighbor’s building fell onto my building. My car survived. The insurance company came in. There was no damage to ’em, but they all got soaked and wet because the block wall just stripped my wall off, but my structure was up, so it just rained in there for days.

The worst part about that whole ordeal was. On the wall that got damaged, I had built the 1988 Republican convention, and at the end of the convention there was a flag drop. That was when the fireworks went off. This big flag fell out of the ceiling of the dome. That flag was on the wall and it just got ripped to shreds.

That’s the worst part of that. And my buddy Henry Shane’s collection was [00:10:00] the same thing. I mean, he had 54 Buick sky locks where beams just fell right on top of the cars. He had a boss 4 29 that got damaged also. But Katrina was a devastating storm. A lot of people lost their lives. There’s a lot of property damage, but it kind of changed the whole environment there.

It made other parishes outside that metro area grow even faster.

Crew Chief Eric: And I bring it up because it’s important to your original Corvette story because at some point you ended up selling off your original 66 Corvette. Then you went on a journey to refind it and part of that was discovering it as a result of the impact of Katrina.

So sort of walk us through that, how you found it, the restoration process and so on, and bringing that original Corvette home to you.

Pete Vicari: We have two boys and when my boys were, let’s say seven, eight, I sold it ’cause I felt like it was just sitting around. My wife said, you know, we really ought get rid of that car before it deteriorates and blah, blah blah.

So we did. [00:11:00] So one day I was cleaning out my desk drawer and I ran across, this was years after I sold it. We used to have what’s called a pink slip. It was like a registration, but it was the pink slip. And I had a friend of mine that worked for the state run the VIN number, and lo and behold, the address that this guy lived at.

Sound familiar to me. And it was in Slidel, it was across the lake from New Orleans. That next day I asked one of my superintendents, ’cause he lived there, and I said, where’s this address? ’cause I know you’re in Slidel. And he looked at the address and he said, well, that’s my street. He said, the number that must be right next to my house, I said, well, does the guy next door to you have a red Corvette?

He says, yeah, I told you about that call years ago. ’cause Mike, my superintendent, been with me 20 something years, but you know, I was so busy involved in business and when he said it, it just went over my head. And then when he told me that, I said, wait a minute, you telling me this call is next to you? He says, yeah, I see it every week.

The guy goes out and drive, whatever. I said, [00:12:00] well, when you go home, I need to talk to the guy. He called me and we stayed in touch and he was the regional U-Haul representative. Kept it at the U-Haul facility in a storage container. And don’t you know Katrina comes, it’s in New Orleans East and that’s where all the flooding happened.

That call was literally a summary. I mean, it was over the roof. And he called me, he says, look, the insurance company wants to give me $20,000 if I want to keep the car off of the settlement. And I said, I’ll pay it. Keep the car, I’ll give you the 20. He said, done deal. So that’s how I got it back. And lemme tell you, this call was a submarine.

Within five hours we had that call running. The gas cap was sealed. When we opened the gas cap, they had a half a tank of gas and the water didn’t go into the tank. So we flushed the motor out with all, and we used some diesel and cleaned the carburetor four or five hours we had it running. But anyway, we since have sent it off [00:13:00] it’s frame off restoration.

It’s beautiful now. $120,000 later, you know

Crew Chief Eric: it’s brand new again. Yeah, right. It’s that original 1200. Just, you know, add some zeros to it, that’s all.

Pete Vicari: Yeah. And my wife, we even was kidding about that. Wait a minute. You pay 1200, now you’re gonna pay one 20 to have it restored. Something’s wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: Adjusted for inflation.

That’s what that’s called.

Pete Vicari: Right. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: So switching gears a little bit, we talk about Corvettes and Corvette racing and we find that you’re also involved in racing. You have a couple sponsored Ari Rail cars, and for those that don’t know what those are, drag racing cars, the ones you kind of see like, you know, the big top fuel cars.

So tell us a little bit more about how you got into that side of the vehicle world and your builds. And do you do any drag racing yourself? Have you gone down the strip?

Pete Vicari: Oh yeah. I’m still licensed in N H R A Super Comp. I still retain my license, but the way I got started, my brother-in-law that had the Belvedere 4 26 hemmer, he used to go out [00:14:00] to the track and we’d go out and watch it.

Southland Driveway here in hoa, Louisiana. My dad owned land right next to the track and the opening event there with all the big name guys, dime, gall, snake, all those guys were there for the opening. I was in the towel as a young kid. Watching the races. You know, when I see that, I got kind of hooked on that.

And as I got older, I did some racing and then after I got married and had kids, I bought a 82 Corvette, all two Dow chassis, Supercon car. I raced that. And then when my oldest son was eight, I bought a junior dragster for him. He’s very good. He won his first race. Now he runs top dragster. It’s right below alcohol.

He’s been second and he’s also won the division 2013 and won the whole division of N H R A top dragster. From there, my youngest son got involved. I was working day and night in construction. During the [00:15:00] day when I get home, have to take care of Corvettes. I got race cars I gotta deal with. I got tracked the trailers, you know, we were just burning it on both ends.

But anyway, throughout my kids’ careers, they had five dragsters and a junior funny car. In my museum. I have all of those up on the wall, and then I have all the drta. We have three big Drta, top drta that we’ve run

Crew Chief Eric: since we’re talking about racing. Are you a fan of any other racing Formula One IMSA sports car Endurance.

Pete Vicari: I’ve always been drag racing. I mean, I got a lot of friends that like NASCAR stuff. I’ve been invited to the NASCAR races. That’s just not my thing. I can’t sit there and just look at cars going in a circle. I’m not beating anybody up. That’s their thing. I like drag racing. I pat ’em on the back, you know, and we sell NASCARs.

I think they’re great, but that’s just not my thing, you know? Fair

Crew Chief Eric: enough. We’re gonna pop this thing into third here, and we’re gonna talk about your sweet spot. We’re gonna talk about auctions, and I know it’s something that Williams’s been chomping [00:16:00] at the bit to talk about too, because as we’ve learned in the past, he does some brokering himself, as you said, your day job, general contracting, you’ve been into cars, collecting cars, personal collection, museum, all these kinds of things.

So

William Ross: did you start an auction company so you could get your hands on some of the better stuff before it went to market?

Pete Vicari: Well, it wasn’t really planned. One of my best friends, Henry Shane, he owns Cars of Yester years. He’s a local developer here. He’s probably the largest apartment owner here in the New Orleans market.

He has 150 car collection and he used to be the Cruise International sponsor. You remember Cruz way back when?

William Ross: Yeah.

Pete Vicari: Well, when Henry’s business blew up and he just got out of control and he couldn’t be the sponsor anymore. He told me, he says, you take it and you run with it. You build it, do whatever you want with it.

I did, we were having auctions at BoomTown Casino and the second year some guys called me and said, man, we wanna start this little cruise in Biloxi. We want you to move over. ’cause Biloxi Gulf Coast [00:17:00] is beautiful. I agreed and the first year of cruising the coast probably had 600 cars, maybe not that many ’cause I had already had an auction planned, so I didn’t do the first year, but I was involved with them putting it together.

And then the second year is the first year I had the auction at Cruising the Coast and we sold the Imperial Palace collection. At the Imperial Palace Casino, and from there it was on every year doing the sales there. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with Cruise on the Coast. We were voted the best car show by U SS A today for the fourth time.

William Ross: Oh wow.

Pete Vicari: Last year, 9,630 something cars were in the cruise. They probably had two times that many that wasn’t registered because of the impact on the local area, the state, and the city’s access to do an impact study. And we did, and it’s a 30 plus million dollar impact for a week. There’s 260,000 people come for the event over 10 days.

That’s outstanding. I tell everybody, [00:18:00] y’all, when I go around the country at different auctions and all they missing out, and when they do come, they say, man, I don’t understand why we haven’t been here for years now. You know, I’ve always tell people the auctions, it’s a fun thing to come experienced.

Crew Chief Eric: Pete, in your opinion, why an auction over all these other options that are out there for a car buyer or a collector?

Pete Vicari: I much prefer buying at an auction than buying online. At an auction you can touch, you can feel it, you can look at it. So most cars that are online, chely came from an auction. Some dealer or somebody bought it at an auction and proved it, did whatever they had to do and put it online.

William Ross: That is very true, and people don’t realize that, you know, they’re not doing the research on the car thoroughly enough to find out its whole history.

But yeah, you’re a hundred percent correct in that majority of ’em come through an auction one point or another in their life.

Pete Vicari: Years ago, I bought two Superbird from a guy. One of ’em was a Hemi, and one was I think a four 40. I bought ’em. I sold them at the auction. I think for the pay. I [00:19:00] got around 400,000 for both of them.

The buddy of mine that bought the Hemi car kept it in his collection. Three, four years. He sold the car, I think it was three 50. Well, a dealer takes it, puts it on his website. Doesn’t get any bites, sends it to the auction in Scottsdale. That car, same car that I sold at auction, brought $1,400,000. Car.

Wasn’t worth that. They got caught up in the frenzy of the auction and my buddy was there and it’s a shame to say, but Byer got caught up in it and was raising his own bids. It got outta hand. And then the cost sold point is that call was at an auction that somebody could have got a better deal and it sold for crazy money.

William Ross: People feed off that energy. And to your point too, it’s like who are you actually bidding against? Bidding against yourself? The auction company’s goal is obviously trying to get the most money for the client, but also for themselves. ’cause obviously fees and whatnot. Unfortunately, some [00:20:00] people get caught up in that and they end up paying up way more than they should.

And then hopefully it’s, they love the car. They’ll hang onto it for a long time. But yeah, it does happen quite a bit.

Pete Vicari: When things like that happen, you better like the car better than your money. Yeah. It’s not my problem. You got outta hand Because we have people that come bring us cars that they have bought from other auctions, and I’m honest with people.

This is a family auctions. We tell people upfront what we can do for you. We help you. I’m at the back door helping people get cars in. I’m at the auction podium. I’m not sitting on some. Office that’s not involved. I’m very involved and I tell people when they bring a car and they tell me they got a hundred thousand in reserve, and I said, sir, I’ll be honest with you.

It’s only my opinion, but I think this car’s worth 50. Oh, well, I paid 85 $90,000. I said, The top of the market’s 50. So we’ll try it for you. And a lot of people end up losing money ’cause they just didn’t know what they were buying.

William Ross: You know, I’ve run that situation many times, helping someone with the car to try [00:21:00] and sell it.

They’re on the fence about going, which route? I’m like, well, I’m gonna go to the auction, you know, ’cause they told me this. I’m like, well, yeah, they’re gonna tell you that. It’s not worth that. ’cause they want the car in the auction to keep their numbers up. But I’m like, Hey, I go, it’s your car. Do what you want.

Two months later, after auction they called me back. Oh, hey Will man, you know, I should have listened you, you were right because I spent all this money shipping it there, da da this and all this stuff. Come back like, look, I go, I was just being honest with, but hey, you do what you wanna do. But it’s unfortunate that it happens quite a bit.

They listen to that little voice that’s talking over here from say, the Scottsdale auction people and you know those locations and. They’re just trying to get, oh, we had 1500 cars. Oh, we had not, you know, this kind of situation. It’s like, well, what did you really do for them? That’s the thing.

Pete Vicari: Yes. I had a situation where a car was getting outta hand on prices on the auction block.

There was two friends bidding on it, and I just walked over there and, and I knew what the reserve was and the bid walked way over the reserve. The seller was happy and I had to do it because I owe it to my customers. I just said, do you realize what you bidding on? [00:22:00] And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of ’em said, well, my wife, it was a white T-bird.

Beautiful. Absolutely drop that gorgeous car. But when you get north of a hundred, it don’t make sense. No. And I said, the seller’s happy right now. Why are y’all doing this? I told ’em both and they were on their own and one of ’em got it and he still has it today, but they’d like the car. They like the car better than their mind.

You can

William Ross: quickly sour some people too on coming to auction, which is, you know, to your point. Going to that and touching and feeling, seeing the car, and maybe even hear it run and whatnot. But it can sour people after that experience like, oh, I got taken on this or that. You know, wrong place, wrong time.

There’s a lot of auction comes out there, but you gotta deal with the right ones and go to the right auctions where they’re gonna treat you fairly.

Pete Vicari: I’ve got thank you cards and letters from so many customers. I got a call today, a guy from South Florida. He says, man, y’all treat people so nicely. He registered 12 calls today.

Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, I got a lot of that repeat business and because they know I’m always [00:23:00] available by phone, they can call me anytime. I’ve got it on vibrated. It’s done one off three times while you and I would talk.

William Ross: And as you know that, treat your customer right. You have a customer for life.

It’s simple. It’s a very good model to live by. That’s what I’ve always done. I’m gonna teach you right, teach you fair, and teach you honestly. I want you to not only come back, but I want you to recommend me to other people. I’m sure you get it too. Say, well, hey, yo, so and so sold their cars to you guys, you know, a year ago, whatever.

Hey, I wanna bring some cars too, because you did treat ’em so well.

Pete Vicari: Look, I’ve been doing auctions now almost 30 years. Everybody has got that title and everybody’s got paid, and I have not been sued. Not one time. ’cause I told my people from day one, if, if we can’t do it right and be nice to people, let’s stop right now.

Stop. So that’s my motto. And then my family’s all involved and it’s been working. I don’t wanna be the biggest, and I’m not gonna tell you I’m the best, but I’m gonna Sure work hard to make sure my customers have. It’s all, I’m struggling.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve spoken with other auction companies before, but it’s always been one of these things that I, I sort of shied away from and I’ve come to the [00:24:00] auction scene late and I actually experienced my first car auction live back at Lamar earlier this year.

If I summarize it into two words or one phrase, it was like this quiet chaos. There’s so many moving parts and so many pieces to it and it was intense and the bidding and all this stuff. And to your point, you do get wrapped up in it. But it also made me stop and pause and think, well, why haven’t I come to an auction before?

And, and you were talking about online versus auctions and, and things like that. But it also made me wonder, why not get a broker if I’m gonna try to find a car, a specific car, right? Somebody like William, what he does, or just direct sale. Granted some of these cars, you’re not gonna go to Autotrader or cars.com to find them, but there’s a lot of different avenues here.

Pete Vicari: You go to the right auctions, you can pay less at an auction than buying ’em through a broker. Not always, but most of the time you can. If you do your homework, the auction is a better buy. But it’s fun also because like I said earlier, I mean most cars that end up at [00:25:00] dealers or whatever, at some point in its life, they went through an auction.

We’ve got, people have bought Porsches, let’s say brand new Porsches. They don’t trade ’em in because they don’t get any money for ’em on a new car. They send them to our sale and they’ll get more. And the buyer’s happy. You know, we work with people. I mean, if we have to, we work on commissions so that the buyer and the sellers are happy.

And it’s a fun outing. Like I keep saying that, especially cruising the coast. We have so much going on. There’s burnout contest. You know, we have the beach boys playing, we have cruise ins. I mean, people get there at two, three o’clock in the morning to get a good parking spot for the Cruisin, and we have six or seven casinos.

All of them have something going on at that event, and it’s just so much going. We have to swap, meet. And we got the auction. We got road rallies. It’s 30 miles of hot rods all along the beach. Is that in October? Yes. It starts the first weekend in October [00:26:00] and it runs to the second. Our auction is the fourth through the seventh.

It’s four days this year. ’cause we’re doing now spring and fall. Springs in April in conjunction with the Crawfish Festival and then the fall sail with cruising the Coast at the same convention center in Biloxi.

William Ross: I just had to come down for that this year.

Pete Vicari: Yeah, police do you. You’ll love it. The weather’s nice.

You’re right there on the Gulf and it’s beautiful area.

William Ross: He’s just making me want to go to his event more and more in October.

Pete Vicari: Y’all are more than welcome. That is just an event in itself that people like to come and enjoy and they buy a car too. Yeah,

William Ross: you’ll be that much more excited about your acquisition and more than likely you might be able to get a better price on it.

Let’s go and see what we can do, especially like a new buyer, someone that is just getting into, say, a collector car, exotic car, whatever it may be. It really gets them into, and, and being part of that, you know, all the ancillary stuff that goes on, like you were saying with all those other events that you guys have, say, look, there’s [00:27:00] so much more you can do with your car.

Then just buying it. Then they park in your garage and go on a Sunday drive. You know, there’s clubs, there’s all these things you can do. It’s really getting them into the car world, you know, for like what you guys are doing on there. It’s fantastic. ’cause it’s not just about the auction, it’s about all these other things that you guys got going on too that people can do with their cars.

It shows people like, Hey, if I get a car, I can go to this auction tomorrow, the next day I can be part of this. It’s getting people involved and get ’em into it.

Crew Chief Eric: One of the other things I’ve also noticed across the different folks that I’ve talked to, and even going to the auction that I was at, it seems like a hassle-free experience, right?

Again, you get to see the car ahead of time, get to talk to people. There’s the whole energy of the event itself, but it seems like the process. Especially now in our digital age has been very streamlined. There were guys on the phone, there’s guys bidding online, you have brokers there, people in person with their little paddles, you know, all this kind of stuff.

That’s also partly in part because of the auction company and the processes that they’ve put in place. So Pete over at [00:28:00] Bakari Auto Auctions, what have you guys done to streamline the process and make it a hassle-free experience for the bidders as well as the sellers?

Pete Vicari: Well, you’re right, we’ve got a lot of moving parts going on.

The first thing that we do to make it really hassle free, you know, because there’s so many people coming to cruising the coast, 260,000 people, a lot of people don’t come prepared. In other words, they don’t come with cash or they don’t come with a bank letter. LER finance is right there and literally you give ’em your name, address, and social security number, they’ll prove you in less than five minutes for the amount.

People, they don’t realize how quick that takes. All they’re doing is checking your credit score. You got good credit, they’re gonna loan you a hundred thousand bucks. And I’ve got friends that I’m talking about people with deep pockets and the girl at Ed Kesler has developed a lot of friends and she’ll joke with ’em, gimme your driver’s license, gimme a credit card.

Lemme go see if you a good credit. She’ll come back and say, you good for half a million dollars? And some of ’em said, well, what’s the rate? Said 2%. Well shoot. I’m gonna [00:29:00] use your money instead of taking my money out. Yeah. Everybody’s like, man, this is good. So anyway, we make that hassle free. If somebody comes in and has never been to an auction and my girls at the bid registration desk, they are trained to pick that out.

If somebody don’t know the process, they will let one of our car salesman people. No, and they will walk ’em through the process and kind of stay with them, walk ’em out to the auction, show ’em and explain to ’em what’s going on, where the cars are for today to be auctioned. Don’t be intimidated if a car opens up at a hundred thousand dollars.

That’s just auctioneer getting the auction going, but he’s gonna drop down to, let’s say, $25,000. So don’t bid at a hundred. Wait till he drops down. Then get in it’s easy process. We’ve got transportation there, everything is done right there. And even for the guys that bring cars to sell there detail is there cleaning them.

’cause for cruising the [00:30:00] coast, people drive ’em around for a week and they bring ’em to the back door and wanna sell ’em and of cost filthy. Well, we gotta have all details ready to go for people. It’s a seamless process. I’ve sold cars to the Netherlands, Australia. We had a couple cars, went to Germany ’cause we have online bidding.

You can go on that and register to bid. You need to do that ahead of time ’cause we have to pre-approve you to make sure you’re for real when you got a good IP address. But then you can buy online and they wire us the money and we send the car out, ship it right to the door.

William Ross: You guys are finding your bread and butter in essence is, you know, the classic muscle carves your carves from the fifties, sixties, maybe early, mid seventies, or, I mean, or do you have more of a breath?

Uh, like you mentioned, hey, we will take the guy to 20 22, 9 11 that he bought and put 1500 miles on and he wants to run it through. I mean, you guys try and curate to what you guys know or what you guys feel is gonna go, or it’s like, Hey, you’re gonna take what you guys can get

Pete Vicari: because there’s so many people there and so many different age groups, we could sell anything.

We [00:31:00] had a guy who passed away. He donated two 20 model brass cars to Florida State University. We sold those two cars. One was 210 and another was 300 and something, and then we’ll sell a Ferrari or a Lamborghini because our audience is very broad. We’re not, let’s say a muscle car or a fifties collection.

We have so much to pick from because of our broad audience. It’s kind of great to say that because we have something for everyone. Yeah. We have 20 models to brand new Corvettes.

William Ross: Obviously people coming to you or do you guys sometimes have to go out and like try and get on the phone and say, Hey, I know you got some cars, you know, you did some maybe auction ’em off, and what do you guys do about creating cars that way?

Pete Vicari: We do a lot of that. Both of that. Last year at Cruising the Coast in October, people that checked out our regular customers, we had over 225 numbers reserved for the next year. They reserve a year ahead of time because they know they’re [00:32:00] coming and they reserve ’em right away. And then we do a lot of cold calling to try to develop new customers because it’s reality.

But I’ve had two great customers pass away. You know, they were good customers buying and selling, so you have to go out and look for new people. And it’s a shame. One of ’em was one of my best friends that I sold my callback collection too. I didn’t want to get involved. Mecu sold them in Dallas. The Horton collection.

I went, but I mean, it was tears in my eyes because most of all the Cotes were mine.

William Ross: Sentiment, attachment to those things you know mean a lot. Are you finding, as you know, a lot of these collections obviously owned and put together by individuals. On the elderly side and passing away. Now is coming more frequent.

You’re seeing these collections come to auction, sites coming to market. Are you getting more and more of that? You’re seeing a lot larger collections coming to you guys ’cause of that because the family can’t do the tax burden or they just don’t wanna deal with it? ’cause they’re not into cars.

Pete Vicari: Not a lot, [00:33:00] but there is some.

But what’s happening, some of the competitors, when those collections do come up, the auction company are buy in the collection, just buy ’em from the family. And then they use the family’s name like the The carry collection, carry estate Sale. Well, the carrier, they don’t own it. The auction companies already bought it and it’s no reserves.

So you just gotta be careful when you get into situations like that. I don’t play those games. If there’s a car there that came from an estate, whatever the family wants to do, whether it’s. They want to sell it on reserve or no reserve. That’s totally up to them. They’ve always asked me for my opinion of what the value is.

It seems to be working out, and we also have nonprofit organizations that have cars that have been donated to them. We auction ’em off the charity like this coming year. We have a prototype. 1956 Cadillac 56, they were trying those dual [00:34:00] headlights out. Cadillac built this car and well this guy bought it and he’s donating to a charity that we’re gonna auction the car for the proceeds go to build this stone for all the children in Manila.

And this organization has built them all over the world for homeless kids. We got those kind of cars coming to us and it’s just a lot of different cars coming in from a lot of different avenues.

William Ross: You mentioned about like reserve, no reserve stuff. I mean, do you guys just put it to the owner, say, here’s the two routes you can go, it’s your decision, or do you try and start out saying, Hey, no reserve, or, Hey, it’s all up to the owner.

Pete Vicari: It’s about the customer. I mean, it’s not about the dollar and it’s not about the call. It’s whatever the customer’s expectations are. I don’t push no reserve because I don’t want a customer to be upset. You know, if there’s nobody in the room that wants that kind of car and it goes up and it sells for $5,000 because it’s a great deal, maybe they should have had a $10,000 reserve on it and it might have sold for 12 five or 25 or whatever.

[00:35:00] I just kind of feel a customer out. A lot of auctions will get you in no reserve and they don’t care about you. They want the commission and send you on your way. That ain’t me. That is not me. I’m worried about my customers. That’s awesome to hear.

Crew Chief Eric: And William brought up something really important when you’re talking about estate planning, because that is a hot topic these days.

He’s a hundred percent right. And just to remind our audience, we had Jim Cruz. From Classic Auto Insurance who started a service called Car Connection that works with folks like yourself. I’m sure you’re familiar, Pete, where you basically preset this stuff, especially with the family member before they pass away to say, what’s gonna happen to my collection?

How is it gonna get broken up? Which auction company do I wanna work with? Making all these plans ahead of time, really sitting down and doing estate planning and working in conjunction with the auction companies. That way, the family, to Williams Point, who doesn’t have an interest in daddy’s Corvette. It can go to the right place, or it can be donated to the right museum or things like that.

You know, there’s a lot of moving parts [00:36:00] there. I just wanna remind folks that it’s on both ends, that the auction companies are involved in this, as well as the estate planners, as well as the owners themselves.

Pete Vicari: I tell customers, you gotta be realistic on their expectation, on their price. I have a customer that almost every year he sends me his insurance list, and I don’t know why he does, because I got the one from last year at my desk.

He’ll say, look at my list of cars. Has these cars went up or down so I can insure? And I said, you know, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Jim. Jim, stop. Stop. You bought these cars 10 years ago, let’s say, and you paid nothing for ’em. I’ve already got the insurance up on these cars. Like let’s say you paid 50,000 for a car 10 years ago.

You already got insured for one 50. You good? Yeah. Forget about it, that the cars were 200 today. How much money do you want to insure these cars for? You are wasting money. I said you already got a hundred thousand dollars over and above what you paid for. Now you not in it to hurt the insurance company.

If something [00:37:00] happens, you wanna be covered, is a hundred thousand enough? He says, yeah. I said, well, why do you want to pay for more insurance? So don’t be over-insured is what I’m saying and pay. And for all of that, it’s almost like, what

William Ross: do you got planned?

Pete Vicari: Yeah, exactly. Are you planning to create a flood or fire?

Right. If you’re not doing any of that, you’re good. Why you won’t throw all this money away?

Crew Chief Eric: And so the reason I bring up this stuff about estate planning is that part of a lot of these car collections. Is also memorabilia and PETA that goes with it, that people have created, let’s say, these garage mahals or these shrines to their beloved vehicles, whether it’s Porsche or it’s Corvette, or it’s Alpha Romeo, or it’s sort of combination thereof.

Do you guys at Akari handle the collections as well as the cars or solely? Strictly dealing with the vehicles?

Pete Vicari: We handled the collections. Also like at Cruising the Coast, the first day of the sale is strictly memorabilia. We have a gentleman that has like 90,000 lots of Hollywood [00:38:00] memorabilia and I said, wait a minute.

Whoa Tom, I can’t take that, but I’ll take 500 pieces. We got a lot of automotive memorabilia, so we, yes, because you know, quite honestly, if you there at an auction and you’re a car guy, you buy memorabilia also because you’re gonna put it on your garage wall. I couldn’t tell you what the color of my wall is in my garage because I got so much stuff on the wall.

For years when I was involved with N H R A in the Heritage series, that’s when they have the reunions and all at the banquets. They would have a backdrop. I think I have six or seven of them every year. At the end of the banquet, they would auction off the backdrop. All the drivers would sign it. Snake Don Perone, Manzoni.

All the old time. They sign ’em all. Well, I got like six or seven of ’em. They all on the walls and they used, they like maybe 12 by 30. They’re great. People walk in and look at it and they start seeing all the signatures on it.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk a little bit about the trends. What’s hot in auction sales right now?

William mentioned it [00:39:00] earlier when he was talking about, you know, do you cater to just a specific genre of car at the auction? It sounds like you guys are a little bit more open, but on the sales side, there are certain pockets in the market that are really hot right now. It looks like nineties cars, J d m, and imports.

You know, the Asian cars are really hot right now, especially in a certain demographic and age group. Then trucks have also followed in that trend. Are you seeing those as the next big thing on the auction scene, or is there something else that’s really kind of bubbling to the surface?

Pete Vicari: Well, that’s what’s hot today.

I don’t think that’s the next, that is hot today. We need to try to figure out what is the next car coming up because Broncos, late 70 Broncos bringing Haiti 120. $150,000. Who would’ve thought

Crew Chief Eric: I’m hearing the same thing about square body Chevys too.

Pete Vicari: Exactly. Exactly. You know, it was for a while, the 63 split window and they bring in big money.

I think it kind of cooled off a little bit on them right now, but unless you do Apresso mod out of it, it’ll bring, you know, five, 600,000. [00:40:00] You know, the rest of mines, I think is where the money is today. But, and I’m gonna say this, it’s got a, but rest MOD’s gotta be tastefully done. Okay. Because I’ve seen some rest mod that are, are renders.

But if it’s very tastefully done, like a new car, man, it knocks it out the park.

Crew Chief Eric: You think there’s some cars out there that will just never be desirable or they’re just. Weird enough that only like a click is interested in them. Have you seen some things come across the block that you’re just like, why is this even here?

Pete Vicari: I’ve seen some weirdest cars that you think that would never bring any money, but you know, I’m gonna laugh when I say this. A youo, I can guarantee you a youo will never bring any more money than it does today.

But there are other cars that are gonna surprise you. People are gonna take ’em. ’cause they used to have it when they was a kid and they want one, and the prices go up on ’em. For me to sit here today to tell you what I think is the next car, man, [00:41:00] that’s hard because there’s so many cars out, so many out there.

Crew Chief Eric: Looking back over all the years you’ve been doing this, what is the record setting car? What was the car that sold for the highest? Really shocked everybody at a ARI auto auction.

Pete Vicari: It was a 73 callback. It had 12, 13,000 original miles. It was the original owner. I had known the car. When the car came in the auction block, the gentleman that sold it, he had looked at other auction companies and because what that way I Kentucky myself.

He said, you the guy, you’re gonna be honest with. The car comes in the block and he told me, he said, everything on this car is original except the distributor cap, the water pump and the tires. I said, okay, good. And that, and being a callback guy, I ran the numbers and sure enough everything was matching numbers.

All dated correctly. And I’ve known the call for a long time, but you know, I didn’t know it back in the eighties. But anyway, when he, when the call came in the block, his [00:42:00] grandsons each had a tire, an old tire. He had the distributor cap and the water pump, and he put it right there and he says, Those are the original parts and that is an original car.

Now, 73, call that in your wildest dreams. What do you think it should bring? I’m gonna test y’all for minute,

William Ross: I mean standard, not talking anything special motor wise or anything like that.

Pete Vicari: No. Small block automatic there. Red car,

William Ross: automatic boot. 45 grand.

Pete Vicari: Okay. What’s your other thought? I’m gonna go on the high end and say a buck and a quarter.

Tried $265,000 and I had three or four people fighting over it. Wow. Fighting over it. I mean, it was a spectacularly a call, right? One owner, he had the original title. We had it in the office, but he put the 1973 title on the table and I asked the buyer, I said, why? Why? Please tell me. I’m gonna call that guy.

But we set the world record here today. He said, well, I’ve got the sister car tot. I said, what do you mean? [00:43:00] He said, I have the convertible red just like this with 10,000 miles on it. And I said, oh, wow. You know, and he didn’t tell me that. Until after he won the bid. And then when it was all said and done, I just so happened to go in the office and I told the girls what just happened, and my office manager says, Pete, that guy was prepared to go twice that much.

I said, what? He said, yeah, when he registered the bid, he told me he was gonna go twice that he was half a million if he had to. It’s like, really? You should’ve, you know, we, we don’t want that. Yeah, that’s too much for that call. But he’s still happy with it. I talked to him, but anyway. Probably when you compare wreckage, ’cause like you said, 25 50 or maybe a buck and a quarter, that’s all they bring him.

They wasn’t bringing 2 65. We had 69 Camaro Copos before they were bringing 200. We were selling ’em for 300. I will say this, our auction has been successful. We have not been the biggest. A lot of dealers come [00:44:00] to us ’cause they get better buys at our auctions and then they can sell ’em at their offices or program or online or whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s next? What’s next for you, Pete Akari And what’s next for Akari Auto Auctions? What’s in the future?

Pete Vicari: We just wanna make it the two auctions a year that we’re having bigger and better and just state the course. We’ve got a good plan of action. I do not want to travel around the country. I just want to do two sales a year, but handle it very personable with our customers and just make ’em bigger as it is.

You know, doing a lot of sales is you lose the quality. I don’t wanna do that. I wanna be able to handle my customers properly.

Crew Chief Eric: So with that, we’ve reached the point where I get to ask you our final wrap up question. Pete, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover?

Thus far?

Pete Vicari: I’ve been blessed. I got a great family, great business. I’m in a general contracting business, and I was able to not only merge into, because I collect cars to do the auction business. But to [00:45:00] collect my own cars. But I mean, I just invite everybody to come down the cruising the Coast. If you have not been, when you get there, you’ll be shocked and you’ll be coming for years.

And October is our best weather. That’s when you have all the festivals around ’cause it’s, it’s really great. Cool. It’s not as hot. It’s a great time. And it’s a family event. I tell it all the time. This is a family event. This is not a bunch of guys. You know, you’ll see people out there with their entire family.

But you know, guys, I gotta say this, I’ve been blessed. I have great family, great business, great wife and kids. The family, you know, that I have is able to afford me this opportunity to do all this stuff, and I’m blessed with that.

Crew Chief Eric: Pete Ari’s dedication to his customers is evident as he goes the extra mile, offering vehicle documentation and storage services, including caring for the vehicles in his museum until the new owners can take possession.

It’s a personal experience when dealing with Ari Auto Auction Company and his consignors are [00:46:00] more than the average car guy versus the mega collectors. And Ari offers consignors a choice. You can put a reserve on. To learn more about Akari Auctions and how you can acquire your next dream car or visit their collection, be sure to check out www.ariauctions.com or follow them on social at akari Auction on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.

With that. Pete, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix, sharing your story and your passion for Corvettes and telling us all about the next auction we should be attending, especially in the beautiful city of Biloxi there on the Gulf Coast. So thank you for everything you’re doing and we hope to see you here’s very soon.

Pete Vicari: Thanks guys. Thanks Pete. Okay, key. I’ll keep in touch. All right.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about G T M, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have [00:47:00] suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and G T M swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none [00:48:00] of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Break Fix Podcast
• 00:29 Pete Vicari’s Early Car Passion
• 00:42 The Corvette Obsession Begins
• 00:54 The Auction Company Journey
• 01:12 Welcome Pete Vicari
• 01:26 Pete’s Early Car Influences
• 02:49 First Car Restoration
• 03:26 Corvette Collection and Passion
• 03:56 The Iconic 66 Corvette Story
• 05:51 The Sexiest Car of All Time
• 06:40 Evolution of the Corvette
• 08:52 Hurricane Katrina’s Impact
• 10:32 Rediscovering the 66 Corvette
• 13:24 Drag Racing Adventures
• 15:53 The Auction Business
• 23:09 The Auctioneer’s Philosophy
• 23:54 The Excitement of Live Auctions
• 25:23 Cruisin’ the Coast Event Highlights
• 27:26 Streamlining the Auction Process
• 30:31 Handling Collections and Estate Planning
• 38:54 Trends in Auction Sales
• 41:03 Record-Breaking Sales
• 44:07 Future Plans for Vicari Auto Auctions
• 44:37 Final Thoughts and Promotions
• 46:46 Outro and Listener Engagement

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