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| - As a professional car builder and customizer, we expect to produce the best possible product for our customers. We recently had 2 experiences with the team at Russo and Steele which led us to decide we simply cannot do business with them any longer.
Our first experience was in Monterey in 2012. To make a long story short the cars were stored outside by the harbor and not under tents. Our car was bombed by seagulls, and to be honest, the amount of foot traffic that our car received was minimal.
During the auction, almost all the no-reserve cars went for much lower than I would have expected, and the lots that sold most were the European marks. Not really something that you would expect from a company that prides itself on American Muscle and hotrods. Our car failed to meet its reserve, so we brought it back home.
Looking at the other results from Monterey, it appeared that none of the american car auction companies had a great experience (Perhaps RM excluded)....so we decided to take another shot at the 2013 Scottsdale auction which had a much larger and more diverse catalog of vehicles.
While all the cars were under tents, they were parked on gravel leading to a constant dust covering on the vehicles. One of their patrons even took their finger to the trunk of my 60K hot rod and wrote the words WASH ME...real class.
The main issue that we experienced....as did many many many of the other sellers that we spoke to, was a real lack of qualified buyers in the auction. No reserve lots went for incredibly small amounts and many many of the reserve lots did not sell. By the time one of our newest builds (a 1954 3100 pickup) which had been selling all day long for 33 over at the Barrett Jackson auction, there were no bidders in the house and we barely made our "reasonable" reserve of 24000 (actually 23000 with a lowered commission which made my take the same).
In the end, we cannot recommend Russo and Steele unless you are looking to buy cheap or just dump your classic car to spite your soon to be ex. They just don't have the pull to bring in the qualified buyers who are all over at the Barrett auction it would appear.
We expected our take for 3 vehicles to be in the neighborhood of 100K and went home with 55K. I'm not greedy, but this is my business. I produced 3 lovely cars for this event. Their job is to bring together qualified buyers and sellers. And from the catalog I saw, they know how to find suckers willing to sell their cars, but they absolutely suck at bringing the money to the room.
On the customer service side....They work well with you through the consignment process and are very helpful....but in the end, you need to bring the money to the sellers and that they did not do.
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