South African-made Opel Kadett Superboss set a new record of R555 000. Image: Creative Ride Auctions
Joff van Reenen is a motormouth, but in his line of business, you have to be.
Just watching the energetic auctioneer speaking at 7 000 rpm at the recent Creative Rides car auction at Monte Casino in Johannesburg was, frankly, exhausting.
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As he chain-chugged bottles of water to keep his parched throat and vocal cords from turning to dust, van Reenen was in his element.
While his tongue was bouncing around the redline, his eyes were constantly scanning the bidders in the audience and the auction assistants, as well as keeping tabs on bids coming in online and via the phones.
“We had bidders from 15 countries in the auction,” he says, noting with pride that South Africa is becoming known as the place where classic car gems can be found and snapped up for knockdown prices in dollars, pounds or Euros.
Four buyers each spent R2-million at the auction, where collector cars, trucks and motorcycles worth in excess of R100m went under the hammer.
These included:
Van Reenen says: “ Our local buyers didn’t shy away and only 10% of the cars on the block are actually going to leave the country….”
It shouldn’t really bother him – after all, his job is to get the best possible price for the consignors of the vehicles – but you can tell that the classic car market’s vibrance in South Africa is satisfying for him.
He’s an auctioneer with that increasingly rare personal trait – he has a bit of a conscience.
On a previous, highly publicised auction, of the iconic Kyalami racetrack, he remembers, “I didn’t want to be the bad guy who knocked down a priceless piece of motor racing and Formula One heritage to developers who would turn it into townhouses…”
After weeks of sleepless nights for him, it was nail-biting stuff when big players opened the bidding at R200-million.
A mere 16 seconds after that bid – “ can you believe it?” – well-known businessman and former racer Toby Venter put in what would become the winning bid of R205-million.
“We kept up the process for another 60 seconds, but that was it – done and dusted…”
Van Reenen didn’t become the bad guy. He’s been involved in the auction business now for the best part of 30 years, having started out in Cape Town – “driving trucks and packing and unpacking for the first six months” – doing a full apprenticeship and learning the business from top to bottom.
He’s sold everything from record high-price mansions on the Cape Town Atlantic Seaboard, to wine farms in Stellenbosch to swatches of land in uMhlanga outside Durban which sparked that area’s amazing property boom.
He’s always had a soft spot for cars, going back to the time his Dad got him to help around car repairs and restorations.
His first foray into classic and collectible sales was when he was asked to help dispose of a collection of cars belonging to a decease estate in Stellenbosch.
“We sold them all – even the ones people said weren’t worth much…”
Van Reenen was also wielding the gavel at a sadder occasion, when a huge collection of cars belonging to veteran collector Louis Coetzer went on the block. “Oom Louis” and his wife Hermiene died tragically in a car accident.
“Oom Louis was one of the world’s biggest and most important collectors of Mercedes-Benzes and there was huge interest from around the world in that sale.”
There were many other interesting cars in Oom Louis’ collection and van Reenen and the team at Creative Rides put together many stories about the man and his car collection.
“ It was a way of recalling and honouring the history – and that is what is special about auctions and selling old items – there’s always a story,” says Van Reenen.
The sale of the Coetzer collection, which took place in two auctions, was so successful that van Reenen entered it into an American auction competition, The National Auction Association World Auction Marketing Awards.
“And we won! I asked one of the judges afterwards what made us different from the 1 000 entries and he said it was the stories we told about Oom Louis, the owner, and his year of collecting – childhood memories told in the words of his three children. “
Van Reenen makes regular visits to the US and has a close relationship with the famous Barrett Jackson auction house, which is the biggest seller of classic and collectible cars in the world.
“It’s like a rock concert,” van Reenen says of the company’s auctions in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“There are about 25 000 people in the arena, some of whom are bidders but most will be there for the excitement and the entertainment.”
The auctions are televised by the Discovery TV channel and, van Reenen notes, “auctions are some of the best-watched programming in the US…”
At one Barrett Jackson auction, van Reenen, equipped with a flag and a whistle to be noticed by the auctioneers way over on the podium, found himself putting in bids on behalf an a craggy old gent dressed in black Stetson hat, black cowboy boots and black shirt.
The man was bidding on a Shelby Cobra and, after seeing the price shoot up to $400 000, said: “that’s it, I’m out.”
Van Reenen discovered the bidder was the legendary maker of the Cobra V8 sports cars, Carroll Shelby himself.
As the great man, who took Ford to a win at the Le Mans 24-hour race in the 1960s, left, he said to van Reenen, “I can’t let these cars go for too little…”
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