Larry Printz: Two corporate titans clash in the collector car world

Rob Meyers is the founder of RM Auctions, now RM Sotheby’s.

Rob Meyers is perplexed.

The founder of RM Auctions, now RM Sotheby’s, has been in the collector car world for decades, having built his restoration company and auction house into a powerhouse.

Still, despite all of his years in the business, some things still puzzle him. Like collector car judging, where old men wearing blue blazers, straw hats, tan slacks and frowns determine which cars merit prizes and which ones don’t.

“If you’ve got a car out there that is just by far the most superior car on the field — but let’s say a parking light is not working at that moment — does that mean the car loses because of parking light didn’t work?” Meyers asks. Certainly, it’s happened.

But Meyers has a lot to questions with the approach of the 2024 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in Florida, the first time the show will be held without RM Sotheby’s since the show started in 1996.

Tradition has long guided the world of the concours d’elegance, a series of high-end, invitation-only car shows best typified by the granddaddy of the genre, the glossy, over-hyped and overfed Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California. By that standard, the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance is the Southern rebel, despite retaining certain elements of other concours. It’s one that many in the hobby have long admired, with a noted car designer explaining that everyone goes to Pebble Beach because they have to, but that they also go to Amelia Island because they want to.

ModaMiami promises to display 100 cars on the grounds of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida.

That’s due to Amelia Island’s founder, Bill Warner, a photographer for Road & Track magazine since 1971 who built the show into a must-attend event, one held at The Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island. Warner sold the show to niche insurer Hagerty Inc. in 2021, which had also acquired the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance in 2019 and Michigan’s Concours d’Elegance of America in 2020. Hagerty made a host of changes to the shows with the intent of making them more appealing to younger spectators.

Yet the past couple years has seen the insurer expand into other corners of the collector car world as well. In 2019, it established Hagerty Garage + Social, facilities where collectors can store their prized chariots. That same year saw the start of DriveShare, which allows collectors to rent out their collectible cars. In 2020, Hagerty acquired the California Mille, a longstanding collector car rally.

Then, Hagerty went public in December 2021, merging with Aldel Financial, a SPAC, in a merger valued at $3.13 billion, including a $704 million investment led by State Farm. Hagerty has since grown into a powerhouse, insuring two million cars worldwide.

But most gallingly for Meyers, Hagerty moved into the auction business in 2022, purchasing Broad Arrow Group and hiring three top executives from RM Sotheby’s. Then, Hagerty booted RM Sotheby’s from its prime location at Amelia Island in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom, replacing it with Hagerty’s own Broad Arrow Auctions.

For Rob Meyers, it was all too much.

So, he established ModaMiami, a car show to be held on the same weekend as the Amelia Island Concours – March 1-3, 2024. Promising to display 100 cars on the grounds of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, Meyers says that ModaMiami is as much a lifestyle event as it is a car show. That should be helped by Sotheby’s, which will have a number of luxury retail pop-ups alongside its two-day car auction, of course.

Wanting to avoid the Concours label, which increasingly repels sponsors, Meyers is creating more of a lifestyle event that revolves around cars, but is not strictly a car show. As if to prove the point, there are no judges being brought in.

“I don’t see the purpose of having judges that are not experts,” Meyers said. “You see so many judges that are heads of General Motors or heads of Ford Motor Company. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are experts in the classic car field.”

Instead, the show will feature peer judging, as Meyers feel that car owners know their cars better than judges. “I think it’s a very good idea and we’re going to see if it all works,” Meyers said.

It remains to be seen how successful the event will be as compared to the favorable reputation and longstanding name recognition of the Amelia Island Concours.

Still, Meyers wants to take the ModaMiami concept to other cities, and is considering Nashville and Fort Worth as prime candidates. “We intend to do a few of these actually going down the road and having them unique in sort of a pop-up style,” Meyers said. “I’m building a team of people around me that will be in the production business for putting on these events.”

Yet with both concours being held March 1-3, this corporate grudge match is asking collectors to opt for one over the other. For some, the answer is Amelia Island, for others, it’s ModaMiami. For many it’s neither.

It’s a rare rift in the normally sedate hobby, but one with big financial implications.

In the first three quarters of 2023, Hagerty reported revenue of $755.2 million, a 28% year-over-year improvement. Meanwhile, RM Sotheby’s realized $811,795,835 in sales last year, including a 1962 Ferrari 330 LM/GTO 250, which sold for $51.7 million, the second-highest price paid for a car at auction.

With so much money in play, it remains to be seen how this plays out.

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