Legal Files

It was an eventful week at Mecum Auctions’ recent four-day Dallas/Fort Worth sale — hundreds of cars sold and only four crashed! The accident happened in the post-sale staging area, where three of the cars were parked. A driver, presumably a Mecum employee, was moving a 1958 Willys resto-mod pickup. The truck sported a 5.7-liter…

Mark Bahna is a big fan of JDM cars and currently owns a Nissan Skyline R34 GTR Spec II Nür and a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV. But his pride and joy has been his 1994 Nissan Nismo 270R. It is one of only 30 made, numbers matching, and has its original paint and decals. It…

When eBay Motors started online car auctions, I was sure it would never last. There was just too much potential for crooks to cheat people, and the venue would collapse once people figured that out. I guess in retrospect, I was half right. There’s a lot of fraud, but online car-sales activity just continues to…

A common complaint in the collector car hobby involves a car owner who grows frustrated with a restoration shop that takes years and years to complete a restoration, no matter how hard it is pushed. Here’s an example of the complete opposite — an owner who won’t pick up his car. Do-over Bryant McCants wanted…

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has traveled a rough-and-tumble political road, but we now have some certainty about the tax picture for the next 10 years. Collectors are now able to forge ahead on what to do with their car collections from a tax planning perspective. Income-tax rates Sales of collector cars that have…

One of the most exciting Bring a Trailer auctions ever went live on May 7, when a 1967 Porsche 910 (Lot 191750) was offered by a new seller, PSAutomobile. The listing was accompanied by over 600 photographs, and the auction would go on to rack up over 450 comments over the next two weeks. From…

It’s gotten to the point where I get so many robocalls on my cell phone that I don’t answer it when I don’t recognize the caller. Most often, it’s someone trying to sell me a Medicare supplement plan. Next most common is someone pushing an extended warranty on my car. Thankfully, the Federal Trade Commission…

As I write this, President Trump’s executive order that imposes 25% tariffs on imported cars has just gone into effect, and the stock market has tumbled. There is no doubt that, by the time you read this, something more will have happened. The tariffs may be changed, or even abandoned, or the automotive industry may…

We’ve all learned that car collections quickly become storage problems. It is easy to fall into the spiral of having bought so many cars that more space is needed. So a new garage is constructed, but that leads to buying more cars, which makes it necessary to build an even bigger garage. And on and…

Sensing that I was getting retinal damage driving at night, I wondered if I was developing cataracts. My optometrist who provided me with innovative eye treatments assured me that was not the case, so I started flashing people to dim their high beams, only to find that their high beams were even brighter. Eventually, I…