This weekend is the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, a fancy car event for fancy car people (and also for us last year). It’s also ModaMiami, a new fancy car event that was started specifically out of spite toward Hagerty and the now-Hagerty-owned Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. Oh boy.
The car world you see on Instagram reels and YouTube videos isn’t real, or at least it’s not entirely reel. There are grudges and discontent. It’s not something we talk about often because mostly it doesn’t amount to much and isn’t ultimately that interesting, but every now and then it bubbles to the surface like it is right now.
Also coming to the surface is a move by new leadership at Stellantis to basically abandon the Wagoneer sub-brand, a move that makes obvious sense to, I assume, everyone.
Rounding out The Morning Dump we’ve got new IIHS safety test results and a Toyota recall that I’m going to be keeping my eye on this year.
‘I Started ModaMiami to fuck around with Hagerty’
I guess you can’t swear in Bloomberg articles? It’s not something I noticed before, mostly because there isn’t much swearing in financial news, even though there’s a lot of swearing amongst financial people in my experience (I worked in the MBS market out of college, which is a whole other thing).
I mention this because our old pal Hannah Elliott has a whopper of a story in Bloomberg Businessweek with the headline “A Florida Grudge Match Splits the World’s Richest Car Collectors.”
Here’s the money quote:
The overlap is no accident. In 2021 car insurance giant Hagerty Inc. bought the Amelia concours for an estimated $6.5 million as part of a bold growth plan to own more segments of the vintage car market. Hagerty promptly installed Broad Arrow Auctions, a business it had recently started, as the only auctioneer on-site. That meant booting RM Sotheby’s, which had long occupied the prime spot.
To add insult to injury, key members of the RM Sotheby’s team had left to launch Broad Arrow, including President Kenneth Ahn, a surprise defection that Rob Myers, its chairman, took personally. “I started ModaMiami to f— around with Hagerty,” Myers freely admits. “When they did that s— with Broad Arrow … it was, ‘OK, let’s compete.’ ”
His choice to host a car show on the same weekend as Amelia Island is calculated to force the country’s wealthiest collectors to choose between them. Their decisions on where to show and consign their vehicular assets will determine which company gets the hefty payouts (premiums usually add up to about 20%) when these exquisite vehicles trade hands.
Bolding mine. What isn’t mentioned in the Bloomberg piece is why the RM senior folks left to form Broad Arrow.
Was any of this inevitable? Hagerty has been on a buying spree the last decade and has worked its way into most of the automotive world, including media, events, driver’s clubs, auctions, et cetera. Have there been grumbles? There have been some grumbles.
Part of Hagerty’s strategy has been to bring a lot of the disparate parts of the automotive world under one umbrella. Is that ultimately good for the car world? In the short term, it probably is. The larger Hagerty organization does a pretty fantastic job of running events, promoting them, and executing them.
In the long run, it really depends. If the people in charge of Hagerty lose interest, change their minds, or give in to financial pressure then we’ve now got these treasured automotive eggs in one basket, which is not ideal. But what’s the other option? Private Equity? Hagerty might be the best-case scenario for a lot of these operations and Amelia seems to be thriving.
Plus, for the moment there’s no sign that Hagerty CEO McKeel Hagerty is any less interested in car culture than he was ten years ago. Hagerty’s stated mission is to save driving and car culture, which is also our mission, and I’ve seen little to imply that will change. Oh, I guess we should give him a chance to respond via the article:
“I don’t think about Rob or his grudge match,” CEO McKeel Hagerty wrote in an email. “I think about ways to bring the car community together, not compete against one another. It’s a shame he is thinking about that, versus how to best create a great experience for car collectors.”
To translate:
It is kind of a bummer that two great events are happening at the same time, since one of the perks of Monterey Car Week, for instance, is that most people play nice enough to spread out the events during the week so people can attend most of them.
I asked someone going to one of the events with a big collector what he thought:
“Some people are saying Amelia is dead, but I think it will still draw the purists” they told me. “Moda seems more geared towards the supercar/younger enthusiasts.”
Amelia for the purists and ModaMiami for more of the Supercar Blondie set, I guess?
If there’s a winner here it’s probably the collectors and car sellers themselves now that the different auction houses and events have to bend over backward to give the best experience.
Also, hilariously, this is exactly the plot of the second season of HBO’s The Gilded Age.
IIHS: Hyundai Motor Group Is Killing It Saving Lives
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been slowly ratcheting up the requirements for vehicles to earn the organization’s various awards in the hopes of continuing to push cars to get safer.
According to the IIHS, here are the big changes:
Last year’s biggest change was the replacement of the original side crash test with an updated version that uses a heavier barrier traveling at a higher speed. Initially, an acceptable or good rating was enough to garner the lower-tier TOP SAFETY PICK award. In 2024, a good rating is required for either TOP SAFETY PICK or TOP SAFETY PICK+.
In addition, vehicles now need an acceptable or good rating in a revised version of the pedestrian front crash prevention evaluation to qualify for either award. The new version replaces the earlier daytime and nighttime tests with a single evaluation that includes some test runs in daylight and some in the dark. Last year, vehicles could earn the lower-tier award regardless of whether they could detect and avoid pedestrians in the dark.
In an even bigger change, the updated moderate front overlap test has replaced the original evaluation in the 2024 TOP SAFETY PICK+ requirements. Vehicles now need an acceptable or good rating in the updated evaluation, which adds a second dummy seated behind the driver and emphasizes back seat safety. A good rating in the original moderate overlap test is still needed for the base TOP SAFETY PICK award.
So how’d everyone do?
Overall, pretty well, though the standout so far is Hyundai Motor Group (Hyundai + Kia + Genesis) with six Top Safety Pick+ awards and 10 Top Safety Pick awards.
Wagoneer Is Back To Being The Jeep Wagoneer
Not to get all John Proctor on you, but a name is important. The Jeep name is important. Arguably, Jeep is the best brand name any American automaker has.
So why did Jeep try to start a new sub-brand called Wagoneer for its big crossovers? I don’t really know, but the Jeep Wagoneer S electric SUV is going to be a Jeep again.
From MotorTrend:
And it might be the last new vehicle to include Wagoneer in the name with Jeep’s decision to abandon its efforts to make Wagoneer a sub-brand under new Jeep Brand CEO Antonio Filosa. It was a strategy that was confusing to customers, was heavily criticized, and never really took off. Which is why the Wagoneer S now has “Jeep” written across the back instead of “Wagoneer.” And all members of the Wagoneer family will be branded as Jeeps going forward.
Well, that was a fun waste of time.
Toyotas Being Recalled For Unexpected Movement
I spent about a year at the old site tracking down various stories about Toyotas driving when they weren’t supposed to be, so it didn’t escape my notice that something similar is happening again.
Per Reuters:
A U.S. auto safety regulator said on Tuesday Toyota will recall 280,663 pickup trucks and SUVs and issue a software update to address concerns over unexpected movement caused when vehicles are in neutral and brakes are not applied.
Dealers will issue a free software update on impacted vehicles for the transmission control ECU (electronic control unit) software, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.
This recall affects certain 2022-2024 Tundras, Tundra Hybrids, and Sequoias.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I can’t believe it’s been 12 years since the first Best Coast album. Time moves fast. Enjoy your chill California rock and Volvo 240s.
The Big Question
Where would you go this weekend? ModaMiami or Amelia? Or would you just try to do both?
