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This 1935 Auburn 851SC Boattail Speedster sold for 462,000 (U.S.)

A guy from Chatham, Ont., sold $5.7-million (U.S.) worth of cars on the Aug. 1 weekend.

That would be Rob Myers, of course, the car fixer-upper of 30 years ago who now controls the world's largest vintage automobile auction house.

The company is RM Auctions Inc. and, while it started in the classic-car-restoration business, it now also has its fingers in sales and auctions employing 100 staff in North America and Europe.

Myers hooked up with Sotheby's a couple of years ago and they're now holding the largest automobile auctions in Europe. You may have heard about their sale of a 1957 Ferrari 250 TR last May for €9.02-million (about $12.5-million), which set a new world record for the most expensive motor car to be sold at auction.

Well, nothing went for that price at Meadow Brook, Mich., earlier this month, but sales of cars at a few hundred thousand bucks apiece were common.

That's a great business when RM takes a 16- to 20-per-cent commission on each sale, but it was Myers' restoration business that started it all.

The company does total restorations on some of the world's most important automobiles and regularly wins Best in Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, Amelia Island and Meadow Brook Concours. Auctions are the icing on the cake.

Vaughan: They certainly can't call your business 'Cash for Clunkers.'

Myers: I wish we were in it. They've spent a billion so far.

Your Meadow Brook auction went pretty well.

Business is good.

We had an 82-per-cent auction there. We sold cars worth $5.7-million on an offering that was just under $7-million by our estimated prices.

You have to be good at estimating prices.

We were off on some of the cars.

Our estimates on some of the cars were a little aggressive in this market. Some of the fifties cars and some of the muscle cars -they're still adjusting a little bit from the economy but for most part, though, with an 82-per-cent auction you can never say that that was a bad auction.

Your opinion of the price matters. If RM sells these cars, that's like a pedigree. You're not going to find the stuff from Meadow Brook in Auto Trader.

You won't find most of the stuff we sell in the Auto Trader, that's for sure.

But we had a situation where a man from New Mexico had described his car as being a very nice car and we went on his description.

But when we got the car to the auction, we saw that it was misrepresented to us.

So then we did an addendum to our catalogue and made the announcement on the auction podium that the car was not as represented.

I guess you can't see all of them before you print the catalogue.

We try to see a lot of them but you can't see all of them.

Sometimes, photos lie. When we inspected the car, we said we've got to have an addendum in the catalogue.

I've heard people say that auctioning rare cars is like auctioning art. But if you're auctioning Picasso's Blue Woman with Folded Arms, you know there's only one of them.

Well, there are cars that are one-offs.

For instance, we sold a Ferrari Testarossa in Maranello, Italy. They had built 19 cars, but there was only a handful of genuine, non-crashed examples left and the one we sold was one of those top examples and that car brought more than $12-1/2-million.

And maybe there's only one Picasso Blue Woman with Folded Arms or whatever, but how many Picassos are there? More than there are those Ferraris.

Integrity and high business standards means everything in this business because I've heard of auction houses that have taken the money and run.

We have been very, very transparent in our transactions.

In the early days before I started the auction company, we used to deal with the different auction companies and we had our issues with some of them and that was actually one of the motivating factors that drove us to get into the auction business.

We'd go to an auction and I'd buy a car and I'd have a hard time getting the title or we'd sell a car at auction and they would be slow paying.

And I said we can go into this business and we can be a lot better than our competitors.

And you didn't have to move out of Chatham and go to Geneva or London to do it.

I didn't have to move out of Chatham to do it. By doing things properly and thoroughly and having great people around you, it happens.

The first body man I ever hired still works at RM - Dave Svehla. I would compare his work anywhere in the world. He is one of the top craftsmen worldwide and he learned his trade in Chatham, Ont.

And it goes right down the line in our company from the office staff to the people cataloguing.

We live in a small community and, if you treat your people right, they tend to want to stay with you.

Is there growth left in this or have you maxed out?

I think the collector car industry is still on a growth path.

Think about how many collector cars are on the street and how many cruise nights there are and how many car shows there are.

I've seen some pretty spectacular cars at cruise nights. It's amazing. You didn't see that 10 years ago.

My point being there's a … lot of interest in automobiles these days.

Are you ready to sell the company and take it easy?

No, no. It's a family business.

I've got great people around me - young guys. We have a new generation coming into our company. I'm only 53 years old.

I'm not interested in selling our company or taking it public.

We enjoy our company the way it is now. You have to like what you do to be successful.

If you love what you do, you'll be good at it.

Michael Vaughan is co-host with Jeremy Cato of Car/Business, which appears Fridays at 8 p.m. on Business News Network and Saturdays at 2 p.m. on CTV.

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