In retrospect, Ed Jurist’s Vintage Car Store clearly stood way out ahead of its time in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike today when a sprawling worldwide collectible vehicle business pretty much blankets the globe, the Vintage Car Store in Nyack, NY ranked as one of few top tier go-to places for connoisseurs seeking high quality classic cars. Ferraris, 4½-liter Bentleys, Rolls Royce Town Cars and Maseratis mingled with a 12-cylinder Allison air craft engine on display and striking transportation themed wall art. However, even in this rarified atmosphere of vintage collectibles, Jurist’s exterior display area featured a real show stopper, a 1943 M4A3 Sherman Tank, for sale.

A Sherman tank’s incredible journey from Nyack, NY to the final episode of M.A.S.H.

Bill Wahnish in his Sherman tank

Note 275 GTB for $35,000

While sitting in Ed Jurist’s cozy almost cramped Vintage Car Store office in the early 1980s I noticed a brass ring mounted on a wooden plaque. Inquiring of Jurist, I learned that this treasured artifact had been attached to the ripcord of a parachute that had safely floated him to earth after his WWII B-17 bomber had been shot down over Nazi Germany. Taken prisoner by the Germans, Jurist subsequently succeeded in escaping his captors. This pretty much tells you all you need to know about Jurist the pioneer classic car and vintage military aircraft aficionado. After taking ownership of the Vintage Car Store in 1961, Jurist traveled all over the world seeing South America, India, Europe, Middle East, Far East and Australia to set up agents and ferret out salvageable military equipment and locate desirable classic cars.

When I spoke with Jurist in 1982 the tank had been sold two years prior (February 1980) to Bill Wahnish, a gentlemen with a large film industry car rental business (Bill’s Car Rental) in Hollywood. In  1979 Bill had flown back east slammed a hatch or two, kicked the treads and said, “I’ll take it.” It would be two almost three months before Bill would take delivery in Los Angeles.

For Jurist selling a 73,000 pound Sherman tank with a seized engine is one thing. Moving it is quite another.

Jurist laughed when recalling and said, “It’s not like the town will let you drag it through the streets or over the sidewalks.” Transporting the […]

My footsteps echoed off the walls of the long, mostly doorless hallway. Aged large format black & white action photos of vintage sports cars lined the walls and whet my already eager appetite for the experience that awaited. As a car guy and owner of a 1953 Jaguar XK120 my destination held great fascination for me. Summer of 2012 blazed outside as I came to make a pitch for the contract to digitize the thousands of original photographs, slides and films housed in the Jaguar Land Rover North American Archive. I would be meeting with Jaguar Land Rover Archivist and retired import car industry public relations legend Mike Cook and Assistant Archivist Fred Hammond.

Jaguar Archive – Preserving the soul of the brand

Mike Cook approached me flashing a ready smile and a genial demeanor as I entered the Jaguar Land Rover North American Archive. Mike could not have been a more gracious host as he guided me through the rows of files, shelves and cabinets. During my tour Mike took the opportunity to, in one single action, indelibly impress upon me the rich historic value residing within this treasure trove of 20^th Century British automotive print, film, photography and documents.

Fred Hammond      Mike Cook

As a side note, while Land Rover is included in the Archive title, it has a significantly smaller presence than Jaguar as it was only added to the Archive around 2008. From here on Jaguar will be the focus.

Turning to the large open floor of the archive’s main room, Mike spread his arms open to the room and instructed me to pick any cabinet, open any drawer, pull out any file and remove any document and then said, “tell me what you found.” I did just that.

With the resulting file in hand, I removed two slips of paper.

Inspecting the first slip of paper revealed a letter written around 1957 from Sir William Lyons to another “Sir” explaining his great relief that “this unpleasant business” of wresting control of Jaguar distribution in America from Mr. Hoffman, referring to the notorious Max Hoffman, had been concluded.

The second slip of paper could not have been more historically significant. It was a telegram sent from home office shortly after the tragic events at the 24-hours of Le Mans in 1955, which Jaguar […]

Considering Covid, sheltering in place, social distancing and a steady diet of heavy snow, the attraction of distraction cannot be underestimated. And the explosive growth of online activities clearly leads the pack in the distraction derby. However, when it comes to winning the “selling winter coats in Miami when the temperature plunges” sweepstakes, nobody has been better positioned to benefit from social isolation than Bring-a-Trailer.com.

For an insider’s look at the Covid fueled Bring a Trailer online marketplace phenomenon, we reached out to Matt Maisano, classic car broker and owner of Motorcar Manor a premium vehicle storage facility in Ramsey, NJ.

Carried away by Bring a Trailer

Matt Maisano of Motorcar Manor

For car enthusiasts what began quite humbly over a decade ago has become an obligatory hour lost each day to ogling an eclectic and glorious array of exceptional vehicles from around the world being auctioned in real time. Matt Maisano, with a shrug, concedes, “It’s highly addictive for sure, but it’s a great tool for understanding the market, far better than Autotrader or eBay and if you’re looking to kill an hour of Covid boredom. BaT is for you.”

True to its name, Bring a Trailer began in 2007 as pretty much a car enthusiast website for selling incomplete project cars and race cars incapable of being driven home. Then, in 2014, based on the evolving culture and expanding community of Bring a Trailer, co-founders Randy Nonnenberg and Gentry Underwood took what would be a tentative and ultimately profoundly disruptive step impacting the business of collectible automobile auctions. They launched BaT Auctions.

Nonnenberg grew up as a kind of millennial version of older car guys like many of us. The type who in days past would be at the newsstand waiting for delivery of the WantAd Press. How about that for a blast from the past? Or the type who would follow the NY Times delivery truck to its next stop on a late Saturday night to get first crack at the automotive classified section in the Sunday Times. Yes, I did that.

Born out of Nonnenberg’s passion for all things automotive, Bring a Trailer came to life and evolved into what, in the time of Covid, ranks as the dominant classic and special interest vehicle auction venue.

Bring a Trailer’s very first auction […]