It’s a grudge match between two heavyweights in the classic car field.
(Bloomberg) — RM Sotheby’s, the auction house famous for selling million-dollar vintage Ferraris and Porches, has announced a new classic car show and auction for March 1 to 3 next year in Miami.
Called ModaMiami, the inaugural affair will be held at the Biltmore Hotel Miami Coral Gables, 13 miles from South Beach. Festivities planned for the weekend include fashion shows, art exhibits, exclusive dinners with celebrity chefs, high-speed driving experiences and synchronized swimming performances in the hotel’s 23,000-square-foot pool, all of which will lead up to Saturday’s car auctions and Sunday’s concours d’elegance on the Biltmore grounds.
Ticket prices and the number of attendees have yet to be finalized; Rob Myers, chairman and chief executive officer of the RM Group, said he expects to see as many as 300 vintage cars entered into Sunday’s show and up to 10,000 people present over the weekend.“This won’t be your normal concours, like in Rhode Island, or Amelia Island, or even Pebble Beach,” says Myers, who conceived the event. “We want to give the concours a different lifestyle twist, you know, not just walking around the show field, standing in line and paying $10 for a hot dog.”
ModaEvents, a production company Myers founded in 2022, will produce ModaMiami with Concours Partners 3, a group that consists of Curated, a Miami-based vintage supercar dealer founded by John Temerian; Ronnie Vogel, who consults with Ferrari of Fort Lauderdale; and Brett David, the CEO of Prestige Imports Motor Group in North Miami Beach.
Myers declined to specify how much the company would spend to make ModaMiami happen: “We have a fairly significant budget for the things we want to do, but to be able to honestly say to you, ‘Oh, we’re gonna spend $6 million or $5 million or $10 million,’ we’re gonna spend whatever it takes to do it right.”
ModaEvents may expand the show to cities such as Nashville, Tennessee, in coming years, he said in an interview with Bloomberg on April 24.
Conflicting Car Shows
It’s no coincidence that Myers’s new endeavor falls during the same time frame as the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, which is now owned by classic car insurer Hagerty Inc. That well-established weekend of events on Amelia Island, some 30 miles from Jacksonville, features an auction by Broad Arrow, a Hagerty subsidiary and relatively new competitor to RM Sotheby’s.
ModaMiami is the latest development in a bitter rivalry between RM Sotheby’s and Hagerty that erupted in 2021, when RM Sotheby’s then-president, Kenneth Ahn, and a handful of senior staff abruptly left Myers’s team and started Broad Arrow, which Hagerty promptly bought. Lawsuits involving the rupture were filed by RM Sotheby’s and Broad Arrow. The were settled confidentially last year.
In August of 2022, Hagerty named Broad Arrow the official auction house of the Amelia Island concours, over which RM Sotheby’s had traditionally presided. The move forced Myers to erect his auction tent for this year’s concours a mile down the road from the host hotel and central concours space. It was enough to send him searching for an alternative to Amelia Island, he says.
“We didn’t really plan on doing this at all, but being kicked out of Amelia Island this year, we thought, well, what were we gonna do?” Myers says. The answer was a “no-brainer,” he continues. “Would you rather be on Amelia Island, Florida, or in Miami, Florida?”
“The car world isn’t a zero-sum game—new and different events are good for car culture,” McKeel Hagerty, Hagerty’s CEO, said in an email to Bloomberg on April 25. “However, it’s disappointing that a decision was made to divide the car world by hosting an overlapping event, which creates friction—car lovers, participants, and guests are now being asked to choose.”
Ahn declined to comment on the lawsuits in a recent Businessweek article about the rift. A spokesperson for Hagerty said McKeel Hagerty’s email encompassed the totality of the response from the company, including from Broad Arrow.
Millions at Stake
The arrival of a new concours puts millions of dollars in vintage car sales, branding partnerships, ticket sales and sponsorships at stake—plus cachet in the insular world of high-end classic concours, some of which have overtaken traditional auto shows in prominence and placement for car debuts.
During the sales in north Florida this spring, four auction houses including Bonhams, Broad Arrow, Gooding & Co., and RM Sotheby’s sold a total of $178 million in collectible cars, up from $127.7 million in 2022. RM Sotheby’s accounted for more than $63 million of that sum with an 89% sell-through rate, the second-best results for the event. Gooding posted the strongest results, reporting $72.7 million in sales and a scintillating sell-through rate of 96%. Broad Arrow saw $29.4 million in sales and a 79% sell-through. Bonhams reported $12.8 million sold and a 78% sell-through rate.
ModaMiami will also shift the center of gravity from the Ritz-Carlton golf resort to a more international locale already hosting a very glamorous Formula One grand prix.
“Miami has matured,” says Temerian. “It has become a cultural center and just an easier logistical location. The fact that there hasn’t been anything world class at this level yet almost doesn’t make sense.”
Some insiders expressed concern that Coral Gables residents may not welcome the noisy influx of old cars and auto fanciers into their wealthy and strictly curated community, while others noted that cars and fashion often mix with cringeworthy results. (Remember the Fortwo car that Smart did in collaboration with Jeremy Scott? Or, Exhibit B, this shirt.) But conversations with a dozen sources familiar with the matter reflected strong support for the move as a refreshing take on a stagnant model.
“I don’t know if a fashion show is the answer, but I think it’s great that there are new options,” says Joe Richardson, a car collector, former consultant for Ferrari and the founder of the Car Crush show on YouTube. “Some of these events have been around for so long, and there are so many old-guard politics, but there’s a whole generation of collectors coming up who don’t necessarily want the same old rules, and with something like this going to Miami, it makes sense. There’s a huge car culture in South Florida.”
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ModaMiami may force some high-net-worth collectors to pick sides and choose with whom to list their cars next year: RM Sotheby’s or Broad Arrow.
Broad Arrow’s home-court advantage appealed to some collectors this March, with multiple sellers saying they specifically chose to list their cars with the house in 2023 because as the official auctioneer it was located conveniently inside the Ritz hotel. It also helped that Hagerty’s second-ever Amelia Island concours reflected improved logistics and technology for the 25,000 ticket holders who attended.
It is unclear whether Gooding would follow RM Sotheby’s and hold its spring sale next year in Miami; a spokesperson didn’t respond to emailed questions. A spokesperson from Bonhams said via email that the auction house will remain on Amelia Island in 2024 per a prior contract agreement. Myers says that although he hasn’t spoken with leadership at the other auction houses, they’d be welcome. It’s also unclear whether ModaMiami would be a one-time, or a repeat, event.
“I think it is gonna be a grand slam, very successful,” says Alvaro Rodriguez, the founder and director of the annual car show DRT and co-founder of Zweck, a Miami-based car shop specializing in Porsches. He has attended Amelia Island for more than a decade and says he doesn’t anticipate that Myers will have any trouble enticing deep-pocketed spenders to stay near South Beach for a car show.
“Miami has a lot of millionaires who never had the access to go to a concours and auction like this. They don’t want to go up to Amelia Island, because once you go to Amelia for eight hours and drink 17 Champagnes or whatever, and you get sunburned, then what?” says Rodriguez. “In Miami, you can go home, you get real restaurants, and you can do something on a big scale.”
(Updates Ronnie Vogel’s title in fifth paragraph)
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