Bring A Trailer
Is This Your Business?1.7
2.5
Overall Score
Author: Kaitlyn Short
Bring A Trailer Auctions, or bringatrailer.com, is an online shopping site where users can buy and sell classic, unique, and vintage cars and motorcycles. The original website started in 2007 with fixed-prices and moved to a bidding-style system in 2014.
Enthusiasts can sign up to get daily email updates about current auctions.
So, how does Bring A Trailer work?
First, owners can submit their car on bringatrailer.com and the most interesting and unique vehicles are selected for auction within two business days.
Next, the company works with sellers to put together an informative listing. Sellers pay $99-$349 to list their ride. The submission and preparation process can take a couple weeks to get ready. The fee stands whether or not your car sells, and there is no additional fee when it does sell.
Finally, once it is live, the auction listing lasts seven days. When it is over, the purchase transaction is between buyer and seller. Bring A Trailer doesn’t facilitate. Additionally, there is a 5 percent buyers fee, charged to the winning bidder via credit card ($250 minimum and $5,000 max).
Buyers and sellers from all over the world are welcomed to sell vintage cars online through this site, or browse and bid on cars for sale.
Keep reading our Bring A Trailer review for pros and cons of working with this car auction site.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- Classy Listings
- Reserve Prices
- Photography Help
- White Glove Service
Classy Listings
BAT Auctions specializes in classic, unique, and vintage cars. Anyone can submit a car for auction; however, not everyone will be able to list a car. The site serves to weed out lesser-quality cars to make sure that only the best, most interesting cars are put up for sale.
This helps potential buyers know that they are only seeing the cream of the crop, rather than searching through thousands of classified ads or sites like ebaymotors looking for rare, quality vintage cars.
Listings, written by Bring A Trailer staff, include tons of details about each car, including the current bid and the number of days and hours left in the auction.
Most include standard info about the car’s transmission, interior, exterior, engine, CarFax report info, mileage, and whether the owners manual is included, but some share extra information like:
- History of the car
- Restoration and maintenance details
- Original owner info
- Previous owner info
- Current owner info
- Details about the model and the history of it
- Tons of pictures, some videos of the car in action
In addition to car listings, BAT also offers the option to list parts for sale, like seats, engines, memorabilia, wheels, and more.
Premium Listings features high-value vehicles with listings that last up to 21 days. These 6-figure and 7-figure car auctions will still be held to the $5,000 max for anyone that ends up buying a car of this caliber.
Reserve Prices
Although this is an online auction site, owners can still set a reserve price, or the lowest possible sale price that they are willing to sell the car for.
Why does this matter?
It helps sellers rest assured that they are getting the car sold, at the very least, a certain amount of money, while still putting the car out there for the highest bidder.
Photography Help
If you are selling your car and need help taking pictures for your listing, the site offers a professional photography referral. Photographers can even request to be added to the network.
Additionally, with the Plus package, for $349, you can include professional photography in addition to the professionally written listing, which is already available in the Classic plan for $99.
White Glove Service
The is also a White Glove service feature available for “significant cars and collections.” This is a concierge-type service where BAT will tailor the service to sellers’ needs.
The Bad
- Just the Auction
- Selective Selling Process
- Auction Only Pricing
Just the Auction
Bringatrailer.com only facilitates the listing and auction. When you sell your car on Bring A Trailer, the site doesn’t facilitate the payment. The sale and any exchange of money are directly between the owner and the buyer. This is one place where we see Bring A Trailer has room for improvement in offering premium services.
It would be nice if they would also act as an intermediary between buyers and sellers for the financial transactions like TRED or help with shipping, the way that Carvana does.
It would be great if the company sponsored a pre-purchase inspection as a part of their service. This is left to the owner and prospective buyer to figure out.
We would also appreciate if the Bring A Trailer auction site could help facilitate shipping, if the current owner and new buyer live a long distance apart.
Selective Selling Process
Not all cars that are submitted for auction are selected for auction. While this can be disappointing for some would-be sellers wishing to sell their collector car, it is probably a good way to keep the site’s inventory to a higher quality standard, rather than it becoming like ebaymotors.
Auction Only Pricing
While eBay uses a Buy it Now option, all listings on Bring A Trailer are auctions. There are no Buy it Now pricing options.
If you want to sell classic cars while avoiding auction-type selling and the rigid selection for Bring a Trailer Auctions, consider listing your car on Classic Cars or Hemmings Motor News. Both of these sites are specifically for buying and selling classic, vintage, and niche cars, while Hemmings also lists classic car parts.
The Bottom Line
Bring A Trailer is a car auction site where users can sell or buy a vehicle — but not just any vehicle. The site screens prospective sellers and only accepts the best vintage and classic cars for live auction.
This site is a great option for car enthusiasts and collectors, who benefit from ongoing access to quality cars rather than having to sort through sites like eBayMotors or other non-niche used car finder sites.
At this time, we don’t have enough customer data to recommend this company for buying or selling a car. Have you sold or purchased a car with bringatrailer.com? Let us know in the review section below.
Edwin Wilson Roanoke, VA
4 years ago
