[Alan Reed]

A "Hoard" of Trans Ams are going to be auctioned in Iowa on August 5th.

I had not heard of the now deceased owner, but there are advertised to be around 50 Trans Ams for sale, most are 2nd generation.

I was disappointed to see that the auction company is VanDerBrink. They auctioned a Firebird collection in Kansas about 2 years ago. I went to the auction, but it was not a pleasant experience. Very poorly organized, and basically no description of what parts were for sale.

I talked to many attenders who had traveled a long distance to the Kansas sale and were frustrated with the whole event. Many left early, there were only a few left at the end of the auction.

In addition to the parts being in a jumbled mess, their method of sale was annoying and time consuming. They like to use the "bidder's choice" method, "take one or take all" of the items in a group for the high bidder.

The auction stops while the high bidder looks through the items and picks what he wants. Very slow and quite frustrating. Often the next round of bids brings a higher sale price, as you never know if you are bidding for the same item as the guy bidding against you.

This company has no basic knowledge of cars or car parts. They advertised the Kansas auction as having many 400 and 455 Pontiac engines. In fact there were no 455 engines for sale other than some of the cars for sale had 455 engines in them.

There was a large number of cylinder heads in the sale, probably around 50 pair of heads, all placed in a row. There was only one pair of high value heads, 71 455HO, and the first bidders were obviously bidding for that "choice." A guy near me was bidding and I suggested to him if he won the bid, he should take only one of the heads, because the second one would surely sell for less. He won, but took both heads. I guess he didn't understand my suggestion. The rest of the heads sold painfully slowly, as the high bidder had to look them over each time.

In Iowa, they are claiming to have a "Super Duty" car for sale. There is a youtube walk around video where they show a white 73 TA they claim is an original green SD 4-speed car. If you closely at the interior view, it is a 4-speed with air conditioning. The same car is pictured on their website, and if you look close, the VIN is hand written on the rear window. It is a "Y" code vin, so along with being an air conditioned 4-speed, it is clearly not an original SD car.

They just don't know what they are selling, and I believe they don't care. Their tactic is to heavily promote the sale with little detailed information in order to attract a big crowd of anxious bidders who most likely will go home disappointed.

This same company sold the cars from the eccentric Chevy dealer in Nebraska a few years ago. This dealer had new cars and trucks from the 60's they had never sold and left parked in a field. This event was a total fiasco! Their heavy promotion brought in a huge crowd, for which they were totally unprepared. The vehicles were dragged into an open field and left unprotected. The mass of people were crawling over and through the vehicles and anything that could be removed by hand was missing due to souvenir hunters. They were selling yard sticks for $50 to people who wanted to bid, but couldn't be seen by the auctioneer.

There were also some valuable NOS parts in the Nebraska sale. The parts were spread out in the field before the sale, and what didn't get stolen was damaged by a rainstorm before the sale.

This company is the worst. I told my wife if I were to pass unexpectedly, please don't call VanDerBrinks!