As you may have noticed if you watch our Window Shop With Us video series, we are constantly shopping for cars. Bring a Trailer has been one of our favorite destinations for a long time, thanks to its curated site of classic, collector, and enthusiast vehicles up for auction. Several Hearst Autos staffers have bought and sold cars on the platform.
Bring a Trailer’s knowledgeable community of more than 350,000 users and more than 145,000 registered bidders vets each vehicle, giving confidence to potential buyers. The name of the platform is a reference to the familiar shorthand in classified listings urging buyers to “Bring a trailer!” for non-operational projects, race cars, and concours show vehicles.
The acquisition announcement was made by Hearst Magazines president Troy Young, Hearst Autos CEO Matt Sanchez, and Bring a Trailer co-founders Randy Nonnenberg and Gentry Underwood.
“Bring a Trailer has set the bar for building a community around a passion point,” Sanchez said. “What Randy and Gentry have developed is truly special, and what they deliver to their audience is so much more than transactional. They’ve built a family, developed trust, and have become an invaluable part of the automotive landscape.”
When Bring a Trailer was founded in 2007, it was a blog that sent readers to interesting car posts on eBay. But as the audience grew, Bring a Trailer readers wanted to buy cars through the BAT site. In 2014, they launched the auction site. And over the years, it’s grown to have about 400,000 registered users, with about 175,000 people bidding on cars. For the past four to five years, there have been about 40 to 50 comments on each car listed. It’s a vibrant community that points out interesting things on the cars and aftermarket parts the owner may not have disclosed, and that further vets each vehicle before it’s sold.
“We could never have come this far without the BaT community; it is at the heart of everything we do,” said Nonnenberg in a post announcing the acquisition to readers. “We know that full well, and it is why selecting the right partner has been a careful multi-year process.”
Bring a Trailer is going to continue operating as an independent business, but we’ll be integrating their listings on the story and using data compiled through BaT in our stories.
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