Auction Watch Sidebar—Shipping Your Winning Bid

Words: Steve Johnson

Let’s say you see an Audi model in Auction Watch that you’ve sought for months in your local area with no luck. The auction ends soon. The Carfax is clean and the comments are favorable, so in the heat of the moment you bid on it. Next thing you know, you win the bid and it’s now suddenly time to get your new possession from several states away to your house ASAP. You may have just made a mistake if you’ve never had a car shipped before, it’s not as straight-forward as you might think.

I have friends that have shipped cars from coast-to-coast with no issues at all, but that was a few years ago. Now unscrupulous people have figured out that valuable cars are in transit every day and they are taking a bite out of the apple at the would-be car owner’s expense. It’s called cargo theft and the folks at Hagerty who’ve no doubt had to pay out a few claims because of it wrote a nice article about it. Please follow this link Car Shipping Is Complicated. Thieves are Taking Advantage to read it.

The article does use expensive cars as examples, e.g., a Rolls-Royce Dawn, so you might not think that the B5 S4 Avant you just bought would be a target for thieves. Agreed that it might not be headed for the Middle East and not you, but it might also just get driven into Mexico with someone else at the wheel. The article’s comments section is also very informative. Nothing like reading someone’s lesson learned, good or bad, to help you avoid pitfalls.

Please take some time to do your homework before bidding to ensure you understand the next steps after winning the bid. It might make a fun road trip if you actually do just bring a trailer to gather up your new-to-you Audi. Who knows, it may even be an adventure that you could write about for a future issue of quattro Magazine.