The Barrett-Jackson Rumor Mill, Again

It’s no wonder Craig Jackson sometimes acts paranoid. How many times does Barrett-Jackson have to deal with uninformed rumors?

We’re still putting down the “the Futurliner didn’t sell for $4 million” stories, a year after the $3,680,000 (that’s the $4 million hammer bid less the 8% seller’s commission) wire transfer landed in Montreal.

This week it was “did you hear about the class action against B-J? It’s all over the Internet.”

Well, no I hadn’t, so I went looking.

I found someone named Sam Barer’s posting on his blog. A wide-ranging rant, it started off by accusing B-J of fraud (“some hobbyists are claiming a worst [sic]: fraud”), which must have gotten Mr. Jackson’s attention. Then there it was, Barer says someone “has filed papers with the court” and “this is already being discussed as translating into class-action status.”

Sam claims to be “a collector car journalist” who has “been watching the Barrett-Jackson auction for years.”

From reading his rambling posting it didn’t even appear that he was at B-J, much less on the block where he might have become aware of what goes on there so to find out I called the phone number for his company’s “Business Office.”

I reached Sam at home.

Not only wasn’t Sam at Barrett-Jackson this year, he’s never been to Barrett-Jackson at all. He has been “watching the Barrett-Jackson auction” though. On SPEED Channel. He watched the whole thing, he said – except for the parts he missed. And he “knows people” who’ve bought and sold cars at Barrett-Jackson.

When pressed, Sam admitted that he didn’t know if a suit had been filed. He further allowed that the “class action” was complete conjecture.

This is pathetic. Barrett-Jackson (and Craig Jackson and even Keith Martin who came in for his share of Barer-bashing) has been taking flack from someone who hasn’t any firsthand knowledge of what went on at Barrett-Jackson in 2007 (or any other year). He’s just dishing out recirculated rumors, then piling surmise and conjecture on top of them.

Barrett-Jackson has now issued a statement dealing with Mr. Barer’s rumors and surmise. The statement is clear, concise and factual, unlike the rambling rant that prompted it.

In the case of the lawsuit/class action rumor, there is no “there” there.

Craig Jackson isn’t the one who is paranoid.

Rick Carey
February 2, 2007