As each episode begins, we see a fast-moving montage of beautiful classic cars, body shop mechanics cutting and buffing metal, and the auctioneer banging his gavel, while Wayne Carini's voice-over explains that his job is to find the specific classic cars that are wanted by wealthy clients, restore and bring them up to showroom condition and then sell them on for a massive profit. We then see a half hour show in which none of that takes place.
The credit crunch appears to have turned this show's premise on its head. Now the client comes to Wayne,not to find and buy a classic car he or she covets, but to sell one they already own, presumably because they're feeling the pinch. The restoration part of the show - if any - does not take up very much of the running time. Often the whole of the second half of the show is spent at the auction. Carini is shown trying to sell gorgeous cars that have an impeccable pedigree and gleam like they just rolled out of the factory yesterday. But they invariably fail to make the hoped-for reserve price, and don't sell.
The show represents a fitting epitaph to the boom years of excess. For unemployed Britons reading this, job opportunities beckon in America: every one of the auctioneers are posh-accented Englishmen.
The credit crunch appears to have turned this show's premise on its head. Now the client comes to Wayne,not to find and buy a classic car he or she covets, but to sell one they already own, presumably because they're feeling the pinch. The restoration part of the show - if any - does not take up very much of the running time. Often the whole of the second half of the show is spent at the auction. Carini is shown trying to sell gorgeous cars that have an impeccable pedigree and gleam like they just rolled out of the factory yesterday. But they invariably fail to make the hoped-for reserve price, and don't sell.
The show represents a fitting epitaph to the boom years of excess. For unemployed Britons reading this, job opportunities beckon in America: every one of the auctioneers are posh-accented Englishmen.