Two of Britain’s biggest classic auctioneers have announced that they’ll be merging next month.
Iconic Auctioneers – formerly known as Silverstone Auctions before a re-branding last year – and Classic Car Auctions (CCA) will be operated as a single company, with the latter’s final sale as a standalone company taking place this coming Saturday (28 September) and its website re-directing to Iconic’s in early October.
Iconic said that the move will allow buyers to search for specific marques across all of its sales in one place and offer customers a wider range of services, including the auctioneer’s online, motorcycle, automobilia and private sales.
It added that the same team would run CCA’s sales and that it would use many of the same venues but will be given a new look and logo and referred to as The Classic Sales by Iconic Auctioneers. Silverstone Auctions (as it was then known) set up CCA in 2015 as a sister company to focus on everyman classics but had always operated it as a separate company.
‘We truly value the trusted relationships that we have built with our CCA customers'
CCA’s managing director, Rob Hubbard, said: ‘Most of our customers know that CCA and Iconic are sister companies so bringing them together as one company makes sense, but more importantly it will enhance the exposure of the CCA cars on the Iconic Auctioneers website, which is itself a much busier site. ‘We truly value the trusted relationships that we have built with our CCA customers and look forward to working them in the future under the Iconic Auctioneers umbrella.’
Auction analyst, Richard Hudson-Evans, who has been charting the classic market’s ups and downs since Classic Car Weekly’s first issue in 1990, said: ‘It makes sense for them to bring the brands together because Iconic is a well-known name in the industry.
'CCA caters more for the everyman classics'
‘However I’ve always thought that there is value in the market knowing that Iconic specialises in higher-end buys and that CCA caters more for the everyman classics and that there is a distinction between the two. Happily that’s still being reflected in the branding when you look at the individual sales.’