YouTuber Alex Hirschi, better known as Supercar Blondie, is the world’s most popular automotive entertainer, reaching more than two billion viewers monthly across the Supercar Blondie network of social channels, along with Alex’s website Supercarblondie.com, with around 115 million followers. Now she’s heading up a new online auction venture in partnership with husband Nik Hirschi, CEO of SB Media Group.
SBX Cars is a global digital auction platform specialising in classic cars, hypercars, supercars and special vehicles. It launches with over $100 million in confirmed consignments – including several exclusives.
These include the world’s first public auction of the Mercedes-AMG One and the Hyperion XP-1 prototype, a one-of-three LaFerrari prototype, Tyde’s inaugural hydrofoiling electric glass yacht designed by BMW, a one-of-nine Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, and one of just three Lamborghini Veneno Coupés ever produced.
The most interesting for us here at Magneto, though, is a collection of genuine John Player Special racing cars from the Lotus F1 team of the 1970s and ’80s. This incorporates Grand Prix cars driven by Nigel Mansell, Elio de Angelis, Ronnie Peterson, Johnny Dumfries and more, as well as transporters, several of Colin Chapman’s personal cars and even his own aeroplane. Other classics include a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing, Lamborghini Miura, BMW 507, Aston Martin DB5 and Isdera 036i Spyder.
“Over the past few years, we would get a lot of emails and be contacted by collectors around the world saying, ‘Listen, I know you travel everywhere. Do you know where I can get this car, or who I can sell this car to, or whatever’,” Alex explained to us on a call from Dubai ahead of the SBX Cars launch. “And I had to say to them, ‘I’m so sorry, but I just don’t have time to pick up the phone and call everyone individually’. That’s a job in itself, right?”
She continued: “There’s no centralised space for collectors all over the world to connect, so this is something that we wanted to put together and solve that problem. We have seen that multi-million dollar cars are being sold on digital auction platforms, so we thought, well hang on, there’s no space online for just the premium sector, right? So we really wanted to create a space where only the premium would would get their time in the spotlight, and also create something global, because there isn’t a digital auction space at the moment that is truly global. So what’s so great about what we’ve created, is it’s this global brand that everyone knows around the world.
“Just to give you an idea, we’ve got almost 115 million followers now [Facebook: 56 million, Instagram: 16 million, YouTube: 18 million, TikTok: 18 million, Snapchat: 3 million, website: 6 million] and we’ve got our own editorial team on supercarblondie.com. We have 2 billion views per month. So we’re going to leverage Supercar Blondie channels to really put a spotlight on on these cars and on SBX. We’re always looking for great content for our media sites – and with these cars, some of them are a natural fit for our content. So it will either be me going to film them and put them on the channel, or it will be one of our other presenters – we’ve got three or four full-time presenters now. A unique advantage to what we’ve launched is that it can really get millions of views on the car you want to sell.”
The Supercar Blondie team is already more than 60-strong, and this includes several car specialists working specifically for the auction house, headed by auction director Lance Butler, who has worked for Mouse Motors, Bonhams and his own Stratos Auctions company.
“We have 65 full-time staff,” confirmed Nik Hirschi. “And we have 15 people alone whose sole job is to search for the world’s rarest cars, on a daily basis. So for us to curate and constantly find the most unique stuff is super-important. Of those 15 people, some of them are more on the media side and some are more on the auction side.”
“Because we’re doing only about ten to 15 auctions per week,” added Alex, “we’re going to be able to have that customer-service element that the in-house auctions provide, which is kind of missing when people list their cars on other digital sites. When you submit your vehicle [to SBX], someone from our auction specialist team will guide you through the process, talk to you about the reserve price, make sure that’s all good. If they have a specific collection, or a really special one-off car, we might even decide to run an event around that.”
Nik again: “We take the in-house auction approach, experience and expertise, but essentially give you a two-and-a-half to three-times less cost and transaction value. The buyer pays only five percent uncapped commission. And the seller has a standard $250 processing fee for us to write up the description and get the listing ready, or $950 for the premium service, where you get a professional photography added with that. Or there is the white-glove service, which is a completely bespoke, custom thing with, as Alex said, a custom event, with her personally potentially reviewing the car-marketing plan over a specific period. So we’re taking an in-house sort of approach, but without the logistical nightmares of, say, needing to move a whole collection to Pebble Beach.”
SBX Cars has its headquarters in California, and teams based in Los Angeles, Dubai and London, giving 24/7 end-to-end support for each live auction. The company has a network of photographers around the world, to enable it to send professionals to shoot a car if required. All bidders will be required to provide a valid ID and credit-card details, while, if the company doesn’t personally know a seller, staff will carry out vetting procedures to ensure legitimacy.
“SBX Cars affords the high-end collector community an invaluable tool by way of creating an online network that introduces our clients to a far easier buying and selling process, all while accessing one of the world’s largest global audiences by way of Supercar Blondie,” said Lance Butler. “SBX Cars will redefine what collectors at the high end of the marketplace have come to expect when buying and selling cars online. Our focus is in offering the pinnacle of quality, paired with convenience and an international focus that caters to enthusiasts all around the world, not just in one market.”
The company launches with the first Tesla Cybertruck to go to market, offered at no reserve, with further lots following around a week later. Each auction will last between seven and 14 days. For more information, visit www.sbxcars.com.
