In town - Barrett-Jackson:The Barrett-Jackson Collector Car event, with its massive television coverage and auctioneer's antics, is a must for the canny car spectator - but take carethat you don't catch Spanky the auctioneer's eye, writes Ben Oliver.
Tom "Spanky" Assiter might be speaking English, but I really can't be sure. Spanky is the chief auctioneer at the 37th Annual Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Event, held each January in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Spanky sounds like a particularly nasal country and western singer with uncontrollable Tourette's syndrome. He calls out the bids so fast that the words just blend into a bizarre, unintelligible, deep-southern purr.
There are moments of clarity, as he pauses to admire the car - "Looks about the colour of my bowlin' ball!" - or needles a losing bidder - "You ain't gonna let him beat ya for 10 grand, are ya?" - or finally when he brings the hammer down: "Sold it! Sold it! Sold it!" Then it's back to the gibberish.
But Spanky's doing a great job. The vast screens behind him show bids regularly spooling to six figures, and he's selling one car every five minutes.
In front of him, sitting under the second biggest tent after the Millennium Dome are 10,000 bidders and spectators, none of whom can understand him either.
Spanky is so far away that I can barely see him, and he certainly can't see me. If I wanted to bid I'd have to get the attention of one of his assistants, who would then run over, blow a whistle, stand on a chair and wave a flag to get the attention of one of the junior auctioneers who look out over the masses from the edge of the stage, and yell back at Spanky. Then the television crew from the Speed Channel - this is broadcast live - would race across, tripping over their cables and illuminating me in the glare of their spotlight while my guy tries to coax another bid out of me.
The punters around me would lean in and shout encouragement, and if my bid went up to a really big number - half a million dollars seems to be threshold - the whole 10,000-strong crowd would get to its feet and start clapping and whooping. So both hands stay in my pockets, and I adopt the stance of someone with a serious upper spinal injury. For drama, scale and entertainment, nothing in the classic car world matches the Barrett-Jackson sale.
Over six days, 1,200 cars will be sold, most gloriously technicoloured, all-American muscle cars of 1960s and 1970s vintage. This year's sale had some extra spice.
Last year, US racing legend Carroll Shelby's personal 800bhp Cobra Super Snake sold for a staggering $5.5 million (€3.7 million), a record for an American car and a sign, the experts said, of an unsustainable bubble in the muscle car market. Now, with a looming recession in America, there's a chance prices will slump. Spanky's theatre might feature a little tragedy too, with stung speculators weeping over their emptied bank accounts.
Barrett-Jackson's appeal is threefold. First, there's the live television coverage. Second, there's the entertainment. All the cars are on display and there are hundreds of stalls selling everything from a sofa made from the trunk of a 1957 Chevy to a tacky 10ft bronze-effect sculpture of a stallion, or a $6 million (€4.05 million) private jet. Celebrities stop by - Jay Leno and Muhammad Ali this year. And there are "entertainment" lots for sale, like Robosaurus, the 40ft tall fire-breathing, car-crushing mechanical Godzilla, star of monster truck shows and The Simpsons. In total, 280,000 people come to see it all.
But thirdly, and most importantly, everything must go. There are no reserves at Barrett-Jackson. Your car will sell for whatever someone is prepared to pay, and if it isn't as much as you'd hoped for, too bad. For small-time sellers with big plans riding on the proceeds and a very uncertain market, it's a terrifying business.
The owners standing by their cars outside the hall have the quiet, resigned air of men about to be taken out and shot.
Gerald Iwan, a sweet 69-year-old, is selling the 1957 Chevy Bel Air he bought when it was new. Gerald, at 19, made a rear-seat bar and record-player unit, and installed his parents' old television in the boot. He honeymooned in the car, then kept it for Sunday best. It has only done 16,256 miles. "I've had some heart trouble recently and I want to provide for my wife. It would be great to get over $200,000 (€135,110) for it. Maybe this will be the 1957 Chevy that will break €300,000 . . ."
But not all of them will make six figures; come here with $20 and you can drive home in a good 1960s Mustang or Camaro. Corvette dealer Terry Michaelis has been coming to Barrett-Jackson since the beginning, and has traded his way to the top. Last year he got $660,000 (€445,869) for a Corvette Stingray, and he sold one to Katie Holmes as a birthday present for Tom Cruise.
"The television coverage raises the prices by 10 to 30 per cent," he says. "If your buddies are having a beer back home and watching you on television, are you gonna be beaten for a few grand? No way."
Does he ever feel sorry for the sellers stung by the no-reserve rule? "Not really. When there are tears in their eyes that's a great deal for me. And there are people out there trying to snake the ill-informed buyer too." He has a list of today's lots with "fake" written in red ink and block capitals against several.
"Saturday night is when the billionaires come out to play," one of the Barrett-Jackson guys tells us. Sadly, they arrive too late for old Gerald's Bel Air, which sells for just $90,000 (€60,796); he puts a brave face on it. Nothing is going unpredictably stratospheric; Carroll Shelby's personal 1969 GT500 might have made $2 million (€1.35 million) last year, but gets just $675,000 (€455,390).
Jay Leno coaxes a million for charity out of a rich Chevy dealer for the first new Corvette ZR1, launched a couple of days before in Detroit, and John Schneider - Bo Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard - gets an unbelievable $450,000 (€302,735) for his fairly ordinary recreation of the General Lee, mainly by standing on the roof and singing Good Ol' Boys to the crowd.
Only three cars break seven figures; the one-off 1963 Corvette Rondine by Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina tops the results at $1.6 million (€1.08 million). Total sales are down to $88 milion (€59.4 million) from $111 million (€74.9 million) last year; the crazy days are clearly over.
In the absence of big money bids, the crowd enjoys the novelty lots like Robosaurus - "$20 million if you built him today". Just as I'm wondering who in their right mind would bid on a 31-tonne mechanical dinosaur, I get my answer: the guy sitting next to me.
Ernie Moody is an unassuming, moustached guy in his late fifties. Later I discover his reported earnings of up to $15 million (€10.13 million) each month from the video poker machine he invented.
All I know at the time is that my neighbour has put his hand up. The assistant sprints over, waving his flag into a blur and nearly blowing his tonsils out through his whistle.
We all jump up, the camera crew muscles in past us, and Ernie keeps his hand up until he buys the tin beast for $575,000 (€388,311).
Jostled by a mob of cheering, well-wishers, I ask Ernie the half-million dollar question; did he mean to do that? "No." Where was he going to keep it? "I don't know." So why did he buy it? "I dunno," he shrugs. "It just seemed kind of cool."
The prices might be more sensible this year, but Ernie proves there's unlikely to be an outbreak of sanity at Barrett-Jackson auction any time soon.
Go see it for yourself: just make sure you don't catch Spanky's eye.
Jay Leno coaxed a million for charity out of a rich Chevy dealer for the first Corvette ZR1, which was launched days before in Detroit
Every January in Scottsdale, Arizona, the main Barrett-Jackson auction comes to town. Though the high prices might grab the headlines, with 1,200 cars on offer there are also some serious bargains. The best this year was the vast, outrageous Blastolene B702 (bottom left), inspired by a 1930s roadster and built by hand over two and a half years by sculptor Randy Grubb.
It's only the third car he has made - Jay Leno has one of the others - and it sold for $475,000 (€319,597). It's still big money, but for $9,000 you could have a Reagan-era Lincoln Continental - America's most upmarket car in 1982.
If you can't wait until next year, Barrett-Jackson will sell 600 cars in Florida's Palm Beach on March 26th-30th, and they'll be in Las Vegas for the first time on October 16th-18th. www.barrett-jackson.com