Mecum Spring Classic Auto Auction Rolls Into Indy

A collector car auction that started at a regional airport in 1988 has grown into one of the largest events of its kind, now filling the Indiana State Fairgrounds with roughly 3,000 vehicles each spring. Here’s how Mecum’s Indy Spring Classic became a fixture of the Indy 500’s biggest week, and why the timing was never an accident.

Itâ€™s nearly time for the annual Mecum Indy Spring Classic auto auction, held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds May 16-20.Â We checked in with Scott Hoke, host of Mecum Collector Car Auctions on NBCSN â€“ and former host of Morning Edition on 90.1 WFYI â€“ for the highlights.

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In 1988, a small collector car auction set up shop at a regional airport in Rockford, Illinois, with nothing close to the scale it would eventually reach. Nearly four decades later, that same auction house’s Indianapolis stop routinely pulls in enough cars to fill the Indiana State Fairgrounds for over a week straight, with sales tallies that would have sounded absurd to anyone standing in that original Rockford crowd. The Spring Classic’s move to Indy wasn’t random, either, timing an auction of this size around the Indy 500 puts it at the center of the most motorsports-obsessed week the city has all year. How did one auction grow into one of the largest events in the collector car world?

From Rockford Airport to a Fairgrounds Takeover

Dana Mecum’s Original Spring Classic was Mecum’s very first collector car auction, and it’s been running every year since 1988. The event found its permanent home at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in 2006, and it hasn’t stopped growing since, recent editions have drawn crowds bidding on roughly 3,000 vehicles crossing the block over the course of the event.

Why Indy, and Why May

The timing isn’t a coincidence. Running the Spring Classic during May puts it squarely inside Indianapolis’s biggest motorsports month, with the Indy 500 drawing car-focused crowds into the city at the same time. That overlap, paired with Indianapolis’s central location for buyers and sellers traveling from across the country, has helped push recent Spring Classics well past the $100 million mark in total sales, numbers that put the event among the largest of its kind anywhere in the world.

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