On a recent evening at the Morris and Welford dealership in Newport Beach, no one was kicking the tires, opening engine hoods, peeking into the glove box, or tinkering with the car radio. The handpicked group of guests instead sipped on champagne and admired the inventory from afar.
“It feels like I walked into an art museum,” said Poorang Dadras of Laguna Beach, who caught a glimpse of a red 1967 Ferrari 330 GTC priced at $675,000. Nearby was a navy Ferrari of the same vintage but a slightly different model, GTS, valued at $2.4 million.
“We are a museum to a certain degree, but that’s not the intention—we are here trying to sell cars,” said Miles Morris, who partnered with his best friend, Malcolm Welford, and London-based JD Classics Ltd. on the venture.
Morris and Welford met while working for Christie’s, where they ran the international motor car department.
For the past 15 years they’ve been on their own as “matchmakers of cars,” and have brokered more than $650 million in deals for clients, “without any public profile.”
“Our Rolodex is lovely, and we guard it preciously,” Welford said.
JD Classic, which operates two similar dealerships in the United Kingdom and sponsors rally races, was looking to expand to the U.S. It signed a deal with Morris and Welford in March, just as Shelly Automotive Group was getting ready to move its Rolls Royce dealership to Irvine. The nearly 15,000-square-foot showroom, across the street from John Wayne Airport’s private jet terminals, seemed to be the perfect fit. It’s not clustered with other luxury auto brands along Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach, but it’s close enough for the area’s well-off demographic that the duo is targeting.
“Being slightly off the beaten path means clients are making the deliberate journey to come and see us,” Morris said. “We are probably getting more qualified people that know we are here, rather than just the tourists walking down PCH who are there to look at the beach.”
Auction Alternative
The dealership offers cars that are “either consignments or stock purchases we’ve bought to sell,” he said, adding that commission is usually 5% to 10%, and vehicle prices start around $200,000 and can go into “$30 million to $40 million on the upper end.”
Expected sales volume? Three or four cars a week, the pace set at JD Classic’s showrooms in the U.K.
Morris and Welford, aside from brokering deals, provide guidance to buyers and sellers.
“Every car has its own unique story, depending on who’s owned it, who restored it, where it lived,” said Morris, who’s a judge at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, where he also serves as a member of the selection committee. “You can come take a look, come back, discuss the car, educate yourself more if you’re unsure. There’s a learning curve of ownership, cost of maintenance.”
The dealership is an alternative to auctions, where purchase decisions happen rather quickly. Welford, a few years back, traveled with Jeffrey Sudikoff and his wife, Joyce, to Monaco to purchase the blue 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS at an auction.
“You go from, ‘I think I want it’ to, ‘oh, my God, am I going to buy it?’” said Sudikoff, who founded IDB Communications, the predecessor company of MCI WorldCom, and co-owned the Los Angeles Kings for a brief period. “Ultimately my wife made a decision to raise the paddle the last time. I was at the, ‘I don’t really need it’ point, and she was at, ‘We didn’t come all this way for this car not to buy it.’”
The vehicle is up for sale again at Morris and Welford’s showroom, giving Sudikoff peace of mind.
“You want as many people as possible to see it in an environment [where the vehicle] is well cared for, and well maintained, and you don’t want a lot of people coming to your garage and asking you questions about it,” he said. “These people vet their buyers, you have a layer of protection. Assets like this are what we like to call global assets, where the market is truly global, the buyer can be from absolutely anywhere on the planet, so you need someone who knows how to do that, as well.”
Derek Boycks, a classic-car mechanic by trade, was also in attendance on the opening night, along with his client and Ferrari aficionado, Don Murray, founder of Resources Global Professionals in Irvine.
“Morris and Welford, along with JD Classics … have the top reputation in the industry,” Boycks said. “To have these two together here in OC, it’s a nice thing. It says something about OC car culture.”
