Doug DeMuro's 2005 Ford GT sells for $540,000 on Cars & Bids at Willow Springs Reimagined, 17 October

Doug DeMuro sold the most famous car on his own channel. His 2005 Ford GT, finished in Midnight Blue Metallic with the white stripes he admits he never liked, went under the hammer with no reserve at Cars & Bids' Willow Springs Reimagined sale and closed at $540,000, as autoevolution reported on 17 October.

This matters on our beat because DeMuro is a creator who built an auction business out of a review channel. Cars & Bids is his platform. Selling his own long-term car on it, in public, with the bidding visible to everyone, is the kind of thing a magazine or a TV show could never do so plainly.

The car and the numbers

DeMuro bought the GT in 2018 from the American motoring journalist Karl Brauer, making him the second owner. Carscoops, writing on 16 October as the auction ran, listed the odometer at 45,800 miles, of which roughly 14,400 were added by DeMuro himself. This was not a garage ornament.

The car was not standard either. Carscoops and Motor1 both list a smaller supercharger pulley, an SCT ECU tune and a Ford Racing short shifter, with the original exhaust, stereo and shift linkage included in the sale. The paperwork was the real flex: factory build book, original order form, window stickers, and a fuel stop notebook kept from 2005 to 2018. Camilo Pardo, who designed the car, has signed the engine bay.

Motor1 reported that online bidding opened on 4 October and the lot closed live at the racetrack on 17 October, with bidders free to stay at home. Sixteen cars were catalogued for the sale, including a Singer-modified 1992 Porsche 911, a 2024 McLaren 750S Spider and the screen-used Iron Man Acura NSX from Marvel's The Avengers. DeMuro has said he wants a 2006 Ford GT Heritage Edition next, of which autoevolution says only 343 were built.

For an Indian reader, $540,000 is a number with no local equivalent. A V8 mid-engined American supercar with 45,800 miles on it would be a customs and homologation problem here, not a weekend buy. What travels is the format. Online, no-reserve, documented-to-death auctions of enthusiast cars are exactly what India's classifieds culture does not yet have, and DeMuro's sale is a clean worked example of why provenance files and service notebooks add money.

Creators keep moving into the old media chairs

The same fortnight produced a reminder of how far this shift has gone. Car Throttle reported on 27 October that Richard Hammond has publicly backed the new Grand Tour line-up of Thomas Holland and James Engelsman, the two Canadians behind the Throttle House channel, alongside Francis Bourgeois. Speaking to Radio Times, Hammond said, "I wish them the very best. From what I can see, the audience is giving them space and time to find their own way of working, which is what they need."

Hammond also told The Telegraph that the original Top Gear formula might not find an audience if it launched today. Read alongside DeMuro's auction, the point is the same from two directions. The money and the credibility have moved to the people with cameras and comment sections, and the broadcasters are now hiring from that pool rather than competing with it.

Sources

• Doug DeMuro Just Sold His Ford GT, Reveals What Car He Will Buy Next, autoevolution, 17 October 2026
• Doug DeMuro Is Selling His Well-Used Ford GT With No Reserve, Carscoops, 16 October 2026
• Buy Doug DeMuro's 2005 Ford GT, Motor1
• Richard Hammond offers kind words to the new Grand Tour presenters, Car Throttle, 27 October 2026