Embedded in a thread was a discussion about expensive collector cars. The high bar was just reset. $70 Million dollars! Wow! The collector, David MacNeil, is the founder and CEO of WeatherTech, the floor mat company.
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From selling floor mats?
Wish I had 70 million in my bank
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Apparently it wasn’t an auction, and we may never know what was really paid for the car. No matter what the price really was, and it may well have been $70,000,000 or so, it was huge. Good for McNeil, too. He worked hard, made lots of money off @VDCdriver, and he can spend it any way he wants to.
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Yup, from selling floor mats.
I had a thought after I read this article. Maybe WeatherTech is the beneficiary of the popularity of car leasing. People want to keep their leased vehicles in nice shape so they don’t get charged with excessive wear and tear when they return it, and so the buy his liners and mats.
I bought a W-T rear tray in matching buff-color to protect the cargo area of a Suburban I leased in 1999. It was a great product. Kept that light colored carpet clean.
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No longer having a pickup truck means hauling mulch and bags of garden soil in our wagon. I looked at several mats for the cargo area and there are some lower priced but Weather Tech just seems to much better .
But 70 million for vehicle ? Spock says that is not logical.
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Spock doesn’t drive…
And collector car sales aren’t subject to logic! 
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We had a vacuum forming machine in our model shop. We used it to make drip trays for our test dispensers. Largest was 30" wide. Machined wood forms on our mill and went to town. Making mats from ground up rubber chunks is not much more complicated. Heat up rubber sheet and press it between mold halves. I don’t see what the quality aspect is here. I think bubba could make mud flaps with his eyes closed.
Making them is not hard, making them fit is.
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I’ll second @keith
Bubba may be able to MAKE them, but Bubba didn’t, did he? MacNeil did!
They make other nice accessories, too.
40 years ago I would have agreed, but with today’s laser measuring equipment that can create a surface profile directly usable by not only machining equipment for molding but also three-dimensional copying machinery for prototyping, I’m not sure that’s true anymore. MacNeil did something not done before; he used the latest in measuring and manufacturing technology to make bespoke 3-dimensional mats, when everybody else was making just flat mats. I tip my hat to him.
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I had a set of weathertech floor mats and a trunk liner ordered before I picked up my car from the dealership. The fitment is very.very good. Excellent products IMHO.
I bet he bought the car to get measurements for the floor mats.
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I bought a set of WeatherTech floor mats for our 2003 Toyota 4Runner. They are great for winter conditions. Back in 1995 I bought a WeatherTech rear mat for the 1990 Ford Aerostar we owned at the time. All the products I have purchased from WeatherTech have fit perfectly.
I don’t begrudge the CEO of the company for his $70,000,000 purchase. It takes a real car guy to come up with a great product.
Yeah it’s not that they are easy to make or not but heavy material, fit, and sides. It’s just something you don’t get at a store. Now I haven’t bought Weathertech but we always buy the Acura winter mats which I believe are similar. And for Midwest winter conditions, save the carpet. But regardless, 70 mil is insane for a car and I don’t care if they have the money or not.
Check that guy out. He’s got a “museum” on his private property not far from where I live. 2 (going on 3) giant custom barns filled with classic cars. Many of them have 5-figures just in the paint jobs. They’re also filled with over 200 classic gas pumps. He’s got a double-eagle White Eagle Oil gas pump, one of 2 known to exist. The toppers alone on those things are thousands of dollars, and if you have a complete one, you’re well into 6 figures.
In the back of one of the car barns is the restoration shop, which contains hundreds of thousands of dollars just in tool chests, not counting what’s in the drawers.
Veit has an employee whose sole job is to listen to Veit’s ideas for what he wants to install on his property, and then make it happen. “I want a custom weather vane that has such-and-such on it.” And the employee goes off to commission it.
On the other side of his giant estate is his wife’s prized horse collection, including an arena that used to be a sports arena at a local college when Veit paid to have it taken apart piece by piece and re-assembled at his place.
All in all we’re talking millions and millions of dollars just in the toy-collection parts of his estate, not counting staff salaries to take care of all the cars and horses, and the enormous, as in a mile long on one side, grounds.
Know what his company does? It hauls dirt and garbage.
There’s amazing money in some amazingly mundane lines of work.
The owners of my former company (they made forklifts) had similar “people” that bought collectibles.
Cars, Gilhooly glassware, a pool table that was Nixon’s in the White House, Harry Potter’s wand, a punch card ballot machine from Dade County Florida from the 2000 election. All kinds of artwork. A stamped steel kit house. All kinds of stuff.
Does the expression “easy come easy go” fit here?
I didn’t realize he was in the area. I’ll maybe have to take a field trip. OK, I see we’re talking two different people.
But yeah, there’s money in garbage. The founder of Waste Management was a St. Olaf grad (that’s where my money went) and a few years ago contributed substantially to build a new commons building. He might have paid the millions for the whole thing but I don’t remember. It’s huge and beautiful. He said he just wanted to give back to the school. The trucks are green, like in money.
My dad had one of those 56 Chevy Nomad wagons for a short time. Got rid of it when the transmission went. Too bad, how sad, but where would we have put all those old cars for 50 years?
Don’t know about the “easy go” part. Or the “easy come” part, either, the forklift company is 70 years old and keeps growing at about 15% a year.
You should go anyway. It’s just outside of Buffalo so it isn’t far. You’d love it.