Private sales matter more and more to RM Sotheby's and their recent expansion shows it: a showroom in Culver City, California, a second rising in London, and a European home in Burgerveen, just outside Amsterdam, run by the respected Dutch specialist Bodie Hage, best known as the founder of Real Art on Wheels. A few months ago the dealership passed into the hands of RM Sotheby's, and Hage now serves as the house's European Director of Private Sales. We sat down with him to trace his path into the trade and how he came to join forces with RM Sotheby's.

Bodie, you started washing cars at 14 and launched Real Art on Wheels in 2013. How did that come about?

When I was 18, I finished high school and went to university. But after my first year, my boss fell ill, and I lost him when I was 19. His widow came to me and asked whether I could help sell some of the cars. At that point he had more than 230 of them, spread across five different locations. She said, “Bodie, you were always around the cars, could you please help me sell some of them?” And I thought: you're 19, you love cars, you have a feeling for the business. Why not? So I began selling cars all over the world. From that first big sale, we grew, step by step, into a proper trading operation.

At what point did you decide to strike out on your own?

By 2013, when I was 25, I knew I wanted something of my own. So I launched my own business. I took the Real Art on Wheels name with me and built it into a dealership for collector cars. My former boss' widow was my financial partner, backing all my plans and ideas. I moved into our current showroom in 2018, and in 2020 I opened a workshop, hired a mechanic, and bought out the widow's shares to become sole owner. From there I simply kept building: buying, selling, travelling the world, advising clients, assembling collections, and expanding the workshop and storage facility.

Can you tell us more about your current premises?

In January 2023 we moved the workshop to a new location. Today we have around 1,200 square metres of workshop and storage for the mechanics, while the main building houses the showroom, which is also about 1,200 square metres. The showroom enjoys a beautiful view over the lake, just south of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, and the workshop sits a little closer to the airport still, under five minutes away. It's seven or eight minutes door-to-door to Schiphol. That's ideal for our international clientele. If clients want to come over or send someone to inspect a car, it can all be arranged very easily.

What sparked your passion for cars in the first place? Was there one car that started it all?

It's funny, when I was about 14 and started washing cars, I was always dreaming of a Porsche 356. One sat in storage and the owner never came to collect it. So I made a plan: work hard, save every euro, and own a Porsche before I turned 20. I worked my socks off. I started at about two euros an hour, and that's 24 years ago now, my God, I'm getting old. I also began dealing a little on the side, buying an old Puch moped and selling it at a profit. Around my 20th birthday I could finally buy my 356, a C Coupé. I thought I'd never sell it. But then, during a rally, it was stolen from the hotel car park.

And it never resurfaced?

We never got it back. I'm very proud of our research department, but even we couldn't trace it. Maybe it ended up as parts. I thought I had proper insurance, and then I found out I didn't. After that I qualified as a registered appraiser for classic and historic cars here in the Netherlands. With what the insurance did pay I bought another 356, soon sold it on at a small profit, and bought yet another. That's how the whole Porsche 356 story began. Over the years I've owned perhaps 35 of them, coupés, roadsters, cabriolets and speedsters. Eventually they began to feel a little alike, so I moved on to a 911, then a Ferrari, and nothing stirs quite the same passion as a Ferrari. My greatest love remains cars from the late 1950s through to the 1980s, perhaps the 1990s.

How did the partnership with RM Sotheby's come about, and who made the first move?

I wasn't for sale. It began with Tonnie Van Der Velden, who approached me on behalf of Jack Little, the Managing Director of Private Sales. Tony is one of my closest friends, and he was already working at RM Sotheby's. He said, “You should be open to talking with RM one day, because we want to grow the private sales business alongside our position as the world's leading auction house.” Jack came over after the summer break in 2025, and our first meeting was in September. Then Gord Duff came over, and Shelby Myers flew in from Los Angeles. They all wanted to get a feel for my building, the workshop, and the work we do. From that moment we sat down together and something simply clicked.

What finally convinced you?

What makes it so compelling is that no one else in the world offers everything RM Sotheby's now does. We have our own workshop with our own mechanics, we sell cars at auction and privately, and we have showrooms, one in Los Angeles, one here near Amsterdam, and in a few months' time another in London, in Hammersmith. When these conversations started I was 37, earning good money and having fun, so why would I sell? It was the new challenge we could take on together that made it worthwhile, and in the end it gives clients more service. Real Art on Wheels clients now gain access to online and live auctions in Paris, Monaco, Munich, London and Monterey, while RM Sotheby's clients no longer have to wait for the next auction to sell, because we can also buy privately or sell on their behalf. It's remarkable what we can do now, and nobody else does it.

What will change at your showroom and for your team under RM Sotheby's?

Not a great deal, really. I'm still here, forever, I hope. We can grow the business a little more smoothly now, with plenty of support from the back office in London. We took on a new sales colleague alongside me, because I had been doing everything myself, which isn't healthy. Since the 1st of July I've had Bob van Loon here with me in the showroom, so we're gaining a bit more structure and raising our game on quality. But from a business point of view, everything stays the same: we still buy cars, sell them, and broker them.

For collectors, how does a discreet private sale differ from a live auction?

With a live auction you market in supermarket style, making a lot of noise about what you have, drawing a crowd, and the cars are sold on stage. Private sales are altogether more discreet. Some clients prefer to look very quietly: they tell us what they're after but don't want to be out searching themselves, so they come to us and we help them find the right cars. And some sellers would rather it wasn't known that they own a particular car, or that they're selling it, so discretion counts for a great deal. With RM Sotheby's behind us, we can also provide the kind of institutional-grade documentation you'd expect from the major banks. It's a completely different world from the live-auction scene.

Can you explain the Sealed concept?

This is where auctions and discretion meet. We aim to run a Sealed auction every month, so people can consign their cars without waiting for a live sale. We market them properly and buyers register to bid. It's a live auction, but you never see the other bids, only your position. Say we have a Carrera GT estimated at 2.5 to 3 million euros. You bid one million and the system tells you you're number 10. You raise it again and again, until finally you're number one. Then you wait; closing might be two days away, and half an hour later you're notified that two bidders have overtaken you. So right up to the close, you keep bidding. For the top three, the sale extends by 90 seconds with every new bid. Since you can't see the leading offer, we give those three that comfort, not everyone, or small incremental bids would spoil the incentive for the serious contenders. Why is it so appealing? It's discreet. Only the winning bidder, the seller, and a few people on the RM team ever know the price. The final sale price is never revealed to the public. That suits sellers who don't want a public result, and buyers too, a dealer, say, whose purchase price stays private. Plenty of dealers are bidding on the platform right now.

Which cars, eras, and categories excite you most personally right now?

Looking at the market, cars up to around 30 years old attract the most attention, Ferraris and limited-production models above all. With everything shifting towards electric and hybrid, you can genuinely say that analogue, real driving brings enormous joy: twelve-cylinder Mercedes-Benz, the Carrera GT, manual Porsches and Ferraris. To my mind these will be the last of an era. Take a Renault Clio V6, mid-engined and manual. How on earth did Renault's board ever sign off on that project, and then build two generations of it? It's madness. Every generation understands that these cars will probably never return, not in those numbers, not with that engineering philosophy. The Carrera GT is the finest thing you can buy today: Le Mans engineering for the road, a naturally aspirated V10, centre-lock wheels, a monocoque, carbon-ceramic brakes, and still a manual gearbox. There are so many others that will most likely never come back, the Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series, the BMW M5 E60 with its V10, a manual Lamborghini Murciélago. My generation will probably only be able to afford cars like these over the next five to ten years, so it's fairly safe to say they'll appreciate.

What are the key goals for Sealed by RM Sotheby's over the next few years, especially in Europe?

We want to focus on quality, the quality of the cars and of our client relationships. We don't really chase numbers. We simply want to be the best and give clients the finest possible journey while they enjoy this passion. Because that's what it comes down to in the end: we don't sell anything anyone actually needs. It has to make life more pleasant. We're not selling Fiat 500s or VW Golfs to get you to work. We bring joy, and that's exactly what we set out to do, in the showroom, in the workshop, through the transport we arrange, and in everything else. We just want to make it easier for clients to enjoy the passion, the complete package. We also have a bonded warehouse, which no one else offers, so our American clients can store their cars with us here in Europe.

You can browse the cars currently offered for sale by Sealed by RM Sotheby's in the Classic Driver Market.