Doug DeMuro, the car reviewer who founded the Cars & Bids auction site, listed his own 2005 Ford GT there without a reserve, and bidding had reached $506,000 when Carscoops reported on the sale on October 16, 2026. The supercar has 45,800 miles on the odometer, about 14,400 of them added by DeMuro himself. The auction was scheduled to close on October 17, the day before this report publishes.
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Because the listing carries no reserve, the highest bid at close wins the car regardless of the number. That is the risk any seller takes with a no-reserve listing, and it is why the live bid total drew attention as the final hours approached. The sources read for this report do not include the closing price, so the $506,000 figure should be read as a mid-auction mark and not as a result.
The 2005 Ford GT in Midnight Blue
Carscoops described the car as a Midnight Blue Metallic 2005 Ford GT with a 5.4-liter supercharged V8 fitted with a smaller supercharger pulley. Factory output is 550 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque, sent to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual. Because the listing includes no dyno sheet, the current output is unknown. Modifications are modest: a Ford Racing short shifter and an Alpine head unit, with the original exhaust, stereo and shift linkage included in the sale.
The wear is disclosed rather than hidden. The listing notes chips on the front end and diffuser, seat wear, scratches on the shift knob and clearcoat deterioration on one wheel. Carscoops writer Stephen Rivers wrote that cars are meant to be driven like this one and that a few signs somebody enjoyed the thing seem entirely appropriate.
Two owners and a documented history
The ownership chain is short. Karl Brauer owned the GT from new, and DeMuro bought it in September 2018. Carscoops covered that purchase in a September 2018 report that put the odometer at over 31,000 miles under Brauer, who had owned the car for 13 years. The arithmetic matches the current 45,800: roughly 31,400 miles before DeMuro and 14,400 since.
That 2018 report described the car as being in pristine condition when DeMuro took it, finished in blue with white stripes. The paper trail that came with the car is unusually deep. The auction lists the factory build book, the original order form, two window stickers and period Ford marketing material, and Brauer kept a notebook logging every fuel stop from 2005 to 2018.
Mileage is the crux of the sale. DeMuro says he wanted a car he could drive without the odometer hurting its value much, and 14,400 miles over roughly eight years is a real, if moderate, rate of use for a collector supercar. The Carscoops account stresses that the history is well documented, with several videos showing the car before and after his purchase, which gives a bidder a clear picture of how it has been used and maintained.
Why DeMuro is selling and what comes next
DeMuro’s stated motive is to find a Heritage Edition. According to Carscoops, he wanted a car he could drive without mileage hurting its value much, and he says he is selling this one to track one down. The Heritage Edition is a first-generation GT in a baby blue and orange livery inspired by the Gulf-liveried GT40 that won Le Mans in the late 1960s. Carscoops counted 343 of them among the 4,038 GTs built.
The same 2017 report logged asking prices for four Heritage cars near $500,000, with the examples it listed priced between $489,900 and $549,000. A buyer paying about $506,000 for a driven standard car is therefore in the same range that Heritage owners were asking nine years earlier, which helps explain why the no-reserve bid drew interest. Whether the final number landed above that mark can be confirmed on the Cars & Bids listing, which describes a highly documented car with two owners and a six-speed manual. Anyone comparing the figures should keep the sequence straight: the $506,000 bid was a snapshot from the day before the scheduled close, and a no-reserve auction can move sharply in its final minutes as late bidders arrive, so the closing number could differ in either direction from the snapshot reported here.
DeMuro has also driven the newer Ford GT. Carscoops wrote in May 2017 about his comparison of the 2017 Ford GT to the original, noting that the newer car moved to a carbon fiber tub and a 647-horsepower twin-turbo 3.5-liter V8 and that the original GT started at $139,995 against roughly $450,000 for its successor, a gap that shows how far the model line moved in price between its two generations.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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