Moderator- David Lillywhite

David Gooding

David Gooding is president and founder of Gooding & Co. in Santa Monica, CA. He has philosophy and economics degrees from Skidmore College and began his career with Christie's International Motor Cars department, where he was promoted to managing director responsible for automotive auctions and staff in the United States and Europe.

He was also president of RM Auctions for three years before founding Gooding & Co. in 2003. Its first auction was in 2004 at Pebble Beach.

Year after year, Gooding & Company continues to set the standard for market-leading results, eclipsing its own milestones by achieving impressive sales totals and setting new world records with each auction. To date, Gooding & Company holds the world records for 12 marques, including Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren, Duesenberg, and Bugatti. In 2021 alone, the auction house exceeded over $150 million in sales, and sold the two most valuable cars of the year at its signature Pebble Beach Auctions.

David Lillywhite

David grew up surrounded by old cars and motorcycles, with a playground of Austin Sevens awaiting restoration and regular visits from family friends in MGBs, Frogeye Sprites and Triumph Spitfires – plus the legend of his father’s barn-find Stutz Type M saloon briefly owned in the 1960s. Having been persuaded by the school careers officer that working with cars or motorcycles wouldn’t be a good idea, David joined Marconi as an electronics apprentice and later a graduate engineer. Sponsorship money and student grants were spent on a series of rear-wheel-drive Ford Escorts, until the best one – a Mk1 fitted with a 2.1-litre Pinto engine – was stolen from the university car park. Hit by large insurance premiums, David bought a Triumph Herald.

Then, bored in one of the Marconi labs, he wrote to a handful of car and motorcycle magazines asking for a job. Remarkably, the editor of Practical Classics wrote straight back, and in February 1992 David started there as staff writer. He went on to become deputy editor, then moving to Classic Cars magazine before resigning in protest at poor publishing decisions and ending up spending an exciting 18 months on Bike magazine. Freelance followed, working for titles as varied as Classic Car Weekly and Max Power.

A chance meeting in 2002 with Geoff Love in a local pub prompted a conversation about launching a new magazine – the result was Octane, the first issue of which emerged in April 2003, with co-directors Geoff, Robert Coucher and Sanjay Seetanah. David started as managing editor, later changing to editor. After 172 issues of Octane, he moved to Motorsport Network to learn the dark arts of digital publishing, launching the AutoClassics (now Motorious) website, before leaving to go freelance for approximately three weeks... And then came another one of those chats with Geoff, which resulted in the launch of Hothouse Media and the quarterly Magneto magazine, the publication that David is the proudest of so far.

During this time, he has owned more than 40 cars – most of them classics, many of them restoration projects. These have included a Porsche 914, Citroën SM, Frogeye Sprite and Speedex Austin Seven special. Current projects are the 1972 Saab 96 previously owned by his late grandad, and an early Prodrive Subaru Impreza Turbo.

Again this year we are not charging for our Forums! This is due to the continuing uncertainties of their attendance due to COVID. We anticipate that we will resume charging for some of our Forums in 2023. Please only  RSVP if you are certain you can attend, and allow seats for others.