Auction
From a $2,900 Bid to a $4,786 Delivered Car
August 29, 2026 • 5 min read • $4,786 confirmed
The confirmed cost of getting Project 001 into the driveway: a $2,900 winning bid, a $4,168 invoice, and $618 of transportation across Texas — before title, tax, diagnosis or a single repair.
This is the first entry in the Build Log, and it covers the part that happened before we ever turned a wrench: buying the car and getting it home. Every figure here is confirmed.
What the price appeared to be
A silver 2015 Infiniti Q50 Premium, 3.7L V6, rear-wheel drive, roughly 159,000 miles, sold at auction in August 2026 for $2,900. For a 16-year-old's first project car, that felt like a manageable number. It was the number we talked about, planned around and got excited about.
Winning bid (confirmed)
$2,900
How the invoice reached $4,168
Three additional lines showed up on the vehicle-and-auction invoice. None of them were secret. All of them were things we had not written down in advance.
- Auction fee — $898
- Broker / service fee — $295
- Document fee — $75
Vehicle & auction invoice (confirmed)
$4,168
$1,268 more than the bid.
$600 from Austin to McKinney
The car was in Austin and had a transmission that would not shift past third gear, so driving it home was never an option. The Austin-to-McKinney transport came in at $600 — a fifth of the bid, just to move the car.
Austin to McKinney transport (confirmed)
$600
The $18 final leg
The last stretch from McKinney to home cost $18. Small, but it belongs in the record — this project counts every dollar, including the trivial ones.
McKinney to home (confirmed)
$18
Transportation subtotal (confirmed)
$618
Confirmed delivered cost: $4,786
The $4,168 invoice plus $618 of transportation puts the confirmed delivered cost at $4,786. That is what it took to have the car sitting at the house — before Texas title, tax and registration, before diagnosis, before any repair and before any modification. None of those have been paid yet, and the estimated county figures are still estimates.
Delivered cost (confirmed)
$4,786
Invoice plus transportation. Excludes title/tax/registration, diagnosis, repairs and modifications.
What we learned
- The bid is the down payment on the real number, not the price.
- Fees are knowable in advance. We simply had not looked them up before raising a hand.
- Transportation deserves its own quote, from the actual pickup city, before the sale closes.
- A cheap car with a known drivetrain problem is not cheap; it is a deposit on a repair decision.
- Writing every dollar down — even $18 — is the only way the totals stay honest later.
The running public breakdown lives on the Budget page, and the full picture of the car is on the Project 001 page. We do not publish the invoice, the history report or any paperwork — just the figures.