Barrett-Jackson announced that it is scaling back its January event “for the sake of quality” according to Barrett-Jackson President Steve Davis. The 2007 auction sold 1,270 vehicles for a total value of $112 million. Come January, Barrett-Jackson says it will sell roughly 20% fewer cars and re-route an estimated 250 cars to a yet-to-be-announced Barrett-Jackson event.

This move is related to the recent wrangling over available event space at Scottsdale’s WestWorld grounds. If you recall, Barrett-Jackson was attempting to negotiate its way into more real estate and/or purchasing the grounds on which its event — and many other unrelated events — are held. And to toss out some speculation here, this could also be a move to address the alleged instances of cars being hammered across the block before their ultimate value was reached. There’s only so many cars you can move across the block in a day. Back around March, Barrett-Jackson and David Clabuesch started into each other over an alleged early hammer-drop on a 1970 Hemi ‘Cuda Ramchargers racer.

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