Supercar Blondie Is Going Into the Auction Business
By Jim Motavalli
Mon, Apr 8, 2024 7:00am
3 min
3 min
Social media personality Supercar Blondie, a London-based Australian whose real name is Alex Hirschi, found her niche posting automotive eyecandy for eager viewers rather accidentally.
“I started out as a journalist, and I just fell into cars through my radio show,” says Hirschi.
For someone who “fell into” cars, they’ve certainly been good to her—the Supercar Blondie network of social channels that includes Supercarblondie.com has 110 million subscribers, including 18.4 million on YouTube and 56 million on Facebook. The content has 2 billion views per month, according to the company.
Jim Motavalli photo
Hirschi, whose first car was a lowly Mitsubishi Lancer, produces the Supercar Blondie content with her husband, Nik Hirschi, who is Swiss. The radio show was on the Arabian Radio Network in Dubai from 2012 to 2017. Dubai is full of supercars, and Hirschi, then known as “Radio Blondie,” said it was a natural fit to drive some of them—Bentleys, McLarens, Ferraris—for on-air features. The independent Supercar Blondie content creation company was launched in Dubai (where Nik Hirschi worked at Bloomberg, Barclays, and Thomson Reuters) in 2017 and has been growing ever since.
“I just loved supercars, and what started out as a hobby after I was loaned a Bentley Flying Spur to drive around Dubai eventually got more serious,” Alex Hirschi says. “We started filming my encounters with cars and uploading the video to our channel.” These days the couple travels 300 days a year; Penta first caught up with them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
SBX Cars Photo
And now SB Media Group, based in London with 65 employees, Nik as CEO and Alex as the co-founder and on-air talent, is going into the auto auction business. SBX Cars, based in California, launched this week. The inaugural inventory goes beyond cars, and includes an electric Tyde hydrofoil yacht designed by BMW. There’s also a no-reserve Tesla Cybertruck, a one-of-nine Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, and a one-of-three Lamborghini Veneno Coupe. Likely attracting attention will be the first public auctions of the Mercedes-AMG One and the Hyperion XP-1 hydrogen-powered prototype. There were three LaFerrari prototypes, and one will be auctioned by SBX Cars.
A collection of John Player Special Lotus F1 racing cars will also be auctioned, as well as Lotus transporters, and founder Colin Chapman’s personal plane and some vehicles from his garage. Other high-dollar items include a Mercedes 300SL “Gullwing,” a Lamborghini Miura, a BMW 507, and an Aston Martin DB5. The estimated valuation of the auction lots consigned is US$100 million.
SBX Cars Photo
The auctions will be online, but there could be some in-person events in the future. “We’re going to be the only digital auction site that focuses on the high end,” Nik Hirschi says. “We will focus on cars that are super-cool, with many that are one-of-a-kind, and we’re going to be attracting collectors from all over the world. Every car will be represented on the site with 200 photographs, taken by our global network.” Video will also be available.
SBX Cars says it will speed up the process for consignors, with just a few weeks until their cars become available on the site. Once up, the vehicles will remain available for one to two weeks. SBX Cars Auction Director Lance Butler, a Bonhams veteran, said in a statement that the auction “introduces our clients to a far easier buying and selling process, all while accessing one of the world’s largest global audiences by way of Supercar Blondie.”
SBX Cars Photo
Mercedes 300SLs, Aston Martin DB5s, and BMW 507s are frequently auctioned around the globe, but SBX features some true exotics.
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
By Micah Maidenberg
Mon, Mar 30, 2026 4 min
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
