Blind Auctions and Anonymous Car Ownership for Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix.

... and now for some actual content:

I really enjoy playing Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix, but on our usual Game Nights, I generally spend part of my time running the store and helping customers.

I don't mind doing so, but it can pull me away from games for an extended period. This, as I'm sure you can imagine, can be frustrating for the other players unless you're involved in a game where long delays are part of play.

Another issue I run into is that when people know whose car is mine, they will actively single me out for defeat - I'm not the only one this happens to, but it's a frustrating feature of the game.

With that in mind, here is a variant which fixes these issues for me.

You will need:
1 Envelope Per Player
1 Player to serve as Auctioneer.

At the beginning - when cars are auctioned off - the auction becomes a silent auction.

Turn the first car up. Each racing player secretly places their bid into their envelopes, and hands the envelopes to the Auctioneer.

The auctioneer takes the envelopes to a private location and determines who has won the auction. He then removes that money from the envelope, places that car's Ten Movement Card into the envelope, and hands all envelopes back to the racing players. In the event of a tie, the Auctioneer will then declare that there has been a tie, and will hand envelopes back to the Racing players. All players will then have the ability to adjust their bids - if you are not involved in the tie, your bid will be ignored by the Auctioneer.

Repeat this for all six cars.

Players need to remember to conceal the contents of their envelopes. You don't want other players to know which car you have or how much you paid for it. You'll also want to bluff, even after you own your maximum number of cars.

The Auctioneer needs to keep track of who has purchased a car and who has not - remember: there are limits to the number of cars you can own if there are less than the full six players.

Determine randomly who the starting player is. Once the race starts, the Auctioneer is free to run the store or cook dinner or play another game.

The racing players can determine winnings for themselves after the race, and will not need the Auctioneer until time to bid for the next race.

A possible modification to this is to reveal all six cars first, and then each player bids a certain amount for each car in order - the Auctioneer then resolves the bids in order from first to sixth, stopping and handing bids back if there is a tie. This modification requires a piece of paper per player.