Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Headlines aren’t so encouraging lately. Mortgage crisis; high gas prices; bank employees tapping their fingers wondering if it will be their employer’s across the front of the building tomorrow morning or a big “Office Space For Rent” sign.

And how has this affected the classic car market? Well, if your disposable income fits better in a dump truck than a money clip, the answer is, not much.

After WWII, the troubled BMW company contemplated what direction they would try to go. Even though Germany was in shambles, physically and financially, the company decided to build luxury cars, figuring that no matter what the basic trends of the world economy, there would always be people with money….

That reasoning holds today and their interest in exceptional collector cars is still strong.

Here’s a few figures from a mid-month auction in Carmel, CA:

1930 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport Spyder $1,107,000
1967 Chevrolet Corvette L88 Competition Convertible $744,000
1972 Porsche 911 2.7 RS Prototype $480,000
1960 Jaguar E2A Le Mans Sports-Racing Two-Seater Prototype $4,957,000
1962 Citroën 2CV Sahara 4×4 $93,600
1939 Talbot-Lago T150 C SS $4,847,000

When a couple cars at auction are pulling in $5 million and a Citroen 2CV that half of us could outrun in flip-flops fetches almost six figures, cash is still flowing for the right vehicles.

Should you rush out today and throw savings at a classic car? Not necessarily. But if
you have something unusual, think carefully. I was at a local restaurant yesterday working on a manuscript and the guy sitting next to me said his grandparents had a 1930s DeSoto and a half-dozen other old cars at their farm. He said they didn’t care about them–thought of them as a burden, something taking up space…. He seemed to think they might unload ‘em as salvage.

There’s still big money in collector cars. Even unrestored cars that look rough can fetch fat stacks if rare enough. If you’ve got one, or a friend or family member does, do some talking and internet searching before parting with it. Could be, just maybe, there’s a guy (or gal) with a full dump truck ready to swing by.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.