Poll Re: 2007 Barrett-Jackson

Post a chart of housing prices in top neighborhoods for a side by side comparison and I'll bet that an interesting trend emerges...

 

Mostly I watch B-J for laughs...

Jack

 

i voted for market + 10 %, not because i think the market is climbing, but rather the last of the trickle in buyers who are buying behind the curve. typically, speculation prices reduce their % gains before dropping off. the knowledgable buyers have sold and left. when the music stops, there is still a couple of moments while people scramble for the chairs.......

we just watched it homebuilding a couple of months back, this is no different

 

Oh, they'll have a place to sit...in their suddenly-devalued MoPars.

Jack

 

true, but i meant in a "covered your ass" and bailed out at the right time.

 

There are plenty of folks out there who simply do not believe prices can go down and the number of cars registered for sale and number of bidders is going way up. So, while I think its absurd and the market IS going to get a huge correction, I dont think its going to collapse at this years BJ.

I think its more likely that things will look rosy on surface and average sales will get a very moderate increase, but as the year goes on these cars are just going to stop selling. Sellers wont budge on price... buyers wont step up and the % of cars actually selling at auction will drop.

Because BJ is almost all no reserve, I think the collapse will manifest itself in Jan. 2008 through a big decrease in cars listed for auction.



Terry

 

Dale.......

Seems like we might be building a conscencus here.......I too voted for the 10% increase........and like Terry and others, think the end is nigh in 12-24 months on the muscle car side of things.

 

Mike Sheehan has a very astute article on muscle car values vs. Ferrari values in the new issue of Sports Car Market.

Jack

 

Agree.... very good article.


Yet, while Sheehan and Martin are issueing warnings about muscle car values, the review of the '69 Camaro sold in the same issue says its a $175K car all day long. Why? Because it has the "JL8" option which is apparently rare.

This is where the muscle car "investors" are idiots. They think that a rare option package = a rare car. To me, it does not. A '69 Camaro is not a rare car. Just because one Camaro may have a couple of nifty options packages that are rare does not warrant one Camaro being worth $100K more than another, particularly given that all the parts to duplicate said option package can be bought relatively cheaply. Thus you can have a "clone" of the option package thats supposedly worth $100K for a few grand and your car was, is and always will be a "real" Camaro.

A 'Cuda is a 'Cuda is a 'Cuda.... and while I accept that a '71 Hemi Cuda convertible is in fact a very rare car a '70 440 Cuda is not and in general there were LOTS of Barracudas made they are simply not rare cars. In the long run I think people are going to figure out that the average Joe just likes a cool looking 'cuda he can drive and enjoy and whether an option package was original or not doesnt much matter and its certainly not worth paying $200K for.

I would much rather have a Hemi Cuda with non matching numbers engine but otherwise perfect for $40K than paying $400K simply for the fact that numbers match. To me at least, thats an absurd comparison. Its not as if the non matching car isnt a REAL 'Cuda.... it is!




Terry

 

I've got to agree with Springer on this one. Bidding up $100k above a $75k car just because one car has a $200 option that the other doesn't have is "tulip mania" territory...

...where an "investor" is speculating that the more rare option will make the car vastly more desireable.

That's just so seldom the case, though.

What B-J is doing (which is fine and should be applauded, though noted that it is being done with a wary eye at the same time) is simply reaching out to that crop of retiring Baby-Boomers that "made it."

Oh, they didn't make it big, but they've got $10 Million in the bank from running 20 McDonald's franchises or some sort (you know the group) and now they can go buy what they dreamed about when they were young, toiling away at Minimum Wage.

So they buy the '69 Camaro. Of course they do. And they want it to be perfect. Fine. B-J is going to deliver it to them. This is all well and good.

But this generational surge isn't going to last very long. The Boomers will soon have their dreams purchased and then that will be that.

Those muscle cars are valuable to that generation because that's what they grew up wanting, but no one else places that much value on them. Once the Boomers have filled their garages, the rest of the Market will ignore those muscle cars.

We're not talking about Van Gogh's that are valuable across multiple generations. We're talking about mass produced Detroit Iron (emphasis on "iron").

And we're not even talking about something that is multi-continental, either...almost all of this muscle-car-mania is limited to North America.

So in those two ways, multi-generational and multi-Continental, the muscle-car market is quite different from the vintage Ferrari and classic art markets.





Frankly, that's going to suite the real buyers of the muscle cars just fine...they are buying their dreams, after all. It's just the speculators who stand to get burned after the Boomers stop acquiring said vehicles.

 

I predict the red line is gonna cross the blue line and the yellow line will drift upward.................

Hey, 'barn find' red Corvair convertible ....red.......mint..carefully, lovingly stored....thoughts via PM please......Scott "Lil Bull' and I were thinking Great Race, if we can pry the keys from the widow's hands. We'd paint her husband's name on the door..

We should be able to sort the handling quirks in 3,000 miles, eh?? LOL!

 

This is exactly how it has been working. Every generation in their 40's and 50's wants the cars they drooled over as kids. As far as Ferraris go however, this cycle may be coming to an end. I have a really bad feeling about the practicality of owning a 355/360 and later models when they are 30+ year old cars. They will require prohibitivly expensive maintainence to keep them running, and few people are likely to want to put up with that. The 308's today aren't that bad, belts and all, and they are DIY cars unlike the more modern ones. There will be a lot of $30k (in today's dollars) 360's for sale in 2020 that no one will want because they need $50k in maintainence/repairs.

Ken

 

The Baby Boomers are the last analog Age. The kids of the 355/360/430 generation will simply replace the mechanicals with electrics in the distant future. Picture the current Tesla Roadster guts under the skin of beautiful Ferraris.

They'll use speakers to duplicate the exhaust note, and all of the people who would label such things as heresy will be long-since dead and buried.

True beauty isn't going away, but people will eventually update such cars that so qualify just as people currently update beautiful old homes that once heated with a fireplace and cooled with a ceiling fan...into central heat/air conditioning.

Because just as today's generation abhors the "Values" of two generations ago regarding chopping wood each morning for the fireplace to heat said beautiful homes, so too will future car buyers view the maintenance of a 355 engine compared to an electric motor.

 

About 15 years ago my father purchased a nice black over red 57' T-bird
with a rare three speed transmission w/ a non-synchro first gear. He
normally asked my opinion before buying cars, but in this case he didn't.
When I asked him why he bought the "Bird" with a manual, he said it was
a rare option etc.. I respectfully mentioned that "rare doesn't mean desireable" and felt he would have prefered the automatic since he hadn't
driven a stick in many years. Although he never admitted it, I think he
knew I was correct although I wish I hadn't been on this occasion. Just
my .02$ worth. Thanks!

Mark

 

IMO the market for these cars will not crash as the people who bought them have deep pockets and don't have to/ won't/ sell them right away. At a certain point they will begin to die/get too old to drive/etc. and they will slowly begin to slide and then fall off the cliff. The next thing will be Slammed Fast and Furious NOPI Cars as this group reaches middle age.

Enjoy while U can...

 

Yes, this is how the situation will progress.

First, items will become slow to sell, reserves not being met will slowly start to happen. It may take a few years as it is indeed the Baby Boomer gen that is moving the market and they are still buying. Personally I would be surprised if this happens in '07 but it will happen.

Next, values will start to go down to in order to move the cars. This will happen to the flippers and restorers that entered in the market to make money. As Napolis stated, the guys who bought in the last several years likely won't be selling anytime soon.

As for the next generation in the market, it's gen X, children of the '80s. Think Italian exotica.

-F

 

i think, when u get down to it, some of these cars are overpriced and some are not.

a new piece of sh*t chevy can run $50k ( i drive a 07 tahoe - so hold the back the comments) and the average car costs $25kish ???? so i can see how people can justify paying around that for a for a nice vintage ride.

combine that with the disposable income of many and the USA dollar (which is basically funny money)

 

The Italian rides are popular in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. These vehicles are popular with multiple generations, too. Just today I was driving my 348 around a strip mall parking lot that was full to the brim...no parking. An older shop owner walked outside and offered to move his car to let me park. Saturday I had two kids run out on the street giving me thumbs-ups and smiles and waves as I drove by...and my 348 is no investment Ferrari. Not even close. But it just goes to show that the Ferrari Marquee has a powerful attraction and broad following.


In contrast, the Detroit-Iron muscle cars are popular in one area: North America...with only one group: Baby Boomers.

 

Okay Terry, just to play devil's advocate.....Is a 911 is a 911 is a 911? (i.e., Is a 73 911RS worth 3 times more than a 73 911S?, the RS is just an option right?, wink, wink?)

 

as i mentioned in an earlier post, the mid 70's to mid 80's cars were mostly hum-drum except for the exotic cars. my generation will gravitate towards these.

i am 32, more of my friends are more interested in the testarossa/countach than anything newer or older. i am not endorsing it, but come on, how many mustang 5.0 posters were hanging on walls vs. italian cars with hot women?

the late 70's - early 80's lull should pop these cars up a little ahead of the normal 30 year time frame, but we still have a bit to go before we get there.

 

Obviously a few options will ring in as exceptions to the rule (e.g. "ZR1" for Corvette).

 

One of the joys of Barrett-Jackson is walking around the corral and reading all the fliers the sellers put up to try to differentiate their cars from the 20 other examples.

There's nothing quite as fun than to watch someone overpay for a car because it was "one of only 3 1964 examples to be painted blue and have the ultra rare 'passenger floormat delete' option" (or similar nonsense).

 

Bingo.

Give it about 5-10 years. The cars you refer to will be the magic 25 years out and gen X will be in its prime earnings period.

That's funny.

-F

 

It will be interesting to see what happens after this group gets out of collecting muscle cars. No one has mentioned the possibility (however remote) of this group needing to get out of their cars quickly and all at the same time. A collapse in real estate and or a big spike in fuel prices might cause it. Not that any one will really care about the price of a '69 Z/28 Cross Ram at that point in time.

As for the next big group of car collectors it will be interesting to see what happens there. I think cars like the E30 M3 and the NSX will have a much stronger following. Outside of that I wonder what will happen to some of todays more unusual valuable collector cars. Are people really going to want to spend the money rebuilding the engine of an Auburn or an ATS?

I don't think drive trains will be swapped out of 360s and 430s for electrical components. While they are very sophisticated and expensive cars to run today - I think technology and know how will advance to where diagnosing problems and developing more reliable systems will be relatively easy. How much did the memory in your computer cost 20 years ago and how much did you get? The sophisticated management systems of today are going to look very basic in 20 years.