Are classic cars dead as history repeats itself?

What I don't understand is the fixation with owning a "classic car," or one that might become a classic car.

Who cares? Just love the one you're with.

Dale

 

Try to find a decent Ford Pinto, Chrysler Cordoba or an AMC Matador. Are they rare? Very. Are they valuable? No.

Surviving cars have little to do with value. It's the size of the market that makes the difference. The more people that want these kinds of cars, the higher the demand and the higher the price.

I haven't seen a Chevy Vega running around town lately. But if I did, I don't think anyone would stop and point it out.

 

Check my profile.

True, it's probably some kind of validation of all the energy/money spent on an irrational toy.

 

I agree it's a generational thing. But, things seem so different now than they did in the 80s, 70s, 60's or 50's. For example, there are just so many performance cars available now. They are commodities like never before. 16,000 360s made? That's a lot!

In addition to each mfr making way more cars than before (Porsche, Ferrari, etc.), there is also a much wider field to chose from. In the 80s, if you wanted a real performance, handling car, there weren't many choices. Porsche, Ferrari, a few others (even Lambo sold hardly any cars then). Now, you have all sorts of big performance cars from the US, Asia and Europe, and they all split the "sports car enthusiast" base. They all have their fans.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the current crop of sports cars, 20 years from now. I normally have an opinion on everything, but I really don't know. For example, what will an average 360 be worth?

one thing for sure, even a few years ago, i would not have predicted the bottom basement prices of so many Ferraris today.

 

So you sold your beautiful 328. Wow. Just wow.

I drove my Fcar today. Man and machine. A spiritual experience for me. I would consider life without a Ferrari akin to losing my arm.

My best to you.

 

I agree, but don't forget that in the 1980s, the world population was between 4.5-5 billion people, and today the world has around 6.8 billion people; among those are much greater numbers of people with the wealth to buy Ferraris. I don't think that how common Ferraris (and similar cars) are today is that much greater per capita than it was back then.

 

Interesting article and and even better debate.

Keep in mind that the crowd that is currently paying more for the GTO than the 328 is also older and couldnt remotely afford the GTOs when they were in HS. It was their dream car back then and they now can do it. Just as my dream car was a Ferrari, now I can afford it, so I made it happen.


PDG

 

Your right, rare is not the only thing, but it is necessary. Look at the 400 series. Rare, but not valuable. Few people lust after one.

I am just saying if their were 400,000 pristine big block corvettes around, they would not be very valuable.

There is a Volvo P1800 for sale near here. It's a car that I have always liked. Looks like a big rust bucket, so not interested.

 

The old Mini, the MG B, the old Ford Mustang... were mass produced, and still are beautiful and collectable. They´re not Ferraris, but people love them and take care of them.

Don´t konw. Time will tell. But don´t forget that the 308, that you define as the last classic Ferrari, was a mass produced Dino, sterile rubbish compared with a 250 built 20 years before. And I still love it!

I´ll give the new boys a chance.

 

That 328 was/is a great car, and I could see buying another at some point (garage space permitting). The vintage Porsche/restoration is something I've been toying with for a while -- a new adventure, and very much a man-and-machine thing in the purest sense.

But, a Ferrari is a Ferrari, no doubt about that.

 

Hmmm...

I have 3 cars of different eras to play with - a 1967 Pontiac GTO, a 1988 Ferrari 328 GTS, and a 2007 BMW 335i coupe.

Of the 3, the only one I would never consider selling is the GTO. I probably won't keep the BMW after the warranty runs out in 2013. It's really fast (modded with over 400 hp), really comfortable, and really complicated. The E92 is also one of the 5 best-looking BMWs of all time, in my opinion. But it's just too complicated to worry about fixing it on my dime.

At the time I graduated from high school my dream car was a '69 ZL1 Corvette (or L88 if I had to slum it a little bit). Those were expensive cars even back then. A year after graduation I got a '69 L46 'vette, which scratched that itch OK.

Anyway, I think there are classics (and future classics) from every era. As we see from the past, it's hard to tell which of the current-day crop will make the cut.

BTW, I would LOVE to have a Cord 810 or Auburn Speedster.

 

Check the profile

Ha! I never pick fights with the men of the pen. But I would buy you a drink.

May your next be the 355.

 

A few random thoughts:

A Daytona coupe was around 20K new and currently 225-300K restored. A 69 Shelby GT500 Mustang was 5-6K new and currently 90-120K restored. Many of the muscle cars though, even though restored by the numbers, are better quality cars than new because of improvements in materials and they are finished by hand during the restoration much as a Ferrari would have been originally. With the muscle cars though, it is still easy to spend more on the restoration than the car will bring at auction. On the other hand, the sale of the 250 SWB a few months back (my favorite Ferrari and maybe my favorite car of all time) had a 600k restoration and sold for over 4 million.

I think that older Ferraris are in the investment car status where the muscle cars are still more in the special interest category, breathtaking prices notwithstanding. As others have said, many of the muscle cars were "used hard" as they were fast and relatively inexpensive when new, although approaching the upper end of American cars when "loaded" with options. Hard use and lower quality contributed to the attrition and made them "rare" even though produced in large numbers compared to Ferraris. As others have said, though, even though there were millions of Mustangs for instance produced, there were relatively few 69 Mach 1's with the 428SCJ engine, shaker hood, "drag pack", and manual transmission.

Nostalgia is a major factor I believe right now as well with these muscle cars. I love them as well, but it remains to be seen if they will truly become investment cars.

Purely guessing on my part, even though the 308/328 prices are a bit depressed right now, I think there will be a time in the next few years when the 308/328 will bring more than the average 360.

 

If you can drive it out of warranty, it's a classic and a keeper. If it requires a warranty, it's temporary.

 

I think the collector car market will shrink in the next 30 years. At that time there will be a glut of the "supercars" of today.

IMO, in the next 30 years the middle class will be squeezed out, and only the rich will be able to buy anything interesting.

It's already to the point VERY few know or care about brass era cars, and even the number of people who actually know or care about pre-war cars is shrinking. The same thing is starting to happen of cars built into the 1950s.

With so few late 40s and early 50s Ferraris built, there will be a home for them for a long time...but with so many 90s and later Ferraris built, will there be enough people who can afford them?

 

Is thirty years a meaningful time frame? IMO its too long a period to make accurate predictions as to resale. What is predictable is the amount of enjoyment you'll get.

 

I agree with this a lot.
The cars built today and in the past couple of decades are forgettable. There are definately some exceptions. The engineers have gone to function over form and this has taken the excitement out of the new cars. Sad in my book. I love almost all cars. Well not Fords or Lambos but those don't count. I think every decade will have a few classics but in general the art of making a car a piece of art died a while back

 

To be fair the engineers of today are hobbled by a myriad of laws and regulations that their predecessors weren't. Try and build a car the weight of a Lotus Elan (MkI) today.
Mainstream consumers will not put up with the demands of old tech either.
For one thing they expect their cars to start on a regular basis

 

I don't disagree with you at all. It's an unfair world but only a very few try new designs. The HondaNissanAcuraBmwChevyFordChrysler sedans of today are pitiful.

 

When a designer like Chris Bangle tries something new he's stoned by the mob. Mass design is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and we all suffer.

 

OK, I'll cut back to 5 years down the road. IMO, prices on cars like Ferrari 360s and 550s, along with Porsches, BMWs, Audis, etc. will drop substantially, as there will be far too many available, and the cost of upkeep will be beyond what is left of the middle and upper middle class.

 

Well... Lotus has the 2010 Elise/Exige available right now. I know that's not the prettiest car ever made, but every time I read the stats on the latest Ferrari or BMW I find it hard to believe that they all have to be pushing 2 friggin' tons.

But you're right, I think we've lost a lot of really special elements of classic car design, mostly in the interior but also outside the cars.

I parked near a '61 Austin Healey 3000, red/black, at the gym today. I can't imagine it weighed much more than the Elise/Exige. But it was really a stunner, with that signature chrome grille and flowing fenders. Compared to the modern stuff around it, the 'Big Healey' looked tiny and also had no flab. The tonneau was on, so I didn't get a look inside, but I'm sure it had that 'banjo' steering wheel, probably wood-rimmed.

That's a car from before I was born, and it gets me more excited than almost anything from the '80s, '90s, etc. Park that near a yellow Gallardo, for example, and the Healey is just the apex of coolness and style.

If we had used larger stones, I think we could have got BMW design back on track earlier.

 

The old cars that we see today are the ones that someone thought worth preserving or restoring. We don't see the Gawd-awful, Fug-ugly ones but rest assured there were a lot of them too.
Now designers don't take chances and we get (with a few exceptions) anodyne mediocre clones. Either that or "homages" which are, in their own way, just as timid.
Personally I applaud BMW for giving Bangle as much freedom as they did. You'll never succeed if you don't risk failure.

 

I don't feel the loti but I totally agree about the Austin 3000. I've been looking for a good one for a while just can't pull the trigger when they hover in the 70's for good examples. What a classic shape. The old Alfa's are all up there as well.
I think the wife's Tahoe will be more of a classic than almost anything else Chevy makes right now.

 

True, the preserved cars are generally the better ones. But I look around new car showrooms today and really don't see anything that would be worth saving long term. "Timid" is a good way to describe much of it.

And yes, you're right, BMW had the stones to let Bangle do something different, and few if any other automakers have done that. Toyota would be the case study in doing nothing interesting on the off chance that some old lady in Missouri might think the wheel cover is too assertive. My view is that Bangle's designs are self-indulgent and were generally failures, as evidenced by all the posts and conversations about various details of the car (the Bangle Butt, flame surfacing, eyebrow headlamps, etc.) If a car is a classic, it's cohesive and you don't ponder why one detail or another is there. You can't parse it. You just appreciate the whole all at once. You don't wonder why the 246 has its buttresses, because it's like asking why Jessica Simpson has a nose.

He also ignored some basic truths about car design -- e.g., he has no sense of proportion around wheel wells, one of the most important things to get right. Pininfarina did this to perfection up through the 355, where the car looks "poured" over the wheels. Now look at the rear wheels on the 3 series and they're like piano casters. And he seems not to understand directionality -- e.g., look at a Ferrari Daytona or 250 GT SWB, Jag E-Type, or in more modern times an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and they have a purposeful, forward "learning" stance. Look at the Bangle 5, 6 or 7 and if the headlamps were omitted you wouldn't know where the front was.

The other acid test of a classic seems to be that you can't change out bits of it and improve it. E.g.., the Lotus Esprit and Lamborghini Countach got a lot of plastic cladding, wings and other add-ons as they aged. And the original ones were the best, design-wise. Ditto the Jag E-Type, which went from among the most beautiful cars made to a grotesque caricature by 1974, especially as a 2+2 with safety bumpers, butchered headlamps and a gaudy grille.