The earlier thread may have flogged this to death, but as it is a Sunday morning I did a few more analyses of the market. The first graph shows the summarised UK market as best as I can. It shows the rises of the past few years. Significantly it points to more rapid increases in the price of lower quartile cars than upper quartile cars (fitting with the "bring out your dead" effect described in another thread). The second graph shows the inter-quartile range (i.e. upper quartile boundary as % of lower quartile boundary). It again points towards a narrowing in recent years. This might be increased price at a constant quality or maybe the average stock quality has risen i.e. the lemons have all rotted away? The third graph shows what happened (as far as I can map) to the cars offered for sale across the period. Clearly 2008 is ytd and the shorter the time in the market the less likely, other things bring equal, a car is to sell. However, there seems to be an indication that cars are not selling at the current prices. When we look at the dealer offers of 2008, so far 60% have not sold. These cars seem to be trickling over into the auctions at present, always a sign of nervous vendors. The final graph examines the time that a car is in the market before sale. This data is the weakest for completeness, but in aggregate will on balance be directionally correct. The data shows that the average time to sell has been relatively low over recent years. My Views: Theres a bubble waiting to burst, but form your own opinions, but Ive been totally wrong in the past! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
i have no crystal ball, but i have found it EXTREMELY interesting that we have yet to see a repeat performance of one dealer selling another dealers dino in short order. i do agree, there are several cars currently testing the market, but as you track them, they aren't jumping from dealer to dealer - other than a few select cars. not that the fe select cars can be eliminated, but the ones i watch in the us, seem to sell pretty quickly again and not resurface. by serial number, these cars are to be counted on fingers less than those i have. private sales are the hardest to track and the most frequent. i shouldn't be surprised by this, but they typically have higher selling prices as the buyer has made a deal with the seller to free the car. i am most interested to see if the ebay "garage dino" goes through at $124k. if it does, that is a show of the strength of the underground market
Agreed on one level, but I'm intrigued by the internet effect - on the one hand the fact that we can discuss this from thousands of miles apart suggests that information is being disseminated much more rapidly and should assist purchasers and potential purchasers to assess the market in way nobody could in 1989, on the other hand the internet facilitates the "blowing up of speculative bubbles" in ways that didnt exist 20-odd years ago. There are (in Europe) multiple adverts for the same vehicle - and cars have been advertised at auction that have been advertised by dealers at the same time - the interesting thing has been the price differential between auction estimates and dealer prices. E-bay is the latest unknown. I never thought I'd see classic cars on there (at least good ones) maybe the world really is changing and I'm getting too old! jg
