How well did our experts call the trends? Scoring our 2023 market predictions

Nearly 12 months ago, we made several predictions about what would happen in the enthusiast vehicle market in 2023. We value a good gut check, so we are scoring our predictions to see what we got right and wrong. How did we do? This year provided a few curves for us to navigate, but overall our percentage was pretty solid. Hop in and see if we were able to beat our percentage from last year.

1. A Ferrari will sell for $40M+. One point. $51.7 million bought a 1962 Ferrari 330 LM / 250 GTO. We’ve written about this RM Sotheby’s sale here, but it was one of five Ferraris sold this year for more than $10 million. Most years, only a couple of Ferraris sell for more than $10 million. Sometimes a year goes by where none transact for that much. The last time more than five sold for more than $10 million was in 2014 (six found new homes then), so 2023 was a bit unusual. Perhaps we’ll see even more in 2024. 

2. Classic car imports from Europe (and particularly the United Kingdom) will continue to surge. We’ll take half a point on this one. Imports from Europe are up 8.7 percent, with just less than 300 vehicles per month entering the U.S. in 2023. Imports from the U.K. increased 1.9 percent—not as strong as we expected. The rate of growth from both regions is slowing partly because the U.S. Dollar is no longer quite as strong against the Euro and the Pound.

3. The average value of a collector motorcycle will surpass $10k USD for the first time. One point, by a nose. The average condition 3 value of motorcycles in the guide was $10,037, up from $9732 last year.

4. Appreciation for lower priced (< $250K) vehicles will slow in 2023, while $1m+ vehicles will appreciate faster. Half a point. We got the lower end of this prediction correct: vehicles with a condition 2 value of less than $250,000 a year ago appreciated 3.8 percent on average, down from 7.9 percent the prior year. However, those with a condition 2 value of $1 million+ a year ago slowed too, appreciating at 3.5 percent, compared to 7.8 percent in 2022. 

5. An ABC Kei car will sell for over $50,000. No points. They’re cute, but evidently not that cute. A couple of Autozam AZ-1s sold for nearly $30K, but the Kei car market was still too small in 2023. 

6. No NFTs will sell at a collector car auction. One point. Does anyone remember these?

7. Online auction growth will continue to slow. One point. Online auction sales grew five percent in 2023 vs. 45 percent growth for 2022, yielding total sales of “only” $1.7 billion. The number of vehicles sold grew more slowly, too; after an increase of 28 percent in 2022, the increase slowed to 19 percent in 2023, for a total of approximately 35,000 vehicles.

For 2022, our predictions were correct 75 percent of the time. This year, we only managed 71 percent. Will our 2024 predictions reverse the trend? Stay tuned.

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