The Biggest Winners and Losers of the Collector Car Market in 2024

As tastes change and new people start participating in the old car hobby, the market shifts along with them. That’s why Hagerty updates our Price Guide four times per year; values are always moving.

The past 12 months saw lots of car values adjusting downward—25.7 percent of the vehicles in the Hagerty Price Guide came down from their pandemic-era highs. Plenty of others—43.7 percent of those in the Price Guide, in fact—bucked the trend and kept surging upward. (The remainder, for those of you tallying up the numbers, had values that stayed level.) The ends of this spectrum of ups and downs aren’t limited to any one era or segment—there’s a wild array among the winners and losers. Here are the five cars with the biggest movement up and the five biggest movements down from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024, measured by median condition #2 (“excellent”) value in the Hagerty Price Guide.

Winners:

1985-86 Audi Sport Quattro (+30 percent)

Audi introduced all-wheel drive to international rallying at the dawn of the 1980s, smoothed out its early problems (weight, complexity, reliability), and kept on improving its Quattro platform up until its departure from the sport in 1986. The Sport Quattro was Audi’s entry for 1984, and compared to the Ur (German for “original”) Quattro that preceded it, the Sport Quattro is over a foot shorter, features carbon-Kevlar body panels, rides on wider wheels, and stops via brakes derived from the Porsche 917. Audi built a total of 214 Sport Quattros for Group B homologation and a little over 160 of those sold to European customers at sticker prices that surpassed even some Ferraris.

The World Rally Championship’s (WRC) wild Group B and the radical cars it produced have become more popular in recent years, and the Audi is one of the most famous and successful of the genre. Their #2 values are at an all-time high of $644,000.

1973-75 Pontiac Grand Am (+34 percent)

The new-for-1973 Grand Am combined the existing Grand Prix and Trans Am nameplates to suggest it was a car with both the luxury of the Grand Prix and the lively performance of the Trans Am. Available as a two-door colonnade or four-door pillared hardtop and wearing a prominent Pontiac beak, the Grand Am could be had with either a 400-cid or 455-cid V-8.

As a brand, Pontiac has surprising staying power despite getting GM’s corporate ax 15 years ago, and the formerly cheap Grand Am has gotten some attention this year. Median #2 values are at an all-time high of $24,600.

1968-84 Saab 99 (+89 percent)

A formerly slept-on Swede, the Saab 99 was an important model that took the company upsize and upmarket. It was an early adopter of turbocharging and was Saab’s last factory rally car, serving up home-team WRC wins at the International Swedish Rally in ’77 and ’79. The 99 is a handsome, comfortable, and well-made car. As a classic, though, its values had been nearly flat for a full decade before the end of last year. Then there were some big sales in 2024, including a one-owner car sold for $29,504 and a very clean ’78 Turbo sold for $46,725. The condition #1 (“concours”) value for these cars at the beginning of the year wasn’t even 20 grand, so those were massive sales.

1983-92 Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk II (+40 percent)

VW’s Golf Mk II launched in 1983 as a larger, slightly more curved version of the original Giugiaro-designed 1974 best seller. Peppy performance and hot hatch practicality from both eight- and 16-valve Golf GTIs made them strong sellers in 1980s America, though there aren’t many clean Golf GTI Mk IIs left. Prices had been creeping up on these cars throughout the 2010s, but they took off in 2021 and currently sit at an all-time high with a median #2 value of $30,800.

1964-66 Honda S600 (+44 percent)

While not technically Honda’s first four-wheeled vehicle, the S600 marked an important shift for what had primarily been a motorcycle company. Similar in size, style, and performance to the MG Midget and Triumph Spitfire, the S600 is more sophisticated, more significant, and quite a bit rarer than its British rivals. S600s and the S800s that succeeded them have been steadily increasing in value for over a decade, but recent sales, including a record $109,000 result in March, have seen them continue upward in 2024. Their #2 value currently sits at $79,200.

Losers:

1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird (-24 percent)

Plymouth’s aero warrior was a huge winner during the pandemic boom, seeing its median condition #2 values more than double from mid-2021 to mid-2023. Superbirds routinely hit big auction results, particularly at Mecum sales. Two examples of its Dodge sibling—the Charger Daytona—sold for over $1M in that time. Summer of 2023, however, was the peak and the winged wonders have fallen off since. Over 30 Superbirds came to auction in 2024, with mediocre results compared to the two years prior. Condition #2 values for Hemi-powered and 440-cid/390hp Six Pack cars are down 24 percent, while the lower output 440/375hp cars are down nine percent. That said, Superbird values are still 42 percent higher than they were this time five years ago.

1963-68 Maserati Sebring (-24 percent)

Named for Maserati’s 1957 win at the 12 Hours of Sebring, based on the capable 3500 GT, and handsomely styled by Giovanni Michelotti at Vignale, the Maserati Sebring is a beautiful 1960s gran turismo, and it’s priced accordingly. These have been six-figure cars for over a decade, and they were big winners when everything from E-Types to Enzo-era Ferraris got more expensive during the early- to mid-2010s. Since peaking in late 2021, however, they’ve been trending down, and 2024 saw several auction results for under $200K in the E.U., U.K., and U.S. Their current median #2 value is $207,500.

There probably isn’t one sole reason for the big drop, but as a brand Maserati isn’t on top of the world in 2024. Like Jaguar and Alfa Romeo, Maserati has enough heritage to fill a library but hasn’t done much to be proud of lately. And there are plenty of more recent corporate missteps that overshadow the great stuff in the back catalog.

1968-78 Lamborghini Espada (-26 percent)

Values for the long and low Lamborghini Espada have been on quite a ride. From 2010-15 their value more than doubled. Then they dipped during the slowdown in the market of the late 2010s. Then they shot back up again during the hot pandemic-era market. And now they’re back down again.

A little over a year ago, values for these four-seat V-12 Italians were at an all-time high with a median #2 value of $159,000, but multiple Espadas sold in 2024 for under $100K.

1972-76 Ford Thunderbird (-24 percent)

With a hood the length of an aircraft carrier and a monster motor underneath it (up to 460 cubic inches—a 429 was the small engine), the sixth-generation Ford Thunderbird weighs over 5000 pounds and is the biggest the ‘Bird ever got. It was also a big seller when new, offering buyers much of the panache of the mechanically similar Lincoln Continental Mk IV but at a much lower price. But those aren’t the only big things about this T-Bird. It was also one of the biggest losers of 2024 in terms of value. As some of the exuberance in the market died down, so did Thunderbird prices: after some big sales in 2021 and 2022, values peaked in the summer of 2023. These are inexpensive cars, though, and what looks big in percentage terms only equates to anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand bucks. Condition #2 values for these huge personal luxury coupes currently sit at just $13,700.

2002-06 Mini Cooper S (-26 percent)

Well, this is a little awkward. We just put the 2002-06 Mini (aka the “new Mini” or “BMW Mini”) on our annual Bull Market list. That means we expect it to gain significant value in 2025, and yet it lost a ton of value in 2024. What gives?

Part of selecting newer cars for the Bull Market list is watching for cars that are still on that downward slope of used-car depreciation, and predicting when they’ll hit the bottom of that depreciation curve before the start of their collector-car upswing. That’s our basic calculation with the Minis. These charismatic pocket rockets have offered cheap fun for quite some time, and are less expensive than both the classic original and many of its contemporary sport compacts with a median #2 value of just $13,300. The oldest of them are over 20 years old, so attrition has knocked many cars off the road. The vast majority of Hagerty insurance quotes for Minis come from younger buyers, which suggests sustainable long-term interest. Basically, the market still treats them as used cars, but plenty of signs point to them being modern collector cars in the not-so-distant future.